{"data":{"id":17459,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: January 2020","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17459-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-January-2020","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17459","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17459","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).\nOperatives around the world collected the intel needed to provide you with this progress report. Through their efforts, we\u2019ve managed to unearth exciting information on tools improvements for the Cinematics team, a massive month of \u201cinterruptions\u201d for the Gameplay Story team, and seeing hard work pay off with immersive experiences.\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\nWe start January\u2019s report with Combat AI, who improved cover generation and the NPC cover-use mentioned last month. This involved voxelizing the area around the cover locator to better understand which locations have clearance and adequate protection. Behaviour-wise, feedback on shotgun tactics was implemented; now AI actors will find more tactically advantageous positions when shooting. The ability for NPCs to change between locomotion speeds while using a single path was also implemented. For example, NPCs relocating to a new cover location can slowly move and shoot before turning to run without recalculating their path.\n\nThe Ship AI Team finalized the last implementation of the new 3D navigation system. This uses a 3D pathfinder and collision avoidance system, with the goal to make AI pilots fully aware of their physical environments. Each environment offers a different challenge: In open space, pilots need to take into account asteroids, communication arrays, and space stations. When flying close to a planetary surface, pilots need to be aware of the local terrain elevation and physical structures that don\u2019t belong to the procedurally generated surface, such as rocks, buildings, refineries, and towers. In order to obtain and effectively use this information, the AI systems need to query physics in an extremely detailed way and model the information in abstractions that can be processed by their algorithms.\n\n\n\nAlso, time was dedicated to the routine code clean-up that\u2019s crucial to keeping the ever-growing code base efficient and readable. This clean-up focused mostly on flight-related Subsumption tasks with heavily repeated (or \u2018boilerplate\u2019) code that could be abstracted away to reduce the likelihood of errors when implementing new tasks.\n\n\n\nThe final days of January saw Ship AI prototyping a new AI system \u2013 Tactical Target Selection. Mission requirements are getting more sophisticated and the current selection system, based on filters, is not able to fulfill all requested scenarios.\n\nThe Social Team are currently focusing on a bar location, where players and NPCs can purchase bottled and draft drinks and ask the bartender to mix cocktails. Players will be able to drink at a table, booth, or the bar itself. They\u2019re also populating various key locations, such as the Idris, which involves creating specific NPC behaviors for each area. Currently, they\u2019re working on the hangar, where players will find mechanics who inspect and repair ships, and fuelers, who replenish them as required.\n\n\n\nArt (Characters)\nJanuary saw the Character Team continue to update the hairstyles of SQ42. Development continued on the Vanduul race, with the team working closely with Tech Animation, who are developing their internal Rig Logic system. Squadron uniforms were brought up to the latest standard, including the Bridge Officer uniform that was updated courtesy of the new material library. Head update passes are currently underway as hairstyles are completed.\n\nCinematics\nIn Frankfurt, the Cinematic Team\u2019s focus was on improving tools. As such, they now have the long-awaited thruster movements when they puppeteer ships via navsplines within cinematic sequences. This is made possible by IFCS calculating the positional\/rotational movement and additive offset animation and firing the thrusters accordingly. Now, for example, if Old Man\u2019s Gladius comes to a halt, the correct thrusters will fire.\n\nThe team recently gained the ability to play Entity effects on ships. In the past, it was difficult to replicate in-game effects accurately in cinematics, such as a ship exiting quantum travel. Previously, they had to utilize additional particle emitters \u2013 now they can play the exact effect when required. And, if they decide they need additional effects, they can override IFCS to further tweak the visuals manually.\n\n\n\nWork was also done to improve accessibility to ships. The team now have a visual viewport selection of a ship\u2019s itemports and can add them to sequences. This is a huge improvement over the previous long single list, particularly on huge ships with potentially thousands of itemports like the Bengal.\n\n\n\nEngineering\nJanuary saw the Engineering Team continue with physics threading and performance improvements. This involved increasing concurrency by adding an option to specify the number of worker threads to a maximum of 30. Currently, they overlap with the job system\u2019s worker threads. However, job workers are optimized for latency, so there are always points within a frame where it isn\u2019t entirely busy. Long term, they plan to move the in-thread physics workload to the job system directly, which will require further changes to negate the potential for frequent stalls.\n\nThe team also implemented concurrent\/immediate queuing for physics, support for fences and barriers to synchronize physics actions\/params, and added physics step data to the FPS heartbeat to monitor high-level load. The signed distance field (SDF) system was further developed to accelerate collision checks on complex geometry and increase precision. Support was also given to NPC death reaction animations regarding actor and ragdoll body dragging.\n\n\n\nJanuary\u2019s engine work included optimizing the job manager, which is required for entity-component scheduler improvements, and modifying it to run all component updates in batches. The responsiveness of the batch worker was also improved by removing the polling behavior to find jobs done (using direct signals instead), replacing the signaling mechanism with WaitOnAddress functionality for more efficient wake-ups, introducing clusters to prevent unnecessary wakeup for small batches, and replacing work-stealing code with simple atomic decrements.\n\n\n\nFor the zone system, they implemented support for proximity volumes and moved SZoneHandle data from client objects into the zone system. They also supported the transition to Visual Studio 2019.\nEngineering also supported the Gen12 renderer and Vulkan. This involved porting the buffer management code to the Gen12 renderer, generalizing texture views, creating support for LoadOp, changing Map API to make it more C++11-friendly using RAII, and ensuring the UpdateResourceBuffer legacy pipeline now correctly takes in byte offsets in the backend rather than per element-offset.\n\n\n\nWork on new experimental hair features began, including a hair color model with base melanin and bleach\/dye layers. Ocean rendering moved from a \u2018forward\u2019 to a \u2018deferred\u2019 pass to allow more consistent shading; shadow application is now free and cube map reflections were improved. The unified raymarcher continued development too.\n\n\n\nFor planet lighting and atmosphere, they added combined planet color LUT to evaluate the local ground albedo and take it into account during irradiance computations. They also applied scene irradiance computations and cloud shading, introduced new sky irradiance LUT for a better approximation of light scattering events within atmosphere, and added support for an alternative jitter method that works alongside TSAA.\n\n\n\nRegarding ground fog, they implemented a strictly compute-based method to build the ground height map. This means they\u2019ll be able to ditch fog volume proxy mesh generations which, after a lot of improvements, were still subject to artifacts. This move will save on memory resources as well. They also removed the peel buffer (in preparation to drop the proxy mesh) and fog bounds are now evaluated analytically.\n\n\n\nThe Feature Team continued to work with Gameplay Story and the designers to improve the interrupt and join tech. It now uses Subsumption static variables to simplify the logic setup and provide additional triggers, such as area volume.\n\n\n\nGameplay Story\n\u2018Interrupts\u2019 were a key focus for the Gameplay Story Team during January, who managed to complete 975 interrupt, busy, and conversation rejoin lines in Mannequin. They were also involved in testing, documenting, and providing feedback. They also began incorporating the new player facial animation. This involves ensuring that the animation triggers and synchronizes correctly. One particularly complex scene that involves six characters preparing for battle made great progress, with animation and weapon handling flowing seamlessly.\n\n\u201cWe have plenty more background elements and post-scene animations to complete, but I\u2019m certain this scene will become a highlight for our team\u2019s work on Squadron 42.\u201d\n- The Gameplay Story Team\n\n\n\nGraphics\nThe Graphics Team\u2019s SQ42 focus was on the Gen12\/Vulkan renderer that will continue for several months. This major project will improve renderer performance, achieve higher frame-rates, and open the door to various new GPU technologies. They also converted the first few post effects over to the new system and made improvements to the core system as new use-cases were encountered.\n\nLevel Design\nThe Social Team continued with the long process of narrative interaction. The technology for breaking away from, abandoning, and re-joining conversations is complicated when applied to specific actor performances, with each scene considered on merit. However, it\u2019s a worthwhile endeavor as the team are already seeing a level of immersion not seen in other narrative-driven games. Level Design are pushing on with AI behaviors, level mark-up, and moving some of the less-detailed greybox block-outs to their final states. The Dogfight Team are still building out the core AI movesets and behaviors to deliver believable and scalable AI for all scenarios.\n\nQA\nCinematics testing continues on a daily basis, with an embedded tester working closely with the Cinematics Team themselves. This involved creating client scene-captures of individual chapters and investigating issues that hinder the cinematic workflow.\n\nTech Animation\nTech Animation supported Cinematics with various loadout and character-related fixes and fixed multiple small bugs in the animation pipeline. They reworked the PlayBlast animation tool in Maya to make reviewing clips more efficient. They also supported Social AI with Mannequin tasks, implementing animations for the bartender, railings, and bar patron.\n\nTech Art\nTech Art continued to flesh out the runtime Rig Logic tools for Maya. The previously monolithic code and related data structures were broken down into generic building blocks known as rig components. These components can be chained together almost arbitrarily to provide the functionality required by specific rigs, such as a human body or space whale. BlendShape, linear joint offset, PSD, wrinkle map, and more are currently viable. In the future, support will be extended to RBF, look IK, and other more complex variants. This will allow the team to better develop new runtime rigs, which they\u2019ll need when they start creating the complex rigs for alien races and fauna.\n\nAnother important goal is to transition human body rigs from a fully-baked form (where the movement of joints and bones is exported into the game engine from Maya) to a workflow that only bakes and exports the primary joints. This will use a custom body runtime rig logic to determine the translation and rotation of all deformation helper joints. These joints ensure that, regardless of what clothing a character wears or how they pose, attachments always deform correctly without artifacts. By driving them via a runtime rig logic, the memory footprint of the thousands of body animation clips will become much smaller. Also, procedural animation of the primary joints via physicalized ragdolls, runtime IK, and others will not break deformation as the rig logic will adjust the deformation joints according to the final pose.\n\n\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nThroughout January, the UI Team put the finishing touches to the Actor Status display first seen at CitizenCon. This is the first element of the player\u2019s HUD to be built using the recent building blocks tech. They also finalized the design of the SQ42-specific helmet UI.\n\nThe UI Tech Team started work on 3D building blocks, which will support multi-layered screens and make it easier to add 3D icons. They also expanded reusability and restyling, which will help implement the new vehicle UI.\n\n\n\nVFX\nVFX began the year examining the GPU particle system and prioritizing features required for SQ42. They continued their push towards replacing older CPU particles with the GPU system, including a more robust method for spawning parent\/child setups with deeper levels of interaction than before. WE\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 Gemeinschaft zu erleichtern, sich auf diese zu beziehen.\nAchtung Rekruten,\n\nWas Sie gleich lesen werden, sind die neuesten Informationen \u00fcber die weitere Entwicklung der Staffel 42 (SCI des: SQ42).\nMitarbeiter in aller Welt haben die Informationen gesammelt, die Sie f\u00fcr diesen Fortschrittsbericht ben\u00f6tigen. Durch ihre Bem\u00fchungen ist es uns gelungen, spannende Informationen \u00fcber Verbesserungen der Tools f\u00fcr das Cinematics-Team und einen Monat voller \"Unterbrechungen\" f\u00fcr das Gameplay-Story-Team zu finden und zu sehen, wie sich die harte Arbeit mit immersiven Erfahrungen auszahlen wird.\n\nDie in dieser Mitteilung enthaltenen Informationen sind \u00e4u\u00dferst sensibel, und es ist von gr\u00f6\u00dfter Wichtigkeit, dass sie nicht in die falschen H\u00e4nde gelangen. L\u00f6schen Sie alle Datens\u00e4tze nach dem Lesen.\n\nOberkommando der UEE-Marine\n\nKI\nWir beginnen den Januar-Bericht mit der Kampf-KI, die die Deckungserstellung und die im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnte NPC-Deckungsnutzung verbessert hat. Dies beinhaltete eine Voxelierung des Bereichs um den Deckungssucher, um besser zu verstehen, welche Orte \u00fcber eine Freigabe und einen angemessenen Schutz verf\u00fcgen. In Bezug auf das Verhalten wurde ein Feedback zur Schrotflintentaktik implementiert; jetzt werden KI-Akteure beim Schie\u00dfen taktisch vorteilhaftere Positionen finden. Die M\u00f6glichkeit f\u00fcr NPCs, zwischen den Fortbewegungsgeschwindigkeiten zu wechseln, w\u00e4hrend sie eine einzige Bahn benutzen, wurde ebenfalls implementiert. Beispielsweise k\u00f6nnen sich NSCs, die sich an einen neuen Deckungsort verlagern, langsam bewegen und schie\u00dfen, bevor sie sich zum Laufen umdrehen, ohne ihren Weg neu zu berechnen.\nDas Schiffs-KI-Team hat die letzte Implementierung des neuen 3D-Navigationssystems abgeschlossen. Dabei wird ein 3D-Pfadfinder- und Kollisionsvermeidungssystem eingesetzt, mit dem Ziel, den KI-Piloten ihre physische Umgebung vollst\u00e4ndig bewusst zu machen. Jede Umgebung bietet eine andere Herausforderung: Im offenen Raum m\u00fcssen die Piloten Asteroiden, Kommunikationsanordnungen und Raumstationen ber\u00fccksichtigen. Beim Fliegen in der N\u00e4he einer Planetenoberfl\u00e4che m\u00fcssen sich die Piloten der lokalen Gel\u00e4ndeh\u00f6he und der physischen Strukturen bewusst sein, die nicht zu der verfahrenstechnisch erzeugten Oberfl\u00e4che geh\u00f6ren, wie z.B. Felsen, Geb\u00e4ude, Raffinerien und T\u00fcrme. Um diese Informationen zu erhalten und effektiv zu nutzen, m\u00fcssen die KI-Systeme die Physik auf sehr detaillierte Weise abfragen und die Informationen in Abstraktionen modellieren, die von ihren Algorithmen verarbeitet werden k\u00f6nnen.\n\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde Zeit f\u00fcr die routinem\u00e4\u00dfige Code-Bereinigung aufgewendet, die entscheidend daf\u00fcr ist, die st\u00e4ndig wachsende Code-Basis effizient und lesbar zu halten. Diese Bereinigung konzentrierte sich vor allem auf flugbezogene Subsumtionsaufgaben mit stark wiederholtem (oder \"Boilerplate\"-)Code, der weg abstrahiert werden konnte, um die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Fehlern bei der Implementierung neuer Aufgaben zu verringern.\n\n\nIn den letzten Januartagen wurde ein Schiffs-KI-Prototyp eines neuen KI-Systems entwickelt - die taktische Zielauswahl. Die Anforderungen der Missionen werden immer anspruchsvoller, und das derzeitige Auswahlsystem, das auf Filtern basiert, ist nicht in der Lage, alle geforderten Szenarien zu erf\u00fcllen.\nDas Sozialteam konzentriert sich derzeit auf eine Bar, in der Spieler und NPCs Flaschen- und Fassgetr\u00e4nke kaufen und den Barkeeper bitten k\u00f6nnen, Cocktails zu mixen. Die Spieler k\u00f6nnen am Tisch, am Stand oder an der Bar selbst etwas trinken. Sie bev\u00f6lkern auch verschiedene Schl\u00fcsselstandorte, wie z.B. den Idris, was die Schaffung spezifischer NPC-Verhaltensweisen f\u00fcr jedes Gebiet beinhaltet. Zurzeit arbeiten sie am Hangar, wo die Spieler Mechaniker finden, die Schiffe inspizieren und reparieren, sowie Tanker, die sie bei Bedarf auff\u00fcllen.\n\n\nKunst (Zeichen)\nIm Januar hat das Charakter-Team die Aktualisierung der Frisuren von SQ42 fortgesetzt. Beim Rennen in Vanduul wurde die Entwicklung fortgesetzt, wobei das Team eng mit Tech Animation zusammenarbeitete, die ihr internes Rig Logic-System entwickelt. Die Uniformen der Schwadron wurden auf den neuesten Stand gebracht, einschlie\u00dflich der Uniform des Br\u00fcckenoffiziers, die mit Hilfe der neuen Materialbibliothek aktualisiert wurde. Derzeit sind die Head-Update-P\u00e4sse im Gange, w\u00e4hrend die Frisuren fertiggestellt werden.\nKinematographie\nIn Frankfurt lag der Schwerpunkt des Filmteams auf der Verbesserung der Werkzeuge. Als solche haben sie nun die lang erwarteten Schubbewegungen, wenn sie Schiffe \u00fcber Navsplines innerhalb von Filmsequenzen puppenspielen. Dies wird dadurch erm\u00f6glicht, dass das IFCS die Positions-\/Drehbewegung und die additive Offset-Animation berechnet und die Triebwerke entsprechend z\u00fcndet. Wenn zum Beispiel der Gladius des alten Mannes zum Stillstand kommt, werden die richtigen Triebwerke ausgel\u00f6st.\nDas Team hat k\u00fcrzlich die F\u00e4higkeit erlangt, Entit\u00e4tseffekte auf Schiffen zu spielen. In der Vergangenheit war es schwierig, In-Game-Effekte in der Filmkunst exakt zu reproduzieren, wie z.B. ein Schiff, das aus einer Quantenreise austritt. Fr\u00fcher mussten sie zus\u00e4tzliche Partikelemitter einsetzen - jetzt k\u00f6nnen sie bei Bedarf den genauen Effekt spielen. Und wenn sie entscheiden, dass sie zus\u00e4tzliche Effekte ben\u00f6tigen, k\u00f6nnen sie das IFCS au\u00dfer Kraft setzen, um das Bildmaterial weiter manuell zu optimieren.\n\n\nEs wurde auch an der Verbesserung der Zug\u00e4nglichkeit von Schiffen gearbeitet. Das Team hat nun eine visuelle Ansichtsfenster-Auswahl der Itemports eines Schiffes und kann diese zu Sequenzen hinzuf\u00fcgen. Dies ist eine enorme Verbesserung gegen\u00fcber der vorherigen langen Single-Liste, insbesondere auf riesigen Schiffen mit potenziell Tausenden von Itemports wie der Bengal.\n\n\nTechnik\nIm Januar setzte das Ingenieurteam das Einf\u00e4deln der Physik und die Leistungsverbesserung fort. Dies beinhaltete die Erh\u00f6hung der Gleichzeitigkeit durch Hinzuf\u00fcgen einer Option zur Angabe der Anzahl der Worker-Threads auf maximal 30. Gegenw\u00e4rtig \u00fcberschneiden sie sich mit den Arbeitsf\u00e4den des Arbeitssystems. Allerdings sind die Mitarbeiter auf Latenzzeiten optimiert, so dass es immer Punkte innerhalb eines Rahmens gibt, an denen er nicht vollst\u00e4ndig ausgelastet ist. Langfristig planen sie, die in der Physik anfallende Arbeitsbelastung direkt auf das Job-System zu verlagern, was weitere \u00c4nderungen erfordert, um das Potenzial f\u00fcr h\u00e4ufige Str\u00f6mungsabrisse zu negieren.\nDas Team implementierte auch gleichzeitige\/sofortige Warteschlangen f\u00fcr die Physik, Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Z\u00e4une und Barrieren, um die physikalischen Aktionen\/Parameter zu synchronisieren, und f\u00fcgte dem FPS-Herzschlag physikalische Schrittdaten hinzu, um die Belastung auf hoher Ebene zu \u00fcberwachen. Das SDF-System (Signed Distance Field) wurde weiterentwickelt, um die Kollisionspr\u00fcfung komplexer Geometrien zu beschleunigen und die Pr\u00e4zision zu erh\u00f6hen. Unterst\u00fctzt wurden auch Animationen der NPC-Todesreaktion bez\u00fcglich des Schleppens von Schauspielern und Ragdoll-K\u00f6rpern.\n\n\nDie Arbeit an der Engine im Januar beinhaltete die Optimierung des Job-Managers, der f\u00fcr Verbesserungen des Entity-Komponenten-Schedulers erforderlich ist, sowie die Modifizierung des Job-Managers, um alle Komponenten-Updates in Batches auszuf\u00fchren. Die Reaktionsf\u00e4higkeit des Batch-Workers wurde ebenfalls verbessert, indem das Polling-Verhalten zum Auffinden erledigter Jobs entfernt wurde (stattdessen wurden direkte Signale verwendet), der Signalisierungsmechanismus durch die WaitOnAddress-Funktionalit\u00e4t f\u00fcr effizientere Aufweckvorg\u00e4nge ersetzt wurde, Cluster eingef\u00fchrt wurden, um unn\u00f6tiges Aufwecken bei kleinen Batches zu verhindern, und der arbeitsteilige Code durch einfache atomare Dekremente ersetzt wurde.\n\n\nF\u00fcr das Zonensystem implementierten sie die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Proximity-Volumes und verschoben SZoneHandle-Daten von Kundenobjekten in das Zonensystem. Sie unterst\u00fctzten auch den \u00dcbergang zu Visual Studio 2019.\nDie Technik unterst\u00fctzte auch den Gen12-Renderer und Vulkan. Dies beinhaltete die Portierung des Puffermanagement-Codes auf den Gen12-Renderer, die Verallgemeinerung von Texturansichten, die Schaffung von Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr LoadOp, die \u00c4nderung der Map-API, um sie mit RAII C++11-freundlicher zu machen, und die Sicherstellung, dass die UpdateResourceBuffer-Legacy-Pipeline jetzt Byte-Offsets im Backend statt pro Element-Offset korrekt aufnimmt.\n\n\nDie Arbeit an neuen experimentellen Haarmerkmalen begann, darunter ein Haarfarbenmodell mit Melaninbasis und Bleich-\/Farbschichten. Das Ozean-Rendering wurde von einem \"vorw\u00e4rts\" zu einem \"verz\u00f6gerten\" Durchgang verschoben, um eine konsistentere Schattierung zu erm\u00f6glichen; die Schattenanwendung ist jetzt frei und die W\u00fcrfelkartenreflexionen wurden verbessert. Auch der vereinigte Raymarcher entwickelte sich weiter.\n\n\nF\u00fcr die Planetenbeleuchtung und Atmosph\u00e4re f\u00fcgten sie eine kombinierte Planetenfarben-LUT hinzu, um die lokale Bodenalbedo zu bewerten und bei den Bestrahlungsst\u00e4rke-Berechnungen zu ber\u00fccksichtigen. Sie wandten auch Berechnungen der Szenenbestrahlungsst\u00e4rke und Wolkenschattierungen an, f\u00fchrten eine neue Himmelsbestrahlungsst\u00e4rke LUT f\u00fcr eine bessere Ann\u00e4herung an Lichtstreuungsereignisse in der Atmosph\u00e4re ein und f\u00fcgten die Unterst\u00fctzung einer alternativen Jitter-Methode hinzu, die neben TSAA funktioniert.\n\n\nWas den Bodennebel betrifft, so haben sie eine streng rechnergest\u00fctzte Methode zur Erstellung der Bodenh\u00f6henkarte eingef\u00fchrt. Das bedeutet, dass sie in der Lage sein werden, die Nebelvolumen-Proxy-Mesh-Generationen, die nach vielen Verbesserungen immer noch mit Artefakten behaftet waren, zu beseitigen. Dieser Schritt spart auch Speicherressourcen. Sie entfernten auch den Sch\u00e4lpuffer (in Vorbereitung auf den Verzicht auf das Proxy-Mesh), und die Nebelgrenzen werden nun analytisch ausgewertet.\n\n\nDas Feature-Team arbeitete weiterhin mit der Gameplay-Story und den Designern zusammen, um die Unterbrechung zu verbessern und die Technik zu verbessern. Sie verwendet jetzt statische Subsumptionsvariablen, um den Logikaufbau zu vereinfachen und zus\u00e4tzliche Ausl\u00f6ser wie z.B. das Fl\u00e4chenvolumen zu liefern.\n\n\nSpielgeschichte\nUnterbrechungen\" waren im Januar ein Hauptaugenmerk des Gameplay-Story-Teams, dem es gelang, 975 Unterbrechungen, Besch\u00e4ftigungen und Gespr\u00e4che in Mannequin zu beenden. Sie waren auch an der Erprobung, Dokumentation und dem Feedback beteiligt. Sie begannen auch, die Gesichtsanimation des neuen Spielers zu integrieren. Dabei muss sichergestellt werden, dass die Animation korrekt ausgel\u00f6st und synchronisiert wird. Eine besonders komplexe Szene, in der sich sechs Charaktere auf die Schlacht vorbereiten, machte gro\u00dfe Fortschritte, wobei Animation und Waffenhandhabung nahtlos ineinander \u00fcbergehen.\n\"Wir haben noch viele weitere Hintergrundelemente und Post-Szenen-Animationen zu vervollst\u00e4ndigen, aber ich bin sicher, dass diese Szene ein H\u00f6hepunkt f\u00fcr die Arbeit unseres Teams an der Staffel 42 werden wird.\n- Das Team der Spielgeschichte\n\n\nGrafiken\nDer SQ42-Schwerpunkt des Grafikteams lag auf dem Gen12\/Vulkan-Renderer, der noch einige Monate lang laufen wird. Dieses Gro\u00dfprojekt wird die Renderer-Leistung verbessern, h\u00f6here Frameraten erzielen und die T\u00fcr zu verschiedenen neuen GPU-Technologien \u00f6ffnen. Sie stellten auch die ersten paar Nachwirkungen auf das neue System um und verbesserten das Kernsystem, da neue Anwendungsf\u00e4lle auftraten.\nLevel-Entwurf\nDas Sozialteam setzte den langen Prozess der erz\u00e4hlerischen Interaktion fort. Die Technik, um Gespr\u00e4che zu unterbrechen, abzubrechen und wieder aufzunehmen, ist kompliziert, wenn sie auf bestimmte Schauspielerauff\u00fchrungen angewendet wird, wobei jede Szene nach ihrem Verdienst beurteilt wird. Es ist jedoch ein lohnendes Unterfangen, da das Team bereits einen Grad an Vertiefung erreicht hat, der in anderen narrativen Spielen nicht zu finden ist. Das Leveldesign treibt das KI-Verhalten, den Level-Aufschlag und die Verschiebung einiger der weniger detaillierten Greybox-Blockierungen in ihre Endzust\u00e4nde voran. Das Dogfight-Team ist noch dabei, die Kern-Movesets und Verhaltensweisen der KI auszubauen, um eine glaubw\u00fcrdige und skalierbare KI f\u00fcr alle Szenarien zu liefern.\nQA\nDie Filmtests werden t\u00e4glich fortgesetzt, wobei ein eingebetteter Tester eng mit dem Filmteam selbst zusammenarbeitet. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Erstellung von Kundenszenenaufnahmen einzelner Kapitel und die Untersuchung von Problemen, die den filmischen Arbeitsablauf behindern.\nTechnische Animation\nTech Animation unterst\u00fctzte Cinematics mit verschiedenen Loadout- und Charakter-bezogenen Korrekturen und behebt mehrere kleine Fehler in der Animationspipeline. Sie haben das PlayBlast-Animationswerkzeug in Maya \u00fcberarbeitet, um die \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung von Clips effizienter zu gestalten. Sie unterst\u00fctzten auch die soziale KI mit Mannequin-Aufgaben, indem sie Animationen f\u00fcr den Barkeeper, die Gel\u00e4nder und den Bar-Patron implementierten.\nTechnische Kunst\nTech Art hat die Rig Logic-Tools zur Laufzeit f\u00fcr Maya weiter ausgebaut. Der zuvor monolithische Code und die damit verbundenen Datenstrukturen wurden in generische Bausteine, die als Rig-Komponenten bezeichnet werden, zerlegt. Diese Komponenten k\u00f6nnen fast beliebig miteinander verkettet werden, um die Funktionalit\u00e4t zu gew\u00e4hrleisten, die von bestimmten Rigs, wie z.B. einem menschlichen K\u00f6rper oder einem Weltraumwal, ben\u00f6tigt wird. BlendShape, linearer Gelenkausgleich, PSD, Faltenabbildung und mehr sind derzeit realisierbar. In Zukunft wird die Unterst\u00fctzung auf RBF, siehe IK, und andere komplexere Varianten ausgeweitet werden. Dies wird es dem Team erm\u00f6glichen, besser neue Runtime-Rigs zu entwickeln, die sie ben\u00f6tigen, wenn sie die komplexen Rigs f\u00fcr au\u00dferirdische Rassen und Fauna erstellen wollen.\nEin weiteres wichtiges Ziel ist es, menschliche K\u00f6rperger\u00e4te von einer vollst\u00e4ndig gebackenen Form (bei der die Bewegung der Gelenke und Knochen von Maya in die Spiel-Engine exportiert wird) auf einen Arbeitsablauf umzustellen, der nur die prim\u00e4ren Gelenke backt und exportiert. Dabei wird eine benutzerdefinierte Body-Runtime-Rig-Logik verwendet, um die Translation und Rotation aller Deformationshelfergelenke zu bestimmen. Diese Gelenke stellen sicher, dass sich die Anh\u00e4nge unabh\u00e4ngig von der Kleidung einer Figur oder ihrer Haltung immer korrekt und ohne Artefakte verformen. Durch die Ansteuerung \u00fcber eine Laufzeit-Rig-Logik wird der Speicherbedarf der Tausenden von K\u00f6rperanimationsclips deutlich geringer. Auch die prozedurale Animation der Prim\u00e4rgelenke \u00fcber physikalisierte Ragdolls, Laufzeit-IK und andere wird die Verformung nicht brechen, da die Rig-Logik die Verformungsgelenke entsprechend der endg\u00fcltigen Pose anpasst.\n\n\nBenutzerschnittstelle (UI)\nDen ganzen Januar \u00fcber gab das UI-Team der Anzeige des Schauspieler-Status, die erstmals auf der CitizenCon zu sehen war, den letzten Schliff. Dies ist das erste Element des HUDs des Spielers, das unter Verwendung der neuesten Bausteintechnologie gebaut wurde. Sie haben auch das Design der SQ42-spezifischen Helm-UI abgeschlossen.\nDas UI-Tech-Team hat mit der Arbeit an 3D-Bausteinen begonnen, die mehrschichtige Bildschirme unterst\u00fctzen und das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von 3D-Symbolen erleichtern werden. Sie haben auch die Wiederverwendbarkeit und das Restyling erweitert, was die Implementierung der neuen Fahrzeug-UI erleichtern wird.\n\n\nVFX\nVFX begann das Jahr damit, das GPU-Partikelsystem zu untersuchen und die f\u00fcr SQ42 erforderlichen Funktionen zu priorisieren. Sie setzten ihren Vorsto\u00df fort, \u00e4ltere CPU-Partikel durch das GPU-System zu ersetzen, einschlie\u00dflich einer robusteren Methode zur Erzeugung von Eltern\/Kind-Setups mit tieferen Interaktionsebenen als zuvor. WIR 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).\nOperatives around the world collected the intel needed to provide you with this progress report. Through their efforts, we\u2019ve managed to unearth exciting information on tools improvements for the Cinematics team, a massive month of \u201cinterruptions\u201d for the Gameplay Story team, and seeing hard work pay off with immersive experiences.\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\nWe start January\u2019s report with Combat AI, who improved cover generation and the NPC cover-use mentioned last month. This involved voxelizing the area around the cover locator to better understand which locations have clearance and adequate protection. Behaviour-wise, feedback on shotgun tactics was implemented; now AI actors will find more tactically advantageous positions when shooting. The ability for NPCs to change between locomotion speeds while using a single path was also implemented. For example, NPCs relocating to a new cover location can slowly move and shoot before turning to run without recalculating their path.\n\nThe Ship AI Team finalized the last implementation of the new 3D navigation system. This uses a 3D pathfinder and collision avoidance system, with the goal to make AI pilots fully aware of their physical environments. Each environment offers a different challenge: In open space, pilots need to take into account asteroids, communication arrays, and space stations. When flying close to a planetary surface, pilots need to be aware of the local terrain elevation and physical structures that don\u2019t belong to the procedurally generated surface, such as rocks, buildings, refineries, and towers. In order to obtain and effectively use this information, the AI systems need to query physics in an extremely detailed way and model the information in abstractions that can be processed by their algorithms.\n\n\n\nAlso, time was dedicated to the routine code clean-up that\u2019s crucial to keeping the ever-growing code base efficient and readable. This clean-up focused mostly on flight-related Subsumption tasks with heavily repeated (or \u2018boilerplate\u2019) code that could be abstracted away to reduce the likelihood of errors when implementing new tasks.\n\n\n\nThe final days of January saw Ship AI prototyping a new AI system \u2013 Tactical Target Selection. Mission requirements are getting more sophisticated and the current selection system, based on filters, is not able to fulfill all requested scenarios.\n\nThe Social Team are currently focusing on a bar location, where players and NPCs can purchase bottled and draft drinks and ask the bartender to mix cocktails. Players will be able to drink at a table, booth, or the bar itself. They\u2019re also populating various key locations, such as the Idris, which involves creating specific NPC behaviors for each area. Currently, they\u2019re working on the hangar, where players will find mechanics who inspect and repair ships, and fuelers, who replenish them as required.\n\n\n\nArt (Characters)\nJanuary saw the Character Team continue to update the hairstyles of SQ42. Development continued on the Vanduul race, with the team working closely with Tech Animation, who are developing their internal Rig Logic system. Squadron uniforms were brought up to the latest standard, including the Bridge Officer uniform that was updated courtesy of the new material library. Head update passes are currently underway as hairstyles are completed.\n\nCinematics\nIn Frankfurt, the Cinematic Team\u2019s focus was on improving tools. As such, they now have the long-awaited thruster movements when they puppeteer ships via navsplines within cinematic sequences. This is made possible by IFCS calculating the positional\/rotational movement and additive offset animation and firing the thrusters accordingly. Now, for example, if Old Man\u2019s Gladius comes to a halt, the correct thrusters will fire.\n\nThe team recently gained the ability to play Entity effects on ships. In the past, it was difficult to replicate in-game effects accurately in cinematics, such as a ship exiting quantum travel. Previously, they had to utilize additional particle emitters \u2013 now they can play the exact effect when required. And, if they decide they need additional effects, they can override IFCS to further tweak the visuals manually.\n\n\n\nWork was also done to improve accessibility to ships. The team now have a visual viewport selection of a ship\u2019s itemports and can add them to sequences. This is a huge improvement over the previous long single list, particularly on huge ships with potentially thousands of itemports like the Bengal.\n\n\n\nEngineering\nJanuary saw the Engineering Team continue with physics threading and performance improvements. This involved increasing concurrency by adding an option to specify the number of worker threads to a maximum of 30. Currently, they overlap with the job system\u2019s worker threads. However, job workers are optimized for latency, so there are always points within a frame where it isn\u2019t entirely busy. Long term, they plan to move the in-thread physics workload to the job system directly, which will require further changes to negate the potential for frequent stalls.\n\nThe team also implemented concurrent\/immediate queuing for physics, support for fences and barriers to synchronize physics actions\/params, and added physics step data to the FPS heartbeat to monitor high-level load. The signed distance field (SDF) system was further developed to accelerate collision checks on complex geometry and increase precision. Support was also given to NPC death reaction animations regarding actor and ragdoll body dragging.\n\n\n\nJanuary\u2019s engine work included optimizing the job manager, which is required for entity-component scheduler improvements, and modifying it to run all component updates in batches. The responsiveness of the batch worker was also improved by removing the polling behavior to find jobs done (using direct signals instead), replacing the signaling mechanism with WaitOnAddress functionality for more efficient wake-ups, introducing clusters to prevent unnecessary wakeup for small batches, and replacing work-stealing code with simple atomic decrements.\n\n\n\nFor the zone system, they implemented support for proximity volumes and moved SZoneHandle data from client objects into the zone system. They also supported the transition to Visual Studio 2019.\nEngineering also supported the Gen12 renderer and Vulkan. This involved porting the buffer management code to the Gen12 renderer, generalizing texture views, creating support for LoadOp, changing Map API to make it more C++11-friendly using RAII, and ensuring the UpdateResourceBuffer legacy pipeline now correctly takes in byte offsets in the backend rather than per element-offset.\n\n\n\nWork on new experimental hair features began, including a hair color model with base melanin and bleach\/dye layers. Ocean rendering moved from a \u2018forward\u2019 to a \u2018deferred\u2019 pass to allow more consistent shading; shadow application is now free and cube map reflections were improved. The unified raymarcher continued development too.\n\n\n\nFor planet lighting and atmosphere, they added combined planet color LUT to evaluate the local ground albedo and take it into account during irradiance computations. They also applied scene irradiance computations and cloud shading, introduced new sky irradiance LUT for a better approximation of light scattering events within atmosphere, and added support for an alternative jitter method that works alongside TSAA.\n\n\n\nRegarding ground fog, they implemented a strictly compute-based method to build the ground height map. This means they\u2019ll be able to ditch fog volume proxy mesh generations which, after a lot of improvements, were still subject to artifacts. This move will save on memory resources as well. They also removed the peel buffer (in preparation to drop the proxy mesh) and fog bounds are now evaluated analytically.\n\n\n\nThe Feature Team continued to work with Gameplay Story and the designers to improve the interrupt and join tech. It now uses Subsumption static variables to simplify the logic setup and provide additional triggers, such as area volume.\n\n\n\nGameplay Story\n\u2018Interrupts\u2019 were a key focus for the Gameplay Story Team during January, who managed to complete 975 interrupt, busy, and conversation rejoin lines in Mannequin. They were also involved in testing, documenting, and providing feedback. They also began incorporating the new player facial animation. This involves ensuring that the animation triggers and synchronizes correctly. One particularly complex scene that involves six characters preparing for battle made great progress, with animation and weapon handling flowing seamlessly.\n\n\u201cWe have plenty more background elements and post-scene animations to complete, but I\u2019m certain this scene will become a highlight for our team\u2019s work on Squadron 42.\u201d\n- The Gameplay Story Team\n\n\n\nGraphics\nThe Graphics Team\u2019s SQ42 focus was on the Gen12\/Vulkan renderer that will continue for several months. This major project will improve renderer performance, achieve higher frame-rates, and open the door to various new GPU technologies. They also converted the first few post effects over to the new system and made improvements to the core system as new use-cases were encountered.\n\nLevel Design\nThe Social Team continued with the long process of narrative interaction. The technology for breaking away from, abandoning, and re-joining conversations is complicated when applied to specific actor performances, with each scene considered on merit. However, it\u2019s a worthwhile endeavor as the team are already seeing a level of immersion not seen in other narrative-driven games. Level Design are pushing on with AI behaviors, level mark-up, and moving some of the less-detailed greybox block-outs to their final states. The Dogfight Team are still building out the core AI movesets and behaviors to deliver believable and scalable AI for all scenarios.\n\nQA\nCinematics testing continues on a daily basis, with an embedded tester working closely with the Cinematics Team themselves. This involved creating client scene-captures of individual chapters and investigating issues that hinder the cinematic workflow.\n\nTech Animation\nTech Animation supported Cinematics with various loadout and character-related fixes and fixed multiple small bugs in the animation pipeline. They reworked the PlayBlast animation tool in Maya to make reviewing clips more efficient. They also supported Social AI with Mannequin tasks, implementing animations for the bartender, railings, and bar patron.\n\nTech Art\nTech Art continued to flesh out the runtime Rig Logic tools for Maya. The previously monolithic code and related data structures were broken down into generic building blocks known as rig components. These components can be chained together almost arbitrarily to provide the functionality required by specific rigs, such as a human body or space whale. BlendShape, linear joint offset, PSD, wrinkle map, and more are currently viable. In the future, support will be extended to RBF, look IK, and other more complex variants. This will allow the team to better develop new runtime rigs, which they\u2019ll need when they start creating the complex rigs for alien races and fauna.\n\nAnother important goal is to transition human body rigs from a fully-baked form (where the movement of joints and bones is exported into the game engine from Maya) to a workflow that only bakes and exports the primary joints. This will use a custom body runtime rig logic to determine the translation and rotation of all deformation helper joints. These joints ensure that, regardless of what clothing a character wears or how they pose, attachments always deform correctly without artifacts. By driving them via a runtime rig logic, the memory footprint of the thousands of body animation clips will become much smaller. Also, procedural animation of the primary joints via physicalized ragdolls, runtime IK, and others will not break deformation as the rig logic will adjust the deformation joints according to the final pose.\n\n\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nThroughout January, the UI Team put the finishing touches to the Actor Status display first seen at CitizenCon. This is the first element of the player\u2019s HUD to be built using the recent building blocks tech. They also finalized the design of the SQ42-specific helmet UI.\n\nThe UI Tech Team started work on 3D building blocks, which will support multi-layered screens and make it easier to add 3D icons. They also expanded reusability and restyling, which will help implement the new vehicle UI.\n\n\n\nVFX\nVFX began the year examining the GPU particle system and prioritizing features required for SQ42. They continued their push towards replacing older CPU particles with the GPU system, including a more robust method for spawning parent\/child setups with deeper levels of interaction than before. WE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":14,"created_at":"2020-02-12T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"6 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 21:31:40","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17458,"next_id":17460}}