{"data":{"id":17673,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: June 2020","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/17673-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-June-2020","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/17673","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/17673","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\nDue to the unwavering work of our agents in the field, we\u2019ve managed to ascertain work done on Javelin interiors and unique turret assets, Vanduul Combat AI, and a deadly look at what a Vanduul kingship\u2019s weapon could be capable of.\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 AI (Combat)\nWe start June\u2019s report with Character Combat, who focused on Vanduul behaviors, specifically melee attacks.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s important to have a base level of melee for all AI characters, with the idea being to employ the actor functionality to much of the same code as the player character.\u201d -The Character Combat Team\n\nThis use of common code (where possible) ensures that NPCs are able to behave the same ways the player can. However, for the Vanduul, the team need specific attack animations that can be chained together to close distances and apply pressure to the player\/adversary.\n\nThey also tackled several aspects of realistic firing, including improving the code-side of triggering and reloading. They made all requests event-based and added proper success notifications and different action results between the actor state machine and AI components. This allows the AI to have consistent knowledge of the results of the requested actions, allowing them to create behaviors that can handle different scenarios correctly. For example, if an NPC is pushing towards an enemy, the team may want them to automatically reload their weapon. However, if no ammunition is available, the behavior will be notified and a new reaction activated. This can happen to NPCs less skilled in evaluating their ability to manage ammunition, while those better skilled can choose not to use that tactic unless enough ammunition is available.\n\nThey also began leveraging the usable system functionalities of the bartender in a combat scenario. In the social environment, they created the concept of usables that can produce and accept items:\n\u201cAn ammo box is nothing else than an item provider. The item itself could produce magazines or it might have magazines attached, similar to how a beer fridge can contain beer bottles, but a mixing station can create the drinks from specific source items. This allows NPCs to search for places in the world that can provide them with magazines of a specific type, relocate to those objects, and refill their loadout. This gives opportunity for the player and forces NPCs to evaluate the environment to decide if and when it\u2019s appropriate to use those refill spots.\u201d\n\nTime was also spent completing tasks for server mesh implementation.\n\nAI (Social)\nLast month, Social AI focused on the first pass of two new scenarios \u2013 bridge crew behaviors and capital ship hangar crews:\nThe bridge crew behavior allows NPCs to handle the required work of a capital ship. Designers can specify in the NPC schedules which type of role they have, which will help the \u2018generic\u2019 behavior select the right seats and routines they have to perform. The captain will also roam the bridge and supervise other members of the crew.\n\nThe hangar crew behavior represents a set of behaviors for all NPCs that work in a hangar, including overseer, fueler, ordnance, mechanic, grunt, and air-traffic controller. In this instance, the ship is an example of a compound usable \u2013 a usable that can contain the functionality of other single usables.\n\nThe first iteration of the vendor behavior is also nearing completion. June saw the addition of patrons that can order a drink, bring it to a table, and then return it to the counter.\n\nAI (General)\nAi\u2019s global focus was on improvements to the various systems used by all team members. Improvements were made to the debug draw of the Subsumption logic, allowing Subsumption functions, use channels, and conversations to display the updated value of their local variables. The range-event dispatcher debug now easily displays the monitored characters\u2019 distance, orientation, and more. The team also worked on the movement system to provide additional functions to validate the execution of a plan. For example, to correctly consider the movement along a path driven by a cutscene or an animation so that, once finished, the character continues their movement smoothly. The LookComponent was refactored to correctly handle requests with different priorities too.\n\nAnimation\nThroughout June, the team blocked out animations for various features and improved their ability to efficiently capture, select, and turn-around motion capture. They also worked on knockbacks, staggers, and hit reactions from grenades and other thrown objects.\n\nThe team worked with Combat AI on weapon reloads, reloading from locations, and Vanduul locomotion. For Social AI, they worked on lockers, smoking, crates, the bartender and bar patrons, and worked out an issue with the seated console metric.\n\nSpecifically for SQ42, work continued on various scenes, interrupts, and character faces.\n\nArt (Characters)\nThe Character Team continued to work on hair, with blonde hair making progress. They also revisited the \u2018bun\u2019 style, which appears a large number of female characters. The rest of the team\u2019s SQ42 focus was on refining the Vanduul.\n\n\u201cOur Vanduul base body needed to be tweaked and reskinned so that we could achieve higher fidelity animations. We\u2019re wrapping the pass up this week and making an update pass on all Vanduul armors.\u201d -The Character Team\n\nOnce the Vanduul characters are complete, work will begin on the Xi\u2019an in earnest, which the artists recently blocked out.\n\nArt (Environment)\nEnvironment Art progressed with several sections of the Javelin, including new unique turret assets.\n\n\u201cThese are massive turrets involving multiple firing modes that need to have a degree of nimbleness to them as well as, at times, feel heavy and weighty to use.\u201d \u2013 The Environment Art Team\n\nJune saw the progress on two stations within the comms array that make up a large section of gameplay in early parts of the campaign. They both require lighting polish (which will continue as new lighting features come onboard) but are otherwise complete.\n\nWork on the exterior on one of the campaign\u2019s larger locations, a rest stop, is also close to completion.\n\n\u201cWe have again upped the visual quality of our larger mega structures. What\u2019s exciting about this is we can then take said structures and deconstruct them to create more space infrastructure, be it kit-bashing the new assets or taking pieces and tearing them apart and aging them to help populate space with more interesting assets than just asteroids (but we do still need great asteroids!).\u201d\n\nThe mining station hangars were also finished and optimized. These multi-layered areas are the biggest hangars in the game and far bigger than anything seen in the PU.\n\nWork also continued on two of the main hero locations visited throughout the campaign.\n\n\u201cNot much can be said about these without giving too much away, but we can say that they feel very unique, carrying little in the way of the style or aesthetic seen in the rest of the campaign. We\u2019re certainly doing our best to make sure as many of our location feel diverse and carry their own identity.\u201d\n\nAudio\nThe Audio Team\u2019s focus was on the Idris, giving it an updated ambience pass. They also rebalanced some of the weapons and vehicles unique to SQ42. Dialogue was edited and delivered to other teams, such as Animation, too.\n\nCinematics\nAlongside business-as-usual work on scenes, animation, and camera passes, Cinematics undertook R&D into new tech that will help push the internal design tools and narrative scenes.\n\nThis included further improvements to conversations with NPCs. For conversations, markup tech enables them to be interruptible at various chosen points. Last month, they added the capability to markup acknowledgments. This means they can choose the points where two NPCs would glance over to the player if they\u2019re in the vicinity. The goal is to maintain the integrity of scenes and mo-cap as much as possible, so instead of an immediate \u201crobotic\u201d glance whenever a certain distance is reached, the designers created a way to choose variables and mark-up the scene intelligently. Not all conversations between NPCs warrant immediate attention from the player; sometimes they\u2019re in deep discussion and rarely glance over to the player. The designers can dial this in with absolute precision, choosing the percentage of eyes, head, neck, and body independently if they want to.\n\nOther important tech was an auto-generated lighting rig designed to help shine a more visually appealing light on characters. This will be used in scenes not playing in a fixed location (where lighting would be manually placed) and to improve minor scenes that don\u2019t require a full manual pass.\n\n\u201cIn games, even the best environment lighting often results in character faces that aren\u2019t optimal or \u2018cinematic\u2019 looking enough. Characters don\u2019t feel like they are in a movie and often feel flat, not separated from the background enough, or shadowing on them is not great as the environmental lights are too far away. If you look at how a DOP and lighting crew operate on a movie set, it becomes very obvious why that is the case. On a film set, characters get special lighting rigs that are often only motivated by the set lighting. Maybe a key, a fill light, a bounce from a butterfly overhead diffusor frame, maybe a Dedo light hitting the eyes just right and one or two rim lights to cut them out from the background; sometimes you get the lighting crew running with the character to cast that perfect light on them at all times the director finds it important to do so. For static scenes or scenes where we know the location, we\u2019re already doing manual lighting rigs as above to get the most out of the faces and their performances. But this new tech is the first step to building lighting rig tech that will help illuminate characters automatically without using a manual rig.\u201d -The Cinematics Team\n\nThis tech works by querying the surrounding lights in the zone around the character in question, identifying \u2018key\u2019 light, and then sampling its intensity and color. This is then applied (with rules) close to the character. The same goes for an autogenerated rim light. When the player moves around the character, the light rig automatically adjusts as needed.\n\nEngineering\nLast month, Engineering worked on the ISPC compiler for WAF:\n\u201cThink HLSL for CPUs to write CPU target agnostic vectorized SSE functions that can be invoked from C\/C++. This allows us to have bespoke, run-time invoked code paths for different CPU architectures to get the best possible performance for computation of heavy code.\u201d -The Engineering Team\n\nThey also began experimenting with a new code-build system to improve quality-of-life for developers. This will feature implemented Python script to fold similar threads when inspecting GDB crash dumps and add a VC 2019 compiler transition to QA test requests.\n\nOptimizations were made to the physics grid, physics instances, and local OBB algorithms. For planet entities, work was done to prevent cell generation under terrain, while the generation of POD entities on terrain patches was improved by moving complex constructors out of tight loops. They removed various methods from the physical entity interface to avoid virtual-function overhead, made box-pruning optimizations, and promoted moment-related variables to double precision so that the solver is more numerically stable in terms of large masses.\n\nBody-dragging was further polished and work continued on physical damage, this time focusing on deformations. Engineering continued tuning the integrity reduction formula based on the surface types of colliding parts, while ship-to-ship collision detection was tweaked to benefit stability and performance. Ragdoll experiments were also conducted and a quick prototype for cross-section data structure was completed.\n\nRegarding the entity component update-scheduler, the Engineering Team worked on flattening or even removing recursive processing, made improvements to component processing inside an aggregate, and started implementing support for multiple component policies per-update-pass.\n\nNumerous tasks were also completed for the Gen12 Renderer. For planetary atmospheres, they completed the guided filter to de-noise and up-sample lower resolution raymarching results for inscatter and transmittance. Work also began on re-projecting raymarching results to further reduce cost per-frame.\n\nGameplay Story\nGameplay Story continued to support Design with abandons and interrupts, this time on chapter four, and worked through new scenes from later in the game. Current focus is on implementing the remaining 28 scenes, which involves planning with Design, working out how scenes will function, and breaking down animation requirements.\n\nGraphics\nLast month, the Graphics Team continued working on CPU performance improvements, the first being to avoid expensive synchronization events between the CPU and GPU that could occur under certain scenarios and hardware setups. After discovering that the UI code used to rescale and tesselate vector art was highly CPU intensive, they added code to quantize the UI screen resolutions. This avoids code-path cases where the visual difference would otherwise be unnoticeable or extremely subtle (e.g. if two identical UI screens differ in size by just a few pixels). Another major optimization was to avoid DirectX and graphics-driver CPU overhead by minimizing shader and texture swapping. They also cached buffers that were being needlessly set many times per frame, reducing the overall number of function calls to DirectX by over 30%.\n\nAs with Engineering, work on the Gen12 renderer continued, this time with the new deferred graphics pipeline that features faster and easier-to-extend code.\n\n\u201cWith some of the fundamentals now falling into place, we hope to ramp up the efforts to convert existing features over to the Gen12 renderer, with an aim to enable an early version in the next few months.\u201d \u2013 The Graphics Team\n\nThe edge-highlight\/silhouette feature was upgraded to provide cleaner visuals with customizable line width, which was requested by the Vehicle Team to improve the appearance of various UI features.\n\nFinally for Graphics, they changed how the culling system works for ships to allow them to be visible from much greater distances to aid gameplay. To help mitigate performance impact from the increased viewing distance, they implemented an automated testing system to measure the performance of every ship from every viewing distance to identify any requiring an optimization pass.\n\nNarrative\nLast month, the team continued to refine the narrative experience. In addition to ongoing efforts to identify areas where they can tweak or add dialogue to improve the gameplay experience (as mentioned last month), they provided details and backstory for several companies and brands used across various environments to expand world-building. Narrative also coordinated with Audio to review progress on the Vanduul voices.\n\n\u201cSince they are recorded by all too Human actors, there is considerable artistry that goes into creating their unique alien sound.\u201d \u2013 The Narrative Team\n\nQA\nQA continued to work closely with the cinematic director and the rest of the team to investigate a few issues within certain chapters. They\u2019re currently working on a test level to better investigate any issues that arise and to enable the Tools Development Team to more easily debug problems. The latest sprint task is to create recordings of scenes in the client that will eventually be reviewed by Cinematic Design and Animation to provide feedback and create action points for changes.\n\nTech Animation\nTechical Animation made progress with initiatives to overhaul the skin file setup and the physics proxy refactor began to show results. The team is in the final stages of UI and process refinement and aims to deliver the pipeline by the end of the quarter.\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nThe UI Team worked closely with the Vehicle Team to implement the new targeting and turrets UI. The artists also iterated on the bridges of the Aegis capital ships, including a warning screen. The concept artists created visual target videos for the Gladius HUD, including figuring out how to implement the upcoming 3D UI technology to break away from standard, flat screens. Other concept work included scanning and how the lens and visor look when they boot up.\n\nVFX\nLast month, VFX continued to support gas clouds alongside the Art and Design Teams. This involved introducing \u2018themes\u2019 that allow the designers to select a singular option that changes various settings within a gas cloud. For example, making it \u2018safe\u2019 or \u2018dangerous\u2019. depending on the story requirements. They also continued researching destruction pipelines.\n\nThe team in Frankfurt fleshed out the Vanduul tech style and weapon visuals.\n\n\u201cWe received some amazing VFX concept art to help with this. Here\u2019s a concept image to show what the main gun on the Vanduul kingship could look like.\u201d WE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Dies ist ein Cross-Post des Berichts, der k\u00fcrzlich \u00fcber den monatlichen Squadron 42 Newsletter verschickt wurde. Wir ver\u00f6ffentlichen ihn ein zweites Mal als Comm-Link, um es f\u00fcr die Community einfacher zu machen, darauf zur\u00fcckzugreifen.\nAchtung Rekruten,\n\nWas ihr gleich lesen werdet, sind die neuesten Informationen \u00fcber die Weiterentwicklung von Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).\n\nDank der unerm\u00fcdlichen Arbeit unserer Agenten vor Ort ist es uns gelungen, die Arbeit an der Innenausstattung der Speere und an den einzigartigen Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrmen, der Vanduul-Kampf-KI und einen t\u00f6dlichen Blick darauf zu werfen, wozu die Waffe eines Vanduul-K\u00f6nigsschiffs in der Lage sein k\u00f6nnte.\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 geraten. S\u00e4ubere alle Aufzeichnungen nach dem Lesen.\n\nUEE Marine-Oberkommando\n\nKI (Kampf)\nWir beginnen den Juni-Bericht mit Character Combat, der sich auf das Verhalten von Vanduul konzentriert, insbesondere Nahkampfangriffe.\n\"Es ist wichtig, f\u00fcr alle KI-Charaktere einen Basis-Nahkampf-Level zu haben, mit der Idee, die Schauspielerfunktionalit\u00e4t zu einem gro\u00dfen Teil auf den gleichen Code wie der Spielercharakter anzuwenden. -Das Charakterkampf-Team\nDiese Verwendung von allgemeinem Code (wo m\u00f6glich) stellt sicher, dass sich die NSCs genauso verhalten k\u00f6nnen wie der Spieler. F\u00fcr die Vanduul ben\u00f6tigt das Team jedoch spezifische Angriffsanimationen, die aneinander gekettet werden k\u00f6nnen, um Entfernungen zu verringern und Druck auf den Spieler\/Gegenspieler auszu\u00fcben.\nAu\u00dferdem haben sie verschiedene Aspekte des realistischen Schie\u00dfens in Angriff genommen, einschlie\u00dflich der Verbesserung der Code-Seite des Ausl\u00f6sens und Nachladens. Sie machten alle Anfragen ereignisbasiert und f\u00fcgten korrekte Erfolgsbenachrichtigungen und unterschiedliche Aktionsergebnisse zwischen der Akteurszustandsmaschine und KI-Komponenten hinzu. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es der KI, konsistente Kenntnisse \u00fcber die Ergebnisse der angeforderten Aktionen zu haben, was es ihnen erlaubt, Verhaltensweisen zu erstellen, die verschiedene Szenarien korrekt handhaben k\u00f6nnen. Wenn sich zum Beispiel ein NSC auf einen Feind zubewegt, m\u00f6chte das Team vielleicht, dass er seine Waffe automatisch nachl\u00e4dt. Wenn jedoch keine Munition verf\u00fcgbar ist, wird das Verhalten gemeldet und eine neue Reaktion aktiviert. Dies kann NSCs passieren, die weniger geschickt sind, um ihre F\u00e4higkeit, Munition zu verwalten, einzusch\u00e4tzen, w\u00e4hrend die besser ausgebildeten NSCs sich daf\u00fcr entscheiden k\u00f6nnen, diese Taktik nicht anzuwenden, wenn nicht gen\u00fcgend Munition verf\u00fcgbar ist.\nSie haben auch damit begonnen, die nutzbaren Systemfunktionen des Barkeepers in einem Kampfszenario zu nutzen. Im sozialen Umfeld schufen sie das Konzept der Nutzbarkeit, die Gegenst\u00e4nde herstellen und annehmen kann:\n\"Eine Munitionskiste ist nichts anderes als ein Itemlieferant. Der Gegenstand selbst k\u00f6nnte Magazine produzieren oder er k\u00f6nnte Magazine enthalten, \u00e4hnlich wie ein Bierk\u00fchlschrank Bierflaschen enthalten kann, aber eine Mischstation kann die Getr\u00e4nke aus bestimmten Quellgegenst\u00e4nden herstellen. Dadurch k\u00f6nnen NSCs nach Orten in der Welt suchen, die ihnen Magazine eines bestimmten Typs liefern k\u00f6nnen, sich zu diesen Objekten begeben und ihre Ladung wieder auff\u00fcllen. Dies gibt dem Spieler die M\u00f6glichkeit und zwingt die NSCs dazu, die Umgebung zu bewerten, um zu entscheiden, ob und wann es angebracht ist, diese Nachf\u00fcllstellen zu benutzen\".\nEs wurde auch Zeit damit verbracht, Aufgaben f\u00fcr die Implementierung des Server-Mesh zu erledigen.\nKI (sozial)\nLetzten Monat konzentrierte sich die soziale KI auf den ersten Durchgang von zwei neuen Szenarien - das Verhalten der Br\u00fcckenbesatzung und der Hangarbesatzungen von Gro\u00dfkampfschiffen:\nDas Verhalten der Br\u00fcckenbesatzung erlaubt es den NSCs, die erforderliche Arbeit eines Gro\u00dfkampfschiffes zu erledigen. Die Designer k\u00f6nnen in den NSC-Schedules angeben, welche Art von Rolle sie haben, was dem 'generischen' Verhalten hilft, die richtigen Pl\u00e4tze und Routinen auszuw\u00e4hlen, die sie ausf\u00fchren m\u00fcssen. Der Kapit\u00e4n wird auch die Br\u00fccke durchstreifen und andere Crewmitglieder beaufsichtigen.\nDas Verhalten der Hangarbesatzung stellt eine Reihe von Verhaltensweisen f\u00fcr alle NSCs dar, die in einem Hangar arbeiten, einschlie\u00dflich Aufseher, Betanker, Gesch\u00fctze, Mechaniker, Grunzer und Fluglotse. In diesem Fall ist das Schiff ein Beispiel f\u00fcr eine zusammengesetzte Benutzbarkeit - eine Benutzbarkeit, die die Funktionalit\u00e4t anderer einzelner Benutzbarkeiten enthalten kann.\nDie erste Iteration des Verk\u00e4uferverhaltens steht ebenfalls kurz vor dem Abschluss. Im Juni kamen G\u00e4ste hinzu, die ein Getr\u00e4nk bestellen, es an einen Tisch bringen und dann an die Theke zur\u00fcckbringen k\u00f6nnen.\nAI (Allgemein)\nAi's globaler Fokus lag auf der Verbesserung der verschiedenen Systeme, die von allen Teammitgliedern benutzt werden. Es wurden Verbesserungen an der Debug-Zeichnung der Subsumptionslogik vorgenommen, die es den Subsumptionsfunktionen, der Benutzung von Kan\u00e4len und Konversationen erlaubt, den aktualisierten Wert ihrer lokalen Variablen anzuzeigen. Das Debugging des Entfernungs-Ereignisverteilers zeigt nun auf einfache Weise die Entfernung, Orientierung und mehr der \u00fcberwachten Charaktere an. Das Team hat auch am Bewegungssystem gearbeitet, um zus\u00e4tzliche Funktionen zur Validierung der Ausf\u00fchrung eines Plans bereitzustellen. Zum Beispiel, um die Bewegung entlang eines Pfades, der von einer Zwischensequenz oder einer Animation gesteuert wird, korrekt zu ber\u00fccksichtigen, so dass der Charakter, sobald er fertig ist, seine Bewegung reibungslos fortsetzt. Die LookComponent wurde \u00fcberarbeitet, um auch Anfragen mit unterschiedlichen Priorit\u00e4ten korrekt zu behandeln.\nAnimation\nDen ganzen Juni \u00fcber hat das Team Animationen f\u00fcr verschiedene Features blockiert und ihre F\u00e4higkeit verbessert, Bewegungen effizient einzufangen, auszuw\u00e4hlen und umzudrehen. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie an R\u00fcckschl\u00e4gen, Torkeln und Trefferreaktionen von Granaten und anderen geworfenen Gegenst\u00e4nden.\nDas Team arbeitete mit der Kampf-KI an Waffennachladungen, Nachladen von Orten und der Vanduul-Bewegung. F\u00fcr die soziale KI arbeiteten sie an Schlie\u00dff\u00e4chern, Rauchen, Kisten, dem Barkeeper und Barbesuchern und arbeiteten an einem Problem mit der Metrik der Sitzkonsole.\nSpeziell f\u00fcr SQ42 wurde die Arbeit an verschiedenen Szenen, Unterbrechungen und Charaktergesichtern fortgesetzt.\nKunst (Charaktere)\nDas Charakter-Team arbeitete weiter an den Haaren, wobei blonde Haare Fortschritte machten. Sie haben auch den 'Br\u00f6tchen'-Stil \u00fcberarbeitet, der eine gro\u00dfe Anzahl weiblicher Charaktere darstellt. Der Rest des Teams konzentrierte sich bei SQ42 auf die Verfeinerung des Vanduul.\n\"Unser Vanduul-Grundk\u00f6rper musste optimiert und neu geh\u00e4utet werden, damit wir eine h\u00f6here Treue der Animationen erreichen konnten. Wir packen den Pass diese Woche ein und machen einen Update-Pass f\u00fcr alle Vanduul-R\u00fcstungen.\" -Das Charakter-Team\nSobald die Vanduul-Charaktere fertiggestellt sind, wird ernsthaft mit der Arbeit an der Xi'an begonnen, die die K\u00fcnstler k\u00fcrzlich blockiert haben.\nKunst (Umwelt)\nDie Umweltkunst hat sich mit mehreren Abschnitten des Speers weiterentwickelt, darunter neue, einzigartige Turm-Assets.\n\"Es handelt sich dabei um massive Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrme mit mehreren Schussarten, die ein gewisses Ma\u00df an Wendigkeit erfordern und sich manchmal auch schwer und gewichtig anf\u00fchlen m\u00fcssen. - Das Umweltkunst-Team\nIm Juni gab es Fortschritte auf zwei Stationen innerhalb der Comms, die einen gro\u00dfen Teil des Gameplays in den ersten Teilen der Kampagne ausmachen. Beide ben\u00f6tigen Beleuchtungspolitur (die mit der Einf\u00fchrung neuer Beleuchtungsfunktionen fortgesetzt wird), sind aber ansonsten vollst\u00e4ndig.\nDie Arbeiten an der Au\u00dfenseite einer der gr\u00f6\u00dferen Stationen der Kampagne, einer Rastst\u00e4tte, stehen ebenfalls kurz vor dem Abschluss.\n\"Wir haben die visuelle Qualit\u00e4t unserer gr\u00f6\u00dferen Megastrukturen nochmals verbessert. Das Aufregende daran ist, dass wir die besagten Strukturen nehmen k\u00f6nnen, um sie zu dekonstruieren und so mehr Weltraum-Infrastruktur zu schaffen, sei es, dass wir die neuen Anlagen zertr\u00fcmmern oder St\u00fccke nehmen und auseinandernehmen und sie altern lassen k\u00f6nnen, um den Weltraum mit interessanteren Anlagen als nur Asteroiden zu bev\u00f6lkern (aber wir brauchen immer noch gro\u00dfartige Asteroiden!).\nDie Hangars der Bergbaustationen wurden ebenfalls fertig gestellt und optimiert. Diese mehrschichtigen Bereiche sind die gr\u00f6\u00dften Hangars im Spiel und weitaus gr\u00f6\u00dfer als alles, was im PU zu sehen ist.\nDie Arbeit an zwei der Hauptorte der Helden, die w\u00e4hrend der Kampagne besucht wurden, wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt.\n\"\u00dcber diese kann nicht viel gesagt werden, ohne zu viel zu verraten, aber wir k\u00f6nnen sagen, dass sie sich sehr einzigartig anf\u00fchlen und nur wenig von dem Stil oder der \u00c4sthetik der restlichen Kampagne tragen. Wir tun auf jeden Fall unser Bestes, um sicherzustellen, dass sich so viele unserer Locations vielf\u00e4ltig anf\u00fchlen und ihre eigene Identit\u00e4t tragen.\nAudio\nDas Audio-Team konzentrierte sich auf das Idris und gab ihm einen aktualisierten Ambience-Pass. Sie haben auch einige der Waffen und Fahrzeuge, die einzigartig f\u00fcr SQ42 sind, neu ausbalanciert. Die Dialoge wurden bearbeitet und auch an andere Teams, wie z.B. Animation, weitergegeben.\nKinematographie\nNeben der \"Business-as-usual\"-Arbeit an Szenen, Animationen und Kamerap\u00e4ssen hat Cinematics auch Forschung und Entwicklung neuer Technologien betrieben, die dazu beitragen werden, die internen Designtools und narrativen Szenen voranzutreiben.\nDies beinhaltete weitere Verbesserungen der Gespr\u00e4che mit NPCs. Die Markup-Technologie erm\u00f6glicht es, Unterhaltungen an verschiedenen ausgew\u00e4hlten Punkten zu unterbrechen. Letzten Monat haben sie die M\u00f6glichkeit hinzugef\u00fcgt, Danksagungen zu markieren. Das bedeutet, dass sie die Punkte ausw\u00e4hlen k\u00f6nnen, an denen zwei NSCs zum Spieler hin\u00fcberblicken w\u00fcrden, wenn sie sich in der N\u00e4he befinden. Das Ziel ist es, die Integrit\u00e4t von Szenen und mo-cap so weit wie m\u00f6glich zu erhalten. Statt eines sofortigen \"Roboter\"-Blicks, sobald eine bestimmte Entfernung erreicht ist, haben die Designer eine M\u00f6glichkeit geschaffen, Variablen auszuw\u00e4hlen und die Szene intelligent zu markieren. Nicht alle Unterhaltungen zwischen NSCs verdienen die sofortige Aufmerksamkeit des Spielers; manchmal sind sie in tiefer Diskussion und werfen nur selten einen Blick auf den Spieler. Die Designer k\u00f6nnen dies mit absoluter Pr\u00e4zision einstellen und den Prozentsatz von Augen, Kopf, Hals und K\u00f6rper unabh\u00e4ngig voneinander w\u00e4hlen, wenn sie wollen.\nEine weitere wichtige Technik war ein automatisch generiertes Lichtrigg, das den Charakteren ein optisch ansprechenderes Licht geben soll. Diese wird in Szenen verwendet, die nicht an einem festen Ort abgespielt werden (wo die Beleuchtung manuell platziert werden w\u00fcrde) und um kleinere Szenen zu verbessern, die keinen vollst\u00e4ndigen manuellen Durchgang erfordern.\n\"In Spielen f\u00fchrt selbst die beste Umgebungsbeleuchtung oft dazu, dass die Gesichter der Charaktere nicht optimal oder 'filmisch' genug aussehen. Die Charaktere f\u00fchlen sich nicht wie im Film und f\u00fchlen sich oft flach an, nicht genug vom Hintergrund getrennt, oder die Schatten auf ihnen sind nicht gro\u00dfartig, da die Umgebungslichter zu weit weg sind. Wenn du dir ansiehst, wie eine DOP- und Beleuchtungscrew an einem Filmset arbeitet, wird sehr deutlich, warum das der Fall ist. Auf einem Filmset bekommen die Charaktere spezielle Beleuchtungsanlagen, die oft nur durch die Setbeleuchtung motiviert werden. Vielleicht ein Schl\u00fcssel, ein Aufhelllicht, ein Bounce von einem Schmetterling im Overhead-Diffusor-Rahmen, vielleicht ein Dedo-Licht, das genau richtig auf die Augen trifft und ein oder zwei Randlichter, um sie aus dem Hintergrund herauszuschneiden; manchmal bringt man die Licht-Crew dazu, mit der Figur zu laufen, um immer das perfekte Licht auf sie zu werfen, das der Regisseur f\u00fcr wichtig h\u00e4lt. F\u00fcr statische Szenen oder Szenen, bei denen wir den Schauplatz kennen, machen wir bereits manuelle Lichtrigs wie oben, um das Beste aus den Gesichtern und ihren Darbietungen herauszuholen. Aber diese neue Technik ist der erste Schritt, um eine Lichtriggtechnik zu bauen, mit deren Hilfe die Charaktere automatisch beleuchtet werden k\u00f6nnen, ohne ein manuelles Rigg zu benutzen\". -Das Cinematics-Team\nDiese Tech funktioniert, indem sie die Umgebungslichter in der Zone um den fraglichen Charakter herum abfragt, das 'Schl\u00fcssel'-Licht identifiziert und dann seine Intensit\u00e4t und Farbe abtastet. Dies wird dann (mit Regeln) in der N\u00e4he des Charakters angewendet. Dasselbe gilt f\u00fcr ein autogeneriertes Randlicht. Wenn sich der Spieler um den Charakter herum bewegt, passt sich das Lichtrigg automatisch an.\nTechnik\nLetzten Monat hat Engineering an dem ISPC-Compiler f\u00fcr die WAF gearbeitet:\n\"Denke HLSL f\u00fcr CPUs, um CPU Target agnostische vektorisierte SSE Funktionen zu schreiben, die von C\/C++ aus aufgerufen werden k\u00f6nnen. Dies erlaubt es uns, ma\u00dfgeschneiderte, zur Laufzeit aufgerufene Codepfade f\u00fcr verschiedene CPU-Architekturen zu haben, um die bestm\u00f6gliche Leistung f\u00fcr die Berechnung von schwerem Code zu erhalten. -Das Ingenieurteam\nAu\u00dferdem begannen sie mit einem neuen Code-Build-System zu experimentieren, um die Lebensqualit\u00e4t der Entwickler zu verbessern. Dieses wird ein implementiertes Python-Skript enthalten, um \u00e4hnliche Threads beim Inspizieren von GDB-Crash-Dumps zu falten und einen VC 2019-Compiler\u00fcbergang zu QA-Testanfragen hinzuzuf\u00fcgen.\nOptimierungen wurden am Physik-Grid, den Physikinstanzen und den lokalen OBB-Algorithmen vorgenommen. Bei den Planetenentit\u00e4ten wurde daran gearbeitet, die Zellgenerierung unter dem Terrain zu verhindern, w\u00e4hrend die Generierung von POD-Entit\u00e4ten auf Terrain-Patches verbessert wurde, indem komplexe Konstruktoren aus engen Schleifen herausgel\u00f6st wurden. Sie entfernten verschiedene Methoden aus der Schnittstelle f\u00fcr physische Entit\u00e4ten, um den Overhead virtueller Funktionen zu vermeiden, machten Optimierungen f\u00fcr das \"box-pruning\" und erh\u00f6hten die Genauigkeit der momentenbezogenen Variablen auf das Doppelte, so dass der Solver in Bezug auf gro\u00dfe Massen numerisch stabiler ist.\nDas Body-Dragging wurde weiter verfeinert und die Arbeit an physischen Sch\u00e4den fortgesetzt, diesmal mit Schwerpunkt auf Deformationen. Die Ingenieure arbeiteten weiter an der Formel zur Integrit\u00e4tsreduzierung, die auf den Oberfl\u00e4chentypen der kollidierenden Teile basiert, w\u00e4hrend die Schiff-zu-Schiff-Kollisionserkennung optimiert wurde, um Stabilit\u00e4t und Leistung zu verbessern. Ragdoll-Experimente wurden ebenfalls durchgef\u00fchrt und ein schneller Prototyp f\u00fcr die Querschnittsdatenstruktur wurde fertiggestellt.\nWas den Aktualisierungsscheduler f\u00fcr die Entit\u00e4tskomponenten betrifft, so arbeitete das Ingenieurteam daran, rekursive Verarbeitung zu gl\u00e4tten oder sogar zu entfernen, verbesserte die Komponentenverarbeitung innerhalb eines Aggregats und begann mit der Implementierung von Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr mehrere Komponentenrichtlinien pro Aktualisierungsdurchgang.\nZahlreiche Aufgaben wurden auch f\u00fcr den Gen12 Renderer erledigt. F\u00fcr die Planetenatmosph\u00e4re wurde der gef\u00fchrte Filter vervollst\u00e4ndigt, um das Rauschen zu entfernen und die Ergebnisse des Raymarching mit niedrigerer Aufl\u00f6sung f\u00fcr die Streuung und \u00dcbertragung hochzurechnen. Die Arbeit an der Neuprojektion der Raymarching-Ergebnisse wurde ebenfalls begonnen, um die Kosten pro Frame weiter zu reduzieren.\nGameplay-Geschichte\nGameplay Story unterst\u00fctzte das Design weiterhin mit Abbr\u00fcchen und Unterbrechungen, diesmal bei Kapitel vier, und arbeitete neue Szenen aus dem sp\u00e4teren Spielverlauf durch. Derzeit liegt der Schwerpunkt auf der Umsetzung der verbleibenden 28 Szenen, was die Planung mit dem Design, die Ausarbeitung der Funktionsweise der Szenen und die Aufschl\u00fcsselung der Animationsanforderungen beinhaltet.\nGrafiken\nLetzten Monat hat das Grafikteam weiter an der Verbesserung der CPU-Leistung gearbeitet, wobei das erste Ziel darin bestand, teure Synchronisierungsereignisse zwischen CPU und GPU zu vermeiden, die unter bestimmten Szenarien und Hardware-Setups auftreten k\u00f6nnten. Nachdem sie entdeckt hatten, dass der UI-Code, der zum Skalieren und Tessellieren von Vektorgrafiken verwendet wird, sehr CPU-intensiv ist, f\u00fcgten sie Code zum Quantisieren der UI-Bildschirmaufl\u00f6sungen hinzu. Dadurch werden Codepfad-F\u00e4lle vermieden, in denen der visuelle Unterschied sonst unbemerkbar oder extrem subtil w\u00e4re (z.B. wenn zwei identische UI-Bildschirme sich in der Gr\u00f6\u00dfe nur um wenige Pixel unterscheiden). Eine weitere wichtige Optimierung war die Vermeidung von DirectX- und Grafiktreiber-CPU-Overhead durch Minimierung von Shader- und Textur-Swapping. Au\u00dferdem wurden Puffer zwischengespeichert, die unn\u00f6tigerweise viele Male pro Frame gesetzt wurden, wodurch die Gesamtzahl der Funktionsaufrufe an DirectX um \u00fcber 30% reduziert wurde.\nWie bei der Technik ging die Arbeit am Gen12-Renderer weiter, diesmal mit der neuen verz\u00f6gerten Grafik-Pipeline, die schnelleren und einfacher zu erweiternden Code bietet.\n\"Nachdem nun einige der Grundlagen vorhanden sind, hoffen wir, die Anstrengungen zur Konvertierung der bestehenden Funktionen auf den Gen12-Renderer zu erh\u00f6hen, mit dem Ziel, in den n\u00e4chsten Monaten eine fr\u00fche Version zu erm\u00f6glichen. - Das Grafik-Team\nDas Kanten-Highlight\/Silhouetten-Feature wurde verbessert, um eine sauberere Optik mit anpassbarer Linienst\u00e4rke zu bieten, was vom Fahrzeugteam angefordert wurde, um das Erscheinungsbild verschiedener UI-Features zu verbessern.\nSchlie\u00dflich haben sie f\u00fcr die Grafik ge\u00e4ndert, wie das Culling-System f\u00fcr Schiffe funktioniert, damit sie aus viel gr\u00f6\u00dferer Entfernung sichtbar sind, um das Gameplay zu erleichtern. Um die Auswirkungen der erh\u00f6hten Sichtdistanz auf die Leistung zu mildern, wurde ein automatisches Testsystem implementiert, das die Leistung jedes Schiffes aus jeder Sichtdistanz misst, um alle zu identifizieren, die einen Optimierungspass ben\u00f6tigen.\nErz\u00e4hlung\nLetzten Monat hat das Team die erz\u00e4hlerische Erfahrung weiter verfeinert. Zus\u00e4tzlich zu den laufenden Bem\u00fchungen, Bereiche zu identifizieren, in denen sie an der Spielerfahrung feilen oder Dialoge hinzuf\u00fcgen k\u00f6nnen, um das Spielerlebnis zu verbessern (wie im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnt), haben sie Details und Hintergrundgeschichten f\u00fcr verschiedene Firmen und Marken bereitgestellt, die in verschiedenen Umgebungen eingesetzt werden, um die Welten zu erweitern. Narrative hat sich auch mit Audio abgestimmt, um die Fortschritte der Vanduul-Stimmen zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen.\n\"Da sie von allzu menschlichen Schauspielern aufgenommen wurden, steckt viel Kunstfertigkeit in der Erschaffung ihres einzigartigen au\u00dferirdischen Sounds. - Das Erz\u00e4hlteam\nQA\nQA arbeitete weiterhin eng mit dem Filmregisseur und dem Rest des Teams zusammen, um einige Probleme innerhalb bestimmter Kapitel zu untersuchen. Zurzeit arbeiten sie auf einer Teststufe, um alle auftretenden Probleme besser untersuchen zu k\u00f6nnen und um es dem Tools Development Team zu erm\u00f6glichen, Probleme leichter zu debuggen. Die letzte Sprintaufgabe besteht darin, Aufnahmen von Szenen im Client zu erstellen, die schlie\u00dflich von Cinematic Design and Animation \u00fcberpr\u00fcft werden, um Feedback zu geben und Aktionspunkte f\u00fcr \u00c4nderungen zu schaffen.\nTechnische Animation\nDie Technische Animation machte Fortschritte mit Initiativen zur \u00dcberarbeitung des Skin-Dateiaufbaus und der Physik-Proxy-Refaktor zeigte erste Ergebnisse. Das Team befindet sich in der Endphase der UI- und Prozessverfeinerung und will die Pipeline bis zum Ende des Quartals liefern.\nBenutzeroberfl\u00e4che (UI)\nDas UI-Team arbeitete eng mit dem Fahrzeugteam zusammen, um das neue Targeting- und Turm-UI zu implementieren. Die K\u00fcnstler iterierten auch auf den Br\u00fccken der Aegis-Hauptstadtschiffe, einschlie\u00dflich eines Warnbildschirms. Die Konzeptk\u00fcnstler haben visuelle Zielvideos f\u00fcr das Gladius-HUDD erstellt und dabei auch herausgefunden, wie die kommende 3D-UI-Technologie umgesetzt werden kann, um sich von den standardm\u00e4\u00dfigen Flachbildschirmen zu l\u00f6sen. Andere Konzeptarbeiten umfassten das Scannen und wie die Linse und das Visier beim Hochfahren aussehen.\nVFX\nLetzten Monat unterst\u00fctzte VFX weiterhin Gaswolken neben den Kunst- und Design-Teams. Dies beinhaltete die Einf\u00fchrung von 'Themen', die es den Designern erlauben, eine einzelne Option auszuw\u00e4hlen, die verschiedene Einstellungen innerhalb einer Gaswolke ver\u00e4ndert. Zum Beispiel 'sicher' oder 'gef\u00e4hrlich' zu machen, je nach den Anforderungen der Story. Au\u00dferdem forschten sie weiter an Zerst\u00f6rungspipelines.\nDas Team in Frankfurt hat den Vanduul-Tech-Stil und die Waffen-Visualisierung weiter ausgearbeitet.\n\"Wir erhielten einige erstaunliche VFX-Konzeptzeichnungen, die uns dabei helfen sollten. Hier ist ein Konzeptbild, um zu zeigen, wie die Hauptkanone auf dem Vanduul-K\u00f6nigsschiff aussehen k\u00f6nnte\". WIR SEHEN EUCH 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\nDue to the unwavering work of our agents in the field, we\u2019ve managed to ascertain work done on Javelin interiors and unique turret assets, Vanduul Combat AI, and a deadly look at what a Vanduul kingship\u2019s weapon could be capable of.\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 AI (Combat)\nWe start June\u2019s report with Character Combat, who focused on Vanduul behaviors, specifically melee attacks.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s important to have a base level of melee for all AI characters, with the idea being to employ the actor functionality to much of the same code as the player character.\u201d -The Character Combat Team\n\nThis use of common code (where possible) ensures that NPCs are able to behave the same ways the player can. However, for the Vanduul, the team need specific attack animations that can be chained together to close distances and apply pressure to the player\/adversary.\n\nThey also tackled several aspects of realistic firing, including improving the code-side of triggering and reloading. They made all requests event-based and added proper success notifications and different action results between the actor state machine and AI components. This allows the AI to have consistent knowledge of the results of the requested actions, allowing them to create behaviors that can handle different scenarios correctly. For example, if an NPC is pushing towards an enemy, the team may want them to automatically reload their weapon. However, if no ammunition is available, the behavior will be notified and a new reaction activated. This can happen to NPCs less skilled in evaluating their ability to manage ammunition, while those better skilled can choose not to use that tactic unless enough ammunition is available.\n\nThey also began leveraging the usable system functionalities of the bartender in a combat scenario. In the social environment, they created the concept of usables that can produce and accept items:\n\u201cAn ammo box is nothing else than an item provider. The item itself could produce magazines or it might have magazines attached, similar to how a beer fridge can contain beer bottles, but a mixing station can create the drinks from specific source items. This allows NPCs to search for places in the world that can provide them with magazines of a specific type, relocate to those objects, and refill their loadout. This gives opportunity for the player and forces NPCs to evaluate the environment to decide if and when it\u2019s appropriate to use those refill spots.\u201d\n\nTime was also spent completing tasks for server mesh implementation.\n\nAI (Social)\nLast month, Social AI focused on the first pass of two new scenarios \u2013 bridge crew behaviors and capital ship hangar crews:\nThe bridge crew behavior allows NPCs to handle the required work of a capital ship. Designers can specify in the NPC schedules which type of role they have, which will help the \u2018generic\u2019 behavior select the right seats and routines they have to perform. The captain will also roam the bridge and supervise other members of the crew.\n\nThe hangar crew behavior represents a set of behaviors for all NPCs that work in a hangar, including overseer, fueler, ordnance, mechanic, grunt, and air-traffic controller. In this instance, the ship is an example of a compound usable \u2013 a usable that can contain the functionality of other single usables.\n\nThe first iteration of the vendor behavior is also nearing completion. June saw the addition of patrons that can order a drink, bring it to a table, and then return it to the counter.\n\nAI (General)\nAi\u2019s global focus was on improvements to the various systems used by all team members. Improvements were made to the debug draw of the Subsumption logic, allowing Subsumption functions, use channels, and conversations to display the updated value of their local variables. The range-event dispatcher debug now easily displays the monitored characters\u2019 distance, orientation, and more. The team also worked on the movement system to provide additional functions to validate the execution of a plan. For example, to correctly consider the movement along a path driven by a cutscene or an animation so that, once finished, the character continues their movement smoothly. The LookComponent was refactored to correctly handle requests with different priorities too.\n\nAnimation\nThroughout June, the team blocked out animations for various features and improved their ability to efficiently capture, select, and turn-around motion capture. They also worked on knockbacks, staggers, and hit reactions from grenades and other thrown objects.\n\nThe team worked with Combat AI on weapon reloads, reloading from locations, and Vanduul locomotion. For Social AI, they worked on lockers, smoking, crates, the bartender and bar patrons, and worked out an issue with the seated console metric.\n\nSpecifically for SQ42, work continued on various scenes, interrupts, and character faces.\n\nArt (Characters)\nThe Character Team continued to work on hair, with blonde hair making progress. They also revisited the \u2018bun\u2019 style, which appears a large number of female characters. The rest of the team\u2019s SQ42 focus was on refining the Vanduul.\n\n\u201cOur Vanduul base body needed to be tweaked and reskinned so that we could achieve higher fidelity animations. We\u2019re wrapping the pass up this week and making an update pass on all Vanduul armors.\u201d -The Character Team\n\nOnce the Vanduul characters are complete, work will begin on the Xi\u2019an in earnest, which the artists recently blocked out.\n\nArt (Environment)\nEnvironment Art progressed with several sections of the Javelin, including new unique turret assets.\n\n\u201cThese are massive turrets involving multiple firing modes that need to have a degree of nimbleness to them as well as, at times, feel heavy and weighty to use.\u201d \u2013 The Environment Art Team\n\nJune saw the progress on two stations within the comms array that make up a large section of gameplay in early parts of the campaign. They both require lighting polish (which will continue as new lighting features come onboard) but are otherwise complete.\n\nWork on the exterior on one of the campaign\u2019s larger locations, a rest stop, is also close to completion.\n\n\u201cWe have again upped the visual quality of our larger mega structures. What\u2019s exciting about this is we can then take said structures and deconstruct them to create more space infrastructure, be it kit-bashing the new assets or taking pieces and tearing them apart and aging them to help populate space with more interesting assets than just asteroids (but we do still need great asteroids!).\u201d\n\nThe mining station hangars were also finished and optimized. These multi-layered areas are the biggest hangars in the game and far bigger than anything seen in the PU.\n\nWork also continued on two of the main hero locations visited throughout the campaign.\n\n\u201cNot much can be said about these without giving too much away, but we can say that they feel very unique, carrying little in the way of the style or aesthetic seen in the rest of the campaign. We\u2019re certainly doing our best to make sure as many of our location feel diverse and carry their own identity.\u201d\n\nAudio\nThe Audio Team\u2019s focus was on the Idris, giving it an updated ambience pass. They also rebalanced some of the weapons and vehicles unique to SQ42. Dialogue was edited and delivered to other teams, such as Animation, too.\n\nCinematics\nAlongside business-as-usual work on scenes, animation, and camera passes, Cinematics undertook R&D into new tech that will help push the internal design tools and narrative scenes.\n\nThis included further improvements to conversations with NPCs. For conversations, markup tech enables them to be interruptible at various chosen points. Last month, they added the capability to markup acknowledgments. This means they can choose the points where two NPCs would glance over to the player if they\u2019re in the vicinity. The goal is to maintain the integrity of scenes and mo-cap as much as possible, so instead of an immediate \u201crobotic\u201d glance whenever a certain distance is reached, the designers created a way to choose variables and mark-up the scene intelligently. Not all conversations between NPCs warrant immediate attention from the player; sometimes they\u2019re in deep discussion and rarely glance over to the player. The designers can dial this in with absolute precision, choosing the percentage of eyes, head, neck, and body independently if they want to.\n\nOther important tech was an auto-generated lighting rig designed to help shine a more visually appealing light on characters. This will be used in scenes not playing in a fixed location (where lighting would be manually placed) and to improve minor scenes that don\u2019t require a full manual pass.\n\n\u201cIn games, even the best environment lighting often results in character faces that aren\u2019t optimal or \u2018cinematic\u2019 looking enough. Characters don\u2019t feel like they are in a movie and often feel flat, not separated from the background enough, or shadowing on them is not great as the environmental lights are too far away. If you look at how a DOP and lighting crew operate on a movie set, it becomes very obvious why that is the case. On a film set, characters get special lighting rigs that are often only motivated by the set lighting. Maybe a key, a fill light, a bounce from a butterfly overhead diffusor frame, maybe a Dedo light hitting the eyes just right and one or two rim lights to cut them out from the background; sometimes you get the lighting crew running with the character to cast that perfect light on them at all times the director finds it important to do so. For static scenes or scenes where we know the location, we\u2019re already doing manual lighting rigs as above to get the most out of the faces and their performances. But this new tech is the first step to building lighting rig tech that will help illuminate characters automatically without using a manual rig.\u201d -The Cinematics Team\n\nThis tech works by querying the surrounding lights in the zone around the character in question, identifying \u2018key\u2019 light, and then sampling its intensity and color. This is then applied (with rules) close to the character. The same goes for an autogenerated rim light. When the player moves around the character, the light rig automatically adjusts as needed.\n\nEngineering\nLast month, Engineering worked on the ISPC compiler for WAF:\n\u201cThink HLSL for CPUs to write CPU target agnostic vectorized SSE functions that can be invoked from C\/C++. This allows us to have bespoke, run-time invoked code paths for different CPU architectures to get the best possible performance for computation of heavy code.\u201d -The Engineering Team\n\nThey also began experimenting with a new code-build system to improve quality-of-life for developers. This will feature implemented Python script to fold similar threads when inspecting GDB crash dumps and add a VC 2019 compiler transition to QA test requests.\n\nOptimizations were made to the physics grid, physics instances, and local OBB algorithms. For planet entities, work was done to prevent cell generation under terrain, while the generation of POD entities on terrain patches was improved by moving complex constructors out of tight loops. They removed various methods from the physical entity interface to avoid virtual-function overhead, made box-pruning optimizations, and promoted moment-related variables to double precision so that the solver is more numerically stable in terms of large masses.\n\nBody-dragging was further polished and work continued on physical damage, this time focusing on deformations. Engineering continued tuning the integrity reduction formula based on the surface types of colliding parts, while ship-to-ship collision detection was tweaked to benefit stability and performance. Ragdoll experiments were also conducted and a quick prototype for cross-section data structure was completed.\n\nRegarding the entity component update-scheduler, the Engineering Team worked on flattening or even removing recursive processing, made improvements to component processing inside an aggregate, and started implementing support for multiple component policies per-update-pass.\n\nNumerous tasks were also completed for the Gen12 Renderer. For planetary atmospheres, they completed the guided filter to de-noise and up-sample lower resolution raymarching results for inscatter and transmittance. Work also began on re-projecting raymarching results to further reduce cost per-frame.\n\nGameplay Story\nGameplay Story continued to support Design with abandons and interrupts, this time on chapter four, and worked through new scenes from later in the game. Current focus is on implementing the remaining 28 scenes, which involves planning with Design, working out how scenes will function, and breaking down animation requirements.\n\nGraphics\nLast month, the Graphics Team continued working on CPU performance improvements, the first being to avoid expensive synchronization events between the CPU and GPU that could occur under certain scenarios and hardware setups. After discovering that the UI code used to rescale and tesselate vector art was highly CPU intensive, they added code to quantize the UI screen resolutions. This avoids code-path cases where the visual difference would otherwise be unnoticeable or extremely subtle (e.g. if two identical UI screens differ in size by just a few pixels). Another major optimization was to avoid DirectX and graphics-driver CPU overhead by minimizing shader and texture swapping. They also cached buffers that were being needlessly set many times per frame, reducing the overall number of function calls to DirectX by over 30%.\n\nAs with Engineering, work on the Gen12 renderer continued, this time with the new deferred graphics pipeline that features faster and easier-to-extend code.\n\n\u201cWith some of the fundamentals now falling into place, we hope to ramp up the efforts to convert existing features over to the Gen12 renderer, with an aim to enable an early version in the next few months.\u201d \u2013 The Graphics Team\n\nThe edge-highlight\/silhouette feature was upgraded to provide cleaner visuals with customizable line width, which was requested by the Vehicle Team to improve the appearance of various UI features.\n\nFinally for Graphics, they changed how the culling system works for ships to allow them to be visible from much greater distances to aid gameplay. To help mitigate performance impact from the increased viewing distance, they implemented an automated testing system to measure the performance of every ship from every viewing distance to identify any requiring an optimization pass.\n\nNarrative\nLast month, the team continued to refine the narrative experience. In addition to ongoing efforts to identify areas where they can tweak or add dialogue to improve the gameplay experience (as mentioned last month), they provided details and backstory for several companies and brands used across various environments to expand world-building. Narrative also coordinated with Audio to review progress on the Vanduul voices.\n\n\u201cSince they are recorded by all too Human actors, there is considerable artistry that goes into creating their unique alien sound.\u201d \u2013 The Narrative Team\n\nQA\nQA continued to work closely with the cinematic director and the rest of the team to investigate a few issues within certain chapters. They\u2019re currently working on a test level to better investigate any issues that arise and to enable the Tools Development Team to more easily debug problems. The latest sprint task is to create recordings of scenes in the client that will eventually be reviewed by Cinematic Design and Animation to provide feedback and create action points for changes.\n\nTech Animation\nTechical Animation made progress with initiatives to overhaul the skin file setup and the physics proxy refactor began to show results. The team is in the final stages of UI and process refinement and aims to deliver the pipeline by the end of the quarter.\n\nUser Interface (UI)\nThe UI Team worked closely with the Vehicle Team to implement the new targeting and turrets UI. The artists also iterated on the bridges of the Aegis capital ships, including a warning screen. The concept artists created visual target videos for the Gladius HUD, including figuring out how to implement the upcoming 3D UI technology to break away from standard, flat screens. Other concept work included scanning and how the lens and visor look when they boot up.\n\nVFX\nLast month, VFX continued to support gas clouds alongside the Art and Design Teams. This involved introducing \u2018themes\u2019 that allow the designers to select a singular option that changes various settings within a gas cloud. For example, making it \u2018safe\u2019 or \u2018dangerous\u2019. depending on the story requirements. They also continued researching destruction pipelines.\n\nThe team in Frankfurt fleshed out the Vanduul tech style and weapon visuals.\n\n\u201cWe received some amazing VFX concept art to help with this. Here\u2019s a concept image to show what the main gun on the Vanduul kingship could look like.\u201d WE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":25,"created_at":"2020-07-08T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"5 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 21:02:15","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":17672,"next_id":17674}}