{"data":{"id":18180,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: May 2021","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/18180-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-May-2021","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/18180","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/18180","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\nThanks to the work of dedicated field agents and operatives, we\u2019ve uncovered information on security guards, Screaming Galsons, and the Shubin Interstellar Archon Station.\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 AI (Content)\nThe AI Content Team focused on Invictus Launch Week throughout the month, which included polishing the tourist and tour guide behavior, wildlines, Look IK, and completing the required female animations. They dedicated time to the Mannequin fragments animation selection to ensure they correctly fit their context, and the shopkeeper gained more usables that players would expect to see in food and drink shops. They also started designing possible flow extensions to allow NPCs to serve players differently if they choose to eat in or take away. For example, this will allow food to be given to the player directly or served on a plate and tray.\n\nThe security guard was fully designed and prototyped. This behavior offers great gameplay opportunities in an emergent or systemic way as it fulfills scenarios of NPCs acting as law enforcers, information providers, gatekeepers, and greeters. AI Content also continued designing and prototyping background life for the medical room when players respawn, including the systemic janitor and NPCs using the bathroom cubicle and sleeping in the bunk beds.\n\nSpecifically for SQ42, the team supported Aciedo station, identifying tactile interaction opportunities and blocking out animations and the usables setup. These usables, working with scripted AI Paths, will help to create mini-scenarios where the AI appears to look for hostages to dry-freeze.\n\n\n\nAI (Features)\nThe AI Feature Team further developed combat, including the ability for enemy fighters to finish off their targets (AI or player) with execution animations. This involved adapting the existing stealth takedown system for use by AI and making it more data-driven so that it supports different types of takedowns with their own settings. For example, the minimum and maximum distance a takedown can be performed from and what quadrant the attacker must be in relative to the target. For spaceships, AI Features adapted the fighter combat behavior to better utilize missiles. This involves selecting the right type and number of missiles to fire so that NPCs don\u2019t exhaust all of their high-damage missiles on smaller targets. In group combat, this ensures that missiles are spread over a range of targets and are rationed for use throughout the fight. This leads to interesting behaviors where fighters will \u2018soften up\u2019 targets with a barrage of missiles before engaging in dogfighting, firing occasional missiles at opportune moments. They also worked on the pilot security behavior to fix issues that occur when a target has surrendered or been arrested.\n\nAs part of the larger security behavior, work continued on the weapons training sub-behavior, where NPCs can improve their combat abilities by using a firing range. Firstly, a weapon has to be retrieved from the armorer, with the team updating the existing vendor and patron behaviors to support retrieval and return at the armory. For the firing range, the team had to adapt the existing targeting and firing systems to support non-agent targets. This technology will be used in the future to support the targeting of \u2018destructibles\u2019 in combat. For example, the AI might need to take out a computer bank to complete a mission objective. The groundwork for targeting specific parts of the body (eg. headshots) and \u2018non-human-bodied agents\u2019 (e.g. animals) was completed too.\n\nFinally for AI Features, the team further developed untrained weapons combat. They also prepared for an upcoming mo-cap session for untrained cover behaviors, responding to dead bodies, hostile reactions in usables, cowering, and surrendering.\n\n\n\nAI (Tech)\nThroughout May, AI Tech completed and addressed feedback for the tier-0 navigation link work. This involved making improvements to how the cache data is used during navigation links with motion-warp animations but also re-computing navigation link connection points when the navigation mesh changes in its proximity. On the EVA side, work on NPCs transitioning from zero-g into a usable (and vice versa) was completed. Following on from this, they began developing zero-g collision avoidance for NPCs, which allows them to avoid other characters (AI or player) and small objects while floating. This will use the 3D ORCA that was implemented for ship AI collision avoidance. The team also added new functionality to movement requests.; they\u2019re now able to re-plane designer paths at the end, allowing them to create loops.\n\nAnother feature worked on was planetary navigation. The aim is to generate navigation mesh on planets that can be used by NPCs and animals around outposts. This will use physics information, so each time planetary tiles are physicalized, navigation meshes will be generated too.\n\nFor the Subsumption editor tool, the team added new functionality allowing them to create or modify multiple Subsumption functions in the same window view. This will be beneficial to the designers when writing mission scripts or behaviors as they will have an overview of all logic in the same place.\n\n\n\nAnimation\nThe Animation team spent May working on Vanduul combat, hurt locomotion, firing range behaviors, SQ42-specific level usables, movement between nav meshes, and medical gameplay (including healing and moving players to beds). They also tested a rig for the Xi\u2019an alien race (both body and face) and supported several story scenes.\n\n\n\nArt (Characters)\nThe Character Art Team progressed with R&D for the Screaming Galsons. Based on the torso-piece tests that began last month, the modular system is looking like a promising way to create a large number of variations cost-effectively. The next step is tightening up and defining rules for other armor types and starting on the bespoke Screaming Galson characters. The team also wrapped up the polish pass for Trejo\u2019s head and passed it to Tech Animation to update the rig. Her hair is currently in skinning, while her undersuit and helmet are in modeling. Finally, they worked on some characters for Aciedo and uniforms for chapter 4G.\n\n\n\nArt (Environment)\nThe Environment Art Team progressed with the space-scaping and the approach to Aciedo, which not only looks great but also allows interesting flight gameplay. The station interior received lighting tweaks to portray the desired mood too. Planetside, progress was made on creating interesting and believable terrain that incorporates canyons, which the team had been unable to achieve previously. Development of Archon station\u2019s internal tram system, sewers, social hub, back alleys, and worker\u2019s areas continued, while initial work began for exterior FPS spaces in chapter 13.\n\nChapter 15 progressed, with Art working alongside Design to build out the environments for key moments throughout the level. Progress was made on the Bengal\u2019s medbay and armory too, both of which are close to completion.\n\n\n\nCinematics\nDue to the nature of SQ42\u2019s heavily embedded real-time cinematics, it\u2019s rare for the Cinematics Team to be entirely \u2018unblocked\u2019 on scenes and work through them with no interruptions. Blockers can include a scene\u2019s mo-cap delivery needing completion, the state machine for all animation fragments needing to be defined, character assets (like faces, costumes, and rigs) not being ready, and props missing or having incorrectly sized metrics. Sometimes, there are larger issues where level art elements for a set piece or location aren\u2019t solidified enough to give a good understanding of the state machine, placement, flow, or mood. So, the team develops tools to help them work effectively regardless of blockers, which were further developed throughout May. This included tools to control ship functions, the player\u2019s head, settings to suit a female character, the contents of object containers, and a dynamic per-character lighting rig to give a base illumination quality.\n\nA tool was also created to reference and play each landing gear compression spring in the vehicle setup independently. For example, this enables the team to extract or retract a ship\u2019s hind landing skids before the fronts.\n\nAlongside tools, Cinematics worked on specific chapter scenes and sequences, including a key Vanduul encounter and one involving the player hiding among fog and ship parts. Progress was made on the Bengal, including animating the bridge seats and attached screens too.\n\n\n\n\nEngine\nThe Physics Team finalized their support of tracking floating point exceptions within physics, which began in April. As a side effect, this enabled more efficient vector code generation on the Linux server. The rest of the month was mostly spent on optimizations, including improving the mid and narrow phase of soft body collision detection. There were also several updates to signed distance fields (SDF), such as tile-based polygonization when remeshing SDFs and optimizations in tree traversal when baking SDFs. The team further progressed with the Gen12 renderer, including submitting improvements to the Scaleform (UI) render path that was established last month. The render graph, which is a key component in Gen12, received initial support for resource transition APIs, split barriers, and resource state validation; all of which are important for next-gen, low-level APIs such as Vulkan and DX12. The debuggability of the render graph was also updated.\n\nFurthermore, text rendering was refactored and optimized and support for image draw helper code was added. More pipelines were enabled for Gen12 by default, including tiled shading, SSR, SSDO, shadow mask generation, and scattering queries.\n\nAdditionally, significant low-level progress was made in memory management, which involved various types of buffer and packet allocations moving to a more efficient scheme. Lastly for the renderer, various APIs were exposed via common interfaces so higher-level code can eventually make use of them to prepare and package data in advance and offload the renderer.\n\nOn the graphics front, hair rendering received various improvements, such as fixed shadow map generation of view-aligned strands and a new experimental scattering model for better looking blonde hair. Eye shading got support for a normal plus-blend map when rendering specular overlays. The eyeball texture can now also be rescaled to make shared textures better fit varying eye geometry.\n\nThe volumetric cloud system received support for density queries so various VFX can be spawned and the game can react to the presence of clouds at given locations. Scattering query support was also added so transparent and forward-shaded objects properly take clouds into account when rendered. The work on SDFs for efficient space skipping continued too.\n\n\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nMay saw the Feature Team take the basics of the PU\u2019s reputation system and create a single-player version for use in SQ42. The live version is a service separate from the game, writing out the reputation values to a database, whereas the single-player version runs as a part of the game itself, storing reputations in memory that can then be stored to the save game system. Outside of that, they made quality-of-life improvements and completed several smaller tasks, such as improving the video comm setup for multiple parties.\n\nGameplay Story\nLast month, Gameplay Story focused on the second walk-and-talk for chapter 5 following successful work on the previous scene. This involved restructuring animations and getting them to work with AI and creating interrupt, idle, encouragement, and rejoin animations. \u201cThis is quite an undertaking, but it\u2019s been great to maintain momentum and see this chapter rapidly taking shape.\u201d -The Gameplay Story Team\n\nAlongside this, they set up a holographic character, created accurate holstering animations, and updated several scenes to include the new medical gun. Support was also given to Design\u2019s work on chapter 13 and a prototype was made for a scene in chapter 19.\n\n\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nThroughout May, the Graphics & VFX Programming teams made significant improvements to several systems. Work started on a window shader extension to allow views into \u2018fake\u2019 interiors with support for randomized room sizes, rotations, colors, and lighting. When live, this will bring extra life to cities and space stations.\n\nThe render-to-texture system was modified to allow a more bespoke compositing and post-effect pipeline for the UI Team, which will bring greater visual consistency and higher-quality effects. The level of detail (LOD) merger system was updated so that it can be used in New Babbage and Orison to improve performance and reduce the art burden of creating super-low\/distant LODs. Pre-streaming support was added for various game systems (such as vehicle death-masks, muzzle flashes, and quantum travel) to pre-stream any textures required for particle effects before the particles are spawned. This should solve some long-standing visual bugs.\n\nThe shield effects setup was reworked to enable a single effect to be used on multiple ships of varying scales, with all effects scaling appropriately. Work on the fire hazard system mentioned in previous reports continued, with May\u2019s focus on the heat management of the room system. The streaming support for gas clouds was also developed to reduce memory use and improve loading times.\n\nFor the Gen12 renderer, a new Vulkan extension reporting system was added so that, from Alpha 3.14 onwards, the team will be able to gather data on what hardware and driver support they have for various Vulkan features. This will help them use newer features when sufficiently supported. The team also generalized the GPU-to-CPU read-back system and ported the DX9-era texture sampling code to a modern equivalent.\n\n\n\nLevel Design\nThe Space\/Dogfight Team continued to ensure the company-wide focus from last quarter\u2019s milestone was applied to the chapters beyond the scope of their milestone work. Some functionality came in late in the quarter and is now being refined to fit what was designed and expected in terms of polish. The Level Design Team had several detailed discussions regarding non-combat AI and behaviors that are now being put into practice for the pre-combat\/stealth elements of the current milestone, with significant focus on combat behaviors within small spaces.\n\nAs always, the Social Design Team implemented scenes for the various chapter reviews and sign-offs.\n\n\n\nNarrative\nThroughout May, the Narrative Team focused on an expanded environmental storytelling pass for the Shubin Interstellar Archon Station, which included additional posters and advertising to help set the desired mood; the hope is to create a dynamic, living station that immerses the player wherever they look. They also had several reviews of one chapter, discussing how a player\u2019s personal playstyle could impact the narrative and then making sure that the content would react appropriately. These reviews helped highlight a few areas where scenes could be placed differently and additional dialogue could help the gameplay experience. These will be scripted shortly.\n\nAdditionally, Narrative planned a mo-cap session to begin getting final recordings of some of the placeholder content outlined in previous reports.\n\n\n\nQA\nCinematics continued to rely on QA for recordings of each level for review, while support was given to the various development teams, with their changes and updates to the project tested as needed. QA also continued to support AI, testing the behavior implementations into SQ42, with a focus on Vanduul improvements. They also pushed to clear out any outdated issues and performed an open bug-sweep to ensure their databases were up to date.\n\n\n\nTech Animation\nTech Animation\u2019s quarterly deliverables and long-standing initiatives progressed well throughout May. The team also invested time into R&D around their animation pipeline and exporting processes. \u201cBoth are bedrocks of our team and now have many nice-to-have features that the Tech Animation and Animation teams have discussed for a long time.\u201d -The Tech Animation Team\n\nThey spent time clearing up several animation bugs, implemented animations, and worked alongside the Art Team on asset skinning too.\n\n\n\nVFX\nLast month, the much-anticipated particle lighting system was integrated into the artists\u2019 builds, so VFX began updating existing environmental effects to make use of the new settings. The new lighting system is much more physically accurate, which allows the artists to make their effects sit more naturally in the environments regardless of lighting conditions. It generally improves overall visual quality too. As always, the team continued their collaboration with Art and Design on gas clouds. Following on from last month, the VFX artists took a more hands-on approach to the creation of VDBs (previously it was more of an advisory role) along with the gas cloud particle effects.\n\nWE\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, damit die Community leichter darauf zur\u00fcckgreifen kann.\nAchtung Rekruten,\n\nWas ihr gleich lesen werdet, sind die neuesten Informationen \u00fcber die weitere Entwicklung von Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).\n\nDank der Arbeit von engagierten Feldagenten und Agenten haben wir Informationen \u00fcber Sicherheitskr\u00e4fte, Screaming Galsons und die Shubin Interstellar Archon Station aufgedeckt.\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 geraten. L\u00f6sche alle Aufzeichnungen nach dem Lesen.\n\nUEE Marine Oberkommando\n\nKI (Inhalt)\n\nDas KI-Inhaltsteam konzentrierte sich den ganzen Monat \u00fcber auf die Invictus-Launch-Woche, was das Polieren des Touristen- und Reiseleiterverhaltens, der Wildlinien, der Look-IK und die Vervollst\u00e4ndigung der erforderlichen weiblichen Animationen beinhaltete. Sie widmeten sich der Auswahl der Animationen f\u00fcr die Mannequin-Fragmente, um sicherzustellen, dass sie korrekt in den Kontext passen, und der Ladenbesitzer erhielt mehr Usables, die die Spieler in Lebensmittel- und Getr\u00e4nkel\u00e4den erwarten w\u00fcrden. Sie begannen auch damit, m\u00f6gliche Flusserweiterungen zu entwerfen, die es NSCs erlauben, Spieler unterschiedlich zu bedienen, wenn sie sich entscheiden, im Laden zu essen oder mitzunehmen. So wird es zum Beispiel m\u00f6glich sein, dem Spieler Essen direkt zu geben oder es auf einem Teller und Tablett zu servieren.\n\nDer Wachmann wurde vollst\u00e4ndig entworfen und prototypisch umgesetzt. Dieses Verhalten bietet gro\u00dfartige Gameplay-M\u00f6glichkeiten in einer emergenten oder systemischen Art und Weise, da es Szenarien von NSCs erf\u00fcllt, die als Gesetzesh\u00fcter, Informationsgeber, Pf\u00f6rtner und Begr\u00fc\u00dfer agieren.\n\n\nAI Content hat auch das Design und den Prototyping des Hintergrundlebens f\u00fcr den medizinischen Raum fortgesetzt, wenn die Spieler respawnen, einschlie\u00dflich des systemischen Hausmeisters und der NSCs, die die Toilettenkabine benutzen und in den Etagenbetten schlafen.\n\nSpeziell f\u00fcr SQ42 unterst\u00fctzte das Team die Aciedo-Station, indem es taktile Interaktionsm\u00f6glichkeiten identifizierte und Animationen sowie das Usables-Setup ausblockte. Diese Usables, die mit geskripteten KI-Pfaden arbeiten, helfen dabei, Mini-Szenarien zu erstellen, in denen die KI scheinbar nach Geiseln sucht, die sie einfrieren kann.\n\n\nKI (Features)\n\nDas KI-Feature-Team hat den Kampf weiterentwickelt, einschlie\u00dflich der M\u00f6glichkeit f\u00fcr feindliche K\u00e4mpfer, ihre Ziele (KI oder Spieler) mit Hinrichtungsanimationen zu erledigen. Dazu wurde das bestehende Stealth-Takedown-System f\u00fcr die Nutzung durch die KI angepasst und datengesteuerter gemacht, sodass es verschiedene Arten von Takedowns mit eigenen Einstellungen unterst\u00fctzt. Zum Beispiel die minimale und maximale Distanz, aus der ein Takedown durchgef\u00fchrt werden kann und in welchem Quadranten sich der Angreifer relativ zum Ziel befinden muss. F\u00fcr Raumschiffe haben die KI-Features das Kampfverhalten der J\u00e4ger angepasst, um Raketen besser nutzen zu k\u00f6nnen. Dies beinhaltet die Auswahl des richtigen Typs und der Anzahl der abzufeuernden Raketen, damit die NSCs nicht alle ihre Raketen mit hohem Schaden auf kleineren Zielen verbrauchen. Im Gruppenkampf sorgt dies daf\u00fcr, dass die Raketen \u00fcber eine Reihe von Zielen verteilt werden und f\u00fcr den Einsatz w\u00e4hrend des Kampfes rationiert werden. Dies f\u00fchrt zu interessanten Verhaltensweisen, bei denen J\u00e4ger Ziele mit einem Sperrfeuer von Raketen \"aufweichen\", bevor sie sich in den Nahkampf st\u00fcrzen und in g\u00fcnstigen Momenten gelegentlich Raketen abfeuern. Sie haben auch am Sicherheitsverhalten der Piloten gearbeitet, um Probleme zu beheben, die auftreten, wenn sich ein Ziel ergeben hat oder festgenommen wurde.\n\nAls Teil des gr\u00f6\u00dferen Sicherheitsverhaltens wurde die Arbeit am Subverhalten Waffentraining fortgesetzt, bei dem NSCs ihre Kampff\u00e4higkeiten verbessern k\u00f6nnen, indem sie einen Schie\u00dfstand benutzen. Zun\u00e4chst muss eine Waffe vom Waffenschmied abgeholt werden, wobei das Team das bestehende Verk\u00e4ufer- und G\u00f6nnerverhalten aktualisiert hat, um die Abholung und R\u00fcckgabe in der Waffenkammer zu unterst\u00fctzen. F\u00fcr den Schie\u00dfstand musste das Team die bestehenden Ziel- und Schie\u00dfsysteme anpassen, um Nicht-Agenten-Ziele zu unterst\u00fctzen. Diese Technologie wird in der Zukunft verwendet werden, um das Zielen auf \"zerst\u00f6rbare\" Objekte im Kampf zu unterst\u00fctzen. Zum Beispiel k\u00f6nnte die KI eine Computerbank ausschalten m\u00fcssen, um ein Missionsziel zu erf\u00fcllen. Die Grundlagen f\u00fcr das Zielen auf bestimmte K\u00f6rperteile (z.B. Kopfsch\u00fcsse) und \"nicht-menschliche Agenten\" (z.B. Tiere) wurden ebenfalls fertiggestellt.\n\nF\u00fcr die KI-Features schlie\u00dflich entwickelte das Team den untrainierten Waffenkampf weiter. Au\u00dferdem bereiteten sie sich auf eine kommende Mo-Cap-Session f\u00fcr untrainiertes Deckungsverhalten, Reaktion auf tote K\u00f6rper, feindliche Reaktionen in Usables, Cowering und Kapitulation vor.\n\n\nKI (Tech)\n\nDen ganzen Mai \u00fcber hat die KI-Abteilung das Feedback f\u00fcr die Arbeit am Tier-0-Navigations-Link vervollst\u00e4ndigt und bearbeitet. Dies beinhaltete Verbesserungen bei der Verwendung der Cache-Daten w\u00e4hrend der Navigationslinks mit Motion-Warp-Animationen, aber auch die Neuberechnung der Navigationslink-Verbindungspunkte, wenn sich das Navigationsnetz in seiner N\u00e4he \u00e4ndert. Auf der EVA-Seite wurde die Arbeit an NPCs, die aus der Schwerelosigkeit in eine nutzbare \u00fcbergehen (und umgekehrt), abgeschlossen. Darauf aufbauend wurde mit der Entwicklung der Zero-G-Kollisionsvermeidung f\u00fcr NPCs begonnen, die es ihnen erm\u00f6glicht, anderen Charakteren (KI oder Spieler) und kleinen Objekten auszuweichen, w\u00e4hrend sie schweben. Dies wird das 3D ORCA nutzen, das f\u00fcr die Kollisionsvermeidung der SchiffskI implementiert wurde. Das Team f\u00fcgte auch neue Funktionen f\u00fcr Bewegungsanfragen hinzu; sie sind nun in der Lage, Designerpfade am Ende umzuplanen, was es ihnen erm\u00f6glicht, Schleifen zu erstellen.\n\nEin weiteres Feature, an dem gearbeitet wurde, war die Planetennavigation. Das Ziel ist es, ein Navigationsnetz auf Planeten zu generieren, das von NPCs und Tieren um Au\u00dfenposten herum genutzt werden kann. Dies wird Physik-Informationen nutzen, so dass jedes Mal, wenn Planeten-Kacheln physikalisiert werden, auch Navigations-Meshes generiert werden.\n\nF\u00fcr das Subsumption-Editor-Tool f\u00fcgte das Team eine neue Funktionalit\u00e4t hinzu, die es erlaubt, mehrere Subsumption-Funktionen in der gleichen Fensteransicht zu erstellen oder zu ver\u00e4ndern. Dies wird den Designern beim Schreiben von Missionsskripten oder Verhaltensweisen von Vorteil sein, da sie einen \u00dcberblick \u00fcber die gesamte Logik an einem Ort haben werden.\n\n\nAnimation\n\nDas Animationsteam hat im Mai an den Vanduul-K\u00e4mpfen, der Fortbewegung von Verletzten, dem Verhalten im Schussbereich, den SQ42-spezifischen Level-Usables, der Bewegung zwischen Nav-Meshes und dem medizinischen Gameplay (einschlie\u00dflich der Heilung und dem Bewegen von Spielern in Betten) gearbeitet. Sie testeten auch ein Rig f\u00fcr die Xi'an-Alienrasse (sowohl K\u00f6rper als auch Gesicht) und unterst\u00fctzten mehrere Story-Szenen.\n\n\nKunst (Charaktere)\n\nDas Character Art Team machte Fortschritte bei der Entwicklung der Screaming Galsons. Basierend auf den Torso-Teil-Tests, die letzten Monat begonnen haben, sieht das modulare System wie ein vielversprechender Weg aus, um eine gro\u00dfe Anzahl von Variationen kosteng\u00fcnstig zu erstellen. Der n\u00e4chste Schritt ist, die Regeln f\u00fcr andere R\u00fcstungstypen festzulegen und mit den ma\u00dfgeschneiderten Screaming Galson Charakteren zu beginnen. Das Team hat auch den Polishing-Pass f\u00fcr Trejos Kopf abgeschlossen und ihn an Tech Animation \u00fcbergeben, um das Rig zu aktualisieren. Ihr Haar befindet sich derzeit im Skinning, w\u00e4hrend ihr Unteranzug und ihr Helm im Modeling sind. Zu guter Letzt arbeiteten sie an einigen Charakteren f\u00fcr Aciedo und Uniformen f\u00fcr Kapitel 4G.\n\n\nKunst (Umgebung)\n\nDas Environment Art Team machte Fortschritte beim Space-Scaping und dem Anflug auf Aciedo, was nicht nur toll aussieht, sondern auch ein interessantes Flug-Gameplay erm\u00f6glicht. Das Innere der Station wurde in der Beleuchtung \u00fcberarbeitet, um die gew\u00fcnschte Stimmung zu erzeugen. Auf der Planetenseite wurden Fortschritte bei der Gestaltung von interessantem und glaubw\u00fcrdigem Terrain gemacht, das Canyons einschlie\u00dft, was dem Team zuvor nicht m\u00f6glich gewesen war. Die Entwicklung des internen Stra\u00dfenbahnsystems der Archon-Station, der Abwasserkan\u00e4le, des sozialen Zentrums, der Hintergassen und der Arbeiterbereiche wurde fortgesetzt, w\u00e4hrend die ersten Arbeiten f\u00fcr die \u00e4u\u00dferen FPS-R\u00e4ume in Kapitel 13 begannen.\n\nKapitel 15 schritt voran, wobei Art mit Design zusammenarbeitete, um die Umgebungen f\u00fcr die Schl\u00fcsselmomente des Levels zu gestalten. Auch an der Krankenstation und der Waffenkammer der Bengalen wurden Fortschritte gemacht, die beide kurz vor der Fertigstellung stehen.\n\n\nCinematics\n\nAufgrund der Natur von SQ42s stark eingebetteten Echtzeit-Cinematics ist es selten, dass das Cinematics Team komplett \"unblocked\" an Szenen arbeiten kann und ohne Unterbrechungen durchkommt. Blocker k\u00f6nnen sein, dass das Mo-Cap einer Szene fertiggestellt werden muss, dass die Zustandsmaschine f\u00fcr alle Animationsfragmente definiert werden muss, dass Charakter-Assets (wie Gesichter, Kost\u00fcme und Rigs) nicht fertig sind und dass Requisiten fehlen oder eine falsche Gr\u00f6\u00dfe haben. Manchmal gibt es auch gr\u00f6\u00dfere Probleme, wenn die Level Art Elemente f\u00fcr ein Set Piece oder eine Location nicht fest genug sind, um ein gutes Verst\u00e4ndnis f\u00fcr die State Machine, die Platzierung, den Flow oder die Stimmung zu haben. Also entwickelt das Team Tools, die ihnen helfen, unabh\u00e4ngig von Blockern effektiv zu arbeiten, und die im Mai weiterentwickelt wurden. Dazu geh\u00f6rten Werkzeuge, um Schiffsfunktionen, den Kopf des Spielers, Einstellungen f\u00fcr einen weiblichen Charakter, den Inhalt von Objektcontainern und ein dynamisches Beleuchtungs-Rig f\u00fcr jeden Charakter zu kontrollieren, um eine Grundbeleuchtungsqualit\u00e4t zu erhalten.\n\nEs wurde auch ein Tool erstellt, um jede Fahrwerksdruckfeder im Fahrzeugsetup unabh\u00e4ngig zu referenzieren und zu spielen. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es dem Team zum Beispiel, die hinteren Landekufen eines Schiffes vor den vorderen aus- oder einzufahren.\n\nNeben den Werkzeugen arbeiteten die Cinematics an bestimmten Kapitelszenen und Sequenzen, darunter eine Schl\u00fcsselbegegnung mit den Vanduul und eine, in der sich der Spieler zwischen Nebel und Schiffsteilen versteckt. Fortschritte wurden auch bei der Bengal gemacht, einschlie\u00dflich der Animation der Br\u00fcckensitze und der angebrachten Bildschirme.\n\n\n\nMotor\n\nDas Physics Team hat die im April begonnene Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr das Tracking von Floating Point Exceptions in der Physik abgeschlossen. Als Nebeneffekt erm\u00f6glichte dies eine effizientere Vektorcodegenerierung auf dem Linux Server. Der Rest des Monats wurde haupts\u00e4chlich mit Optimierungen verbracht, einschlie\u00dflich der Verbesserung der mittleren und engen Phase der Soft Body Collision Detection. Es gab auch mehrere Updates f\u00fcr Signed Distance Fields (SDF), wie z.B. kachelbasierte Polygonisierung beim Remeshing von SDFs und Optimierungen im Tree Traversal beim Backen von SDFs. Das Team hat weitere Fortschritte mit dem Gen12 Renderer gemacht, einschlie\u00dflich der Einreichung von Verbesserungen am Scaleform (UI) Renderpfad, der letzten Monat eingef\u00fchrt wurde. Der Rendergraph, der eine Schl\u00fcsselkomponente in Gen12 ist, erhielt erste Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Resource Transition APIs, Split Barriers und Resource State Validation; allesamt wichtig f\u00fcr Next-Gen, Low-Level APIs wie Vulkan und DX12. Die Debuggability des Rendergraphen wurde ebenfalls aktualisiert.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde das Textrendering refaktorisiert und optimiert und Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Bild-Draw-Helper-Code hinzugef\u00fcgt. Mehr Pipelines wurden f\u00fcr Gen12 standardm\u00e4\u00dfig aktiviert, darunter Tiled Shading, SSR, SSDO, Shadow Mask Generation und Scattering Queries.\n\nZus\u00e4tzlich wurden signifikante Low-Level-Fortschritte in der Speicherverwaltung gemacht, die verschiedene Arten von Puffer- und Paketallokationen beinhaltete, die in ein effizienteres Schema \u00fcberf\u00fchrt wurden. Schlie\u00dflich wurden f\u00fcr den Renderer verschiedene APIs \u00fcber gemeinsame Schnittstellen offengelegt, so dass Code auf h\u00f6herer Ebene diese nutzen kann, um Daten im Voraus vorzubereiten und zu verpacken und den Renderer zu entlasten.\n\nAn der Grafikfront erhielt das Rendering von Haaren verschiedene Verbesserungen, wie z.B. eine fixierte Shadowmap-Generierung von sichtausgerichteten Str\u00e4hnen und ein neues experimentelles Streumodell f\u00fcr besser aussehendes blondes Haar. Das Eye Shading erhielt Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr eine Normal plus Blend Map beim Rendern von Specular Overlays. Die Augentextur kann nun auch neu skaliert werden, um geteilte Texturen besser an unterschiedliche Augengeometrien anzupassen.\n\nDas volumetrische Wolkensystem erhielt Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Dichteabfragen, sodass verschiedene VFX gespawnt werden k\u00f6nnen und das Spiel auf das Vorhandensein von Wolken an bestimmten Orten reagieren kann. Scattering Query Support wurde ebenfalls hinzugef\u00fcgt, so dass transparente und vorw\u00e4rts schattierte Objekte Wolken beim Rendern korrekt ber\u00fccksichtigen. Die Arbeit an SDFs f\u00fcr effizientes Space-Skipping wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt.\n\n\nEigenschaften (Gameplay)\n\nIm Mai hat das Feature Team die Grundlagen des Reputationssystems der PU genommen und eine Einzelspielerversion f\u00fcr die Verwendung in SQ42 erstellt. Die Live-Version ist ein vom Spiel getrennter Dienst, der die Reputationswerte in eine Datenbank schreibt, wohingegen die Einzelspielerversion als Teil des Spiels selbst l\u00e4uft und die Reputationen im Speicher ablegt, die dann in das Speichersystem des Spiels \u00fcbertragen werden k\u00f6nnen. Dar\u00fcber hinaus wurden Verbesserungen an der Lebensqualit\u00e4t vorgenommen und einige kleinere Aufgaben erledigt, wie zum Beispiel die Verbesserung des Videokommunikations-Setups f\u00fcr mehrere Parteien.\nGameplay Geschichte\n\nIm letzten Monat konzentrierte sich Gameplay Story auf den zweiten Walk-and-Talk f\u00fcr Kapitel 5, nachdem die Arbeit an der vorherigen Szene erfolgreich war. Dies beinhaltete die Umstrukturierung der Animationen und die Anpassung an die KI sowie die Erstellung von Unterbrechungs-, Leerlauf-, Ermutigungs- und Rejoin-Animationen. \"Das ist ein ziemliches Unterfangen, aber es war gro\u00dfartig, den Schwung beizubehalten und zu sehen, wie dieses Kapitel schnell Form annimmt.\" -Das Gameplay Story Team\n\nDaneben haben sie einen holografischen Charakter erstellt, akkurate Holsteranimationen erstellt und mehrere Szenen aktualisiert, um die neue medizinische Waffe einzubauen. Au\u00dferdem wurde das Design bei der Arbeit an Kapitel 13 unterst\u00fctzt und ein Prototyp f\u00fcr eine Szene in Kapitel 19 erstellt.\n\n\nGrafik & VFX Programmierung\n\nDen ganzen Mai \u00fcber haben die Teams der Grafik- und VFX-Programmierung bedeutende Verbesserungen an mehreren Systemen vorgenommen. Es wurde mit der Arbeit an einer Fenster-Shader-Erweiterung begonnen, die Einblicke in \"unechte\" Innenr\u00e4ume mit Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr zuf\u00e4llige Raumgr\u00f6\u00dfen, Drehungen, Farben und Beleuchtung erm\u00f6glicht. Wenn sie in Betrieb ist, wird dies zus\u00e4tzliches Leben in St\u00e4dte und Raumstationen bringen.\n\nDas Render-to-Texture-System wurde modifiziert, um eine ma\u00dfgeschneiderte Compositing- und Post-Effekt-Pipeline f\u00fcr das UI-Team zu erm\u00f6glichen, die eine gr\u00f6\u00dfere visuelle Konsistenz und qualitativ hochwertigere Effekte bringen wird. Das Level of Detail (LOD)-Merger-System wurde aktualisiert, so dass es in New Babbage und Orison verwendet werden kann, um die Leistung zu verbessern und den k\u00fcnstlerischen Aufwand bei der Erstellung von super-niedrigen\/entfernten LODs zu reduzieren. Pre-Streaming-Unterst\u00fctzung wurde f\u00fcr verschiedene Spielsysteme (wie z.B. Fahrzeug-Todesmasken, M\u00fcndungsfeuer und Quantenreisen) hinzugef\u00fcgt, um alle Texturen, die f\u00fcr Partikeleffekte ben\u00f6tigt werden, vorzustreamen, bevor die Partikel gespawnt werden. Dies sollte einige lange bestehende visuelle Bugs l\u00f6sen.\n\nDas Setup der Schildeffekte wurde \u00fcberarbeitet, damit ein einzelner Effekt auf mehreren Schiffen unterschiedlicher Gr\u00f6\u00dfe verwendet werden kann, wobei alle Effekte entsprechend skalieren. Die Arbeit an dem in fr\u00fcheren Berichten erw\u00e4hnten Feuergef\u00e4hrdungssystem wurde fortgesetzt, wobei der Schwerpunkt im Mai auf dem W\u00e4rmemanagement des Raumsystems lag. Die Streaming-Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Gaswolken wurde ebenfalls weiterentwickelt, um den Speicherverbrauch zu reduzieren und die Ladezeiten zu verbessern.\n\nF\u00fcr den Gen12-Renderer wurde ein neues Vulkan-Erweiterungs-Reporting-System hinzugef\u00fcgt, sodass das Team ab Alpha 3.14 in der Lage sein wird, Daten dar\u00fcber zu sammeln, welche Hardware- und Treiberunterst\u00fctzung sie f\u00fcr verschiedene Vulkan-Features haben. Dies wird ihnen helfen, neuere Features zu nutzen, wenn sie ausreichend unterst\u00fctzt werden. Das Team hat auch das GPU-to-CPU R\u00fccklesesystem verallgemeinert und den DX9-\u00c4ra Textur-Sampling-Code auf ein modernes \u00c4quivalent portiert.\n\n\nLevel Design\n\nDas Space\/Dogfight Team stellte weiterhin sicher, dass der unternehmensweite Fokus aus dem Meilenstein des letzten Quartals auch auf die Kapitel jenseits ihrer Meilensteinarbeit angewendet wurde. Einige Funktionen kamen sp\u00e4t im Quartal herein und werden nun verfeinert, damit sie zu dem passen, was in Bezug auf den Feinschliff entworfen und erwartet wurde. Das Level Design Team hatte mehrere detaillierte Diskussionen bez\u00fcglich der Nicht-Kampf-KI und Verhaltensweisen, die nun f\u00fcr die Pre-Combat\/Stealth-Elemente des aktuellen Meilensteins in die Praxis umgesetzt werden, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf dem Kampfverhalten in kleinen R\u00e4umen liegt.\n\nWie immer implementierte das Social Design Team Szenen f\u00fcr die verschiedenen Kapitel-Reviews und Sign-Offs.\n\n\nErz\u00e4hlung\n\nDen ganzen Mai \u00fcber konzentrierte sich das Narrative Team auf einen erweiterten Environmental Storytelling Pass f\u00fcr die Shubin Interstellar Archon Station, der zus\u00e4tzliche Poster und Werbung beinhaltet, um die gew\u00fcnschte Stimmung zu erzeugen; die Hoffnung ist, eine dynamische, lebendige Station zu erschaffen, die den Spieler eintauchen l\u00e4sst, wohin er auch schaut. Es gab auch mehrere Reviews eines Kapitels, in denen besprochen wurde, wie sich der pers\u00f6nliche Spielstil eines Spielers auf die Erz\u00e4hlung auswirken k\u00f6nnte und dann daf\u00fcr gesorgt wurde, dass der Inhalt entsprechend reagiert. Diese Reviews halfen dabei, ein paar Bereiche hervorzuheben, in denen Szenen anders platziert werden k\u00f6nnten und zus\u00e4tzliche Dialoge dem Spielerlebnis helfen k\u00f6nnten. Diese werden in K\u00fcrze geskriptet werden.\n\nZus\u00e4tzlich plante Narrative eine Mo-Cap-Session, um mit den finalen Aufnahmen einiger der Platzhalter-Inhalte zu beginnen, die in fr\u00fcheren Berichten beschrieben wurden.\n\n\nQA\n\nDie Cinematics verlie\u00dfen sich weiterhin auf die QA, um Aufnahmen von jedem Level zur \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung zu erhalten, w\u00e4hrend die verschiedenen Entwicklungsteams unterst\u00fctzt wurden, indem ihre \u00c4nderungen und Updates am Projekt nach Bedarf getestet wurden. QA unterst\u00fctzte auch weiterhin die KI und testete die Verhaltensimplementierungen in SQ42, wobei der Fokus auf Verbesserungen f\u00fcr Vanduul lag. Au\u00dferdem wurden veraltete Probleme beseitigt und ein offener Bug-Sweep durchgef\u00fchrt, um sicherzustellen, dass die Datenbanken auf dem neuesten Stand sind.\n\n\nTechnische Animation\n\nTech Animation's viertelj\u00e4hrliche Ergebnisse und langj\u00e4hrige Initiativen machten im Mai gute Fortschritte. Das Team investierte auch Zeit in Forschung und Entwicklung rund um die Animationspipeline und die Exportprozesse. \"Beides sind Grundpfeiler unseres Teams und haben nun viele Nice-to-have-Features, die das Tech Animation- und das Animationsteam schon lange diskutiert haben.\" -Das Tech Animation Team\n\nSie verbrachten Zeit damit, verschiedene Animationsbugs zu beseitigen, implementierten Animationen und arbeiteten zusammen mit dem Art Team auch am Asset Skinning.\n\n\nVFX\n\nLetzten Monat wurde das lang erwartete Partikel-Beleuchtungssystem in die K\u00fcnstler-Builds integriert, also begann VFX damit, bestehende Umgebungseffekte zu aktualisieren, um die neuen Einstellungen zu nutzen. Das neue Beleuchtungssystem ist viel physikalisch genauer, was es den K\u00fcnstlern erm\u00f6glicht, ihre Effekte nat\u00fcrlicher in die Umgebungen einzupassen, unabh\u00e4ngig von den Lichtverh\u00e4ltnissen. Es verbessert auch die allgemeine visuelle Qualit\u00e4t. Wie immer hat das Team seine Zusammenarbeit mit Art und Design bei den Gaswolken fortgesetzt. Wie schon im letzten Monat haben die VFX-Artists bei der Erstellung der VDBs und den Partikeleffekten der Gaswolken mehr Hand angelegt (vorher war es eher eine beratende Rolle).\n\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...","zh_CN":"This is a cross-post of the report that was recently sent out via the monthly Squadron 42 newsletter. We\u2019re publishing this a second time as a Comm-Link to make it easier for the community to reference back to.\nAttention Recruits,\n\nWhat you are about to read is the latest information on the continuing development of Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).\n\nThanks to the work of dedicated field agents and operatives, we\u2019ve uncovered information on security guards, Screaming Galsons, and the Shubin Interstellar Archon Station.\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 AI (Content)\nThe AI Content Team focused on Invictus Launch Week throughout the month, which included polishing the tourist and tour guide behavior, wildlines, Look IK, and completing the required female animations. They dedicated time to the Mannequin fragments animation selection to ensure they correctly fit their context, and the shopkeeper gained more usables that players would expect to see in food and drink shops. They also started designing possible flow extensions to allow NPCs to serve players differently if they choose to eat in or take away. For example, this will allow food to be given to the player directly or served on a plate and tray.\n\nThe security guard was fully designed and prototyped. This behavior offers great gameplay opportunities in an emergent or systemic way as it fulfills scenarios of NPCs acting as law enforcers, information providers, gatekeepers, and greeters. AI Content also continued designing and prototyping background life for the medical room when players respawn, including the systemic janitor and NPCs using the bathroom cubicle and sleeping in the bunk beds.\n\nSpecifically for SQ42, the team supported Aciedo station, identifying tactile interaction opportunities and blocking out animations and the usables setup. These usables, working with scripted AI Paths, will help to create mini-scenarios where the AI appears to look for hostages to dry-freeze.\n\n\n\nAI (Features)\nThe AI Feature Team further developed combat, including the ability for enemy fighters to finish off their targets (AI or player) with execution animations. This involved adapting the existing stealth takedown system for use by AI and making it more data-driven so that it supports different types of takedowns with their own settings. For example, the minimum and maximum distance a takedown can be performed from and what quadrant the attacker must be in relative to the target. For spaceships, AI Features adapted the fighter combat behavior to better utilize missiles. This involves selecting the right type and number of missiles to fire so that NPCs don\u2019t exhaust all of their high-damage missiles on smaller targets. In group combat, this ensures that missiles are spread over a range of targets and are rationed for use throughout the fight. This leads to interesting behaviors where fighters will \u2018soften up\u2019 targets with a barrage of missiles before engaging in dogfighting, firing occasional missiles at opportune moments. They also worked on the pilot security behavior to fix issues that occur when a target has surrendered or been arrested.\n\nAs part of the larger security behavior, work continued on the weapons training sub-behavior, where NPCs can improve their combat abilities by using a firing range. Firstly, a weapon has to be retrieved from the armorer, with the team updating the existing vendor and patron behaviors to support retrieval and return at the armory. For the firing range, the team had to adapt the existing targeting and firing systems to support non-agent targets. This technology will be used in the future to support the targeting of \u2018destructibles\u2019 in combat. For example, the AI might need to take out a computer bank to complete a mission objective. The groundwork for targeting specific parts of the body (eg. headshots) and \u2018non-human-bodied agents\u2019 (e.g. animals) was completed too.\n\nFinally for AI Features, the team further developed untrained weapons combat. They also prepared for an upcoming mo-cap session for untrained cover behaviors, responding to dead bodies, hostile reactions in usables, cowering, and surrendering.\n\n\n\nAI (Tech)\nThroughout May, AI Tech completed and addressed feedback for the tier-0 navigation link work. This involved making improvements to how the cache data is used during navigation links with motion-warp animations but also re-computing navigation link connection points when the navigation mesh changes in its proximity. On the EVA side, work on NPCs transitioning from zero-g into a usable (and vice versa) was completed. Following on from this, they began developing zero-g collision avoidance for NPCs, which allows them to avoid other characters (AI or player) and small objects while floating. This will use the 3D ORCA that was implemented for ship AI collision avoidance. The team also added new functionality to movement requests.; they\u2019re now able to re-plane designer paths at the end, allowing them to create loops.\n\nAnother feature worked on was planetary navigation. The aim is to generate navigation mesh on planets that can be used by NPCs and animals around outposts. This will use physics information, so each time planetary tiles are physicalized, navigation meshes will be generated too.\n\nFor the Subsumption editor tool, the team added new functionality allowing them to create or modify multiple Subsumption functions in the same window view. This will be beneficial to the designers when writing mission scripts or behaviors as they will have an overview of all logic in the same place.\n\n\n\nAnimation\nThe Animation team spent May working on Vanduul combat, hurt locomotion, firing range behaviors, SQ42-specific level usables, movement between nav meshes, and medical gameplay (including healing and moving players to beds). They also tested a rig for the Xi\u2019an alien race (both body and face) and supported several story scenes.\n\n\n\nArt (Characters)\nThe Character Art Team progressed with R&D for the Screaming Galsons. Based on the torso-piece tests that began last month, the modular system is looking like a promising way to create a large number of variations cost-effectively. The next step is tightening up and defining rules for other armor types and starting on the bespoke Screaming Galson characters. The team also wrapped up the polish pass for Trejo\u2019s head and passed it to Tech Animation to update the rig. Her hair is currently in skinning, while her undersuit and helmet are in modeling. Finally, they worked on some characters for Aciedo and uniforms for chapter 4G.\n\n\n\nArt (Environment)\nThe Environment Art Team progressed with the space-scaping and the approach to Aciedo, which not only looks great but also allows interesting flight gameplay. The station interior received lighting tweaks to portray the desired mood too. Planetside, progress was made on creating interesting and believable terrain that incorporates canyons, which the team had been unable to achieve previously. Development of Archon station\u2019s internal tram system, sewers, social hub, back alleys, and worker\u2019s areas continued, while initial work began for exterior FPS spaces in chapter 13.\n\nChapter 15 progressed, with Art working alongside Design to build out the environments for key moments throughout the level. Progress was made on the Bengal\u2019s medbay and armory too, both of which are close to completion.\n\n\n\nCinematics\nDue to the nature of SQ42\u2019s heavily embedded real-time cinematics, it\u2019s rare for the Cinematics Team to be entirely \u2018unblocked\u2019 on scenes and work through them with no interruptions. Blockers can include a scene\u2019s mo-cap delivery needing completion, the state machine for all animation fragments needing to be defined, character assets (like faces, costumes, and rigs) not being ready, and props missing or having incorrectly sized metrics. Sometimes, there are larger issues where level art elements for a set piece or location aren\u2019t solidified enough to give a good understanding of the state machine, placement, flow, or mood. So, the team develops tools to help them work effectively regardless of blockers, which were further developed throughout May. This included tools to control ship functions, the player\u2019s head, settings to suit a female character, the contents of object containers, and a dynamic per-character lighting rig to give a base illumination quality.\n\nA tool was also created to reference and play each landing gear compression spring in the vehicle setup independently. For example, this enables the team to extract or retract a ship\u2019s hind landing skids before the fronts.\n\nAlongside tools, Cinematics worked on specific chapter scenes and sequences, including a key Vanduul encounter and one involving the player hiding among fog and ship parts. Progress was made on the Bengal, including animating the bridge seats and attached screens too.\n\n\n\n\nEngine\nThe Physics Team finalized their support of tracking floating point exceptions within physics, which began in April. As a side effect, this enabled more efficient vector code generation on the Linux server. The rest of the month was mostly spent on optimizations, including improving the mid and narrow phase of soft body collision detection. There were also several updates to signed distance fields (SDF), such as tile-based polygonization when remeshing SDFs and optimizations in tree traversal when baking SDFs. The team further progressed with the Gen12 renderer, including submitting improvements to the Scaleform (UI) render path that was established last month. The render graph, which is a key component in Gen12, received initial support for resource transition APIs, split barriers, and resource state validation; all of which are important for next-gen, low-level APIs such as Vulkan and DX12. The debuggability of the render graph was also updated.\n\nFurthermore, text rendering was refactored and optimized and support for image draw helper code was added. More pipelines were enabled for Gen12 by default, including tiled shading, SSR, SSDO, shadow mask generation, and scattering queries.\n\nAdditionally, significant low-level progress was made in memory management, which involved various types of buffer and packet allocations moving to a more efficient scheme. Lastly for the renderer, various APIs were exposed via common interfaces so higher-level code can eventually make use of them to prepare and package data in advance and offload the renderer.\n\nOn the graphics front, hair rendering received various improvements, such as fixed shadow map generation of view-aligned strands and a new experimental scattering model for better looking blonde hair. Eye shading got support for a normal plus-blend map when rendering specular overlays. The eyeball texture can now also be rescaled to make shared textures better fit varying eye geometry.\n\nThe volumetric cloud system received support for density queries so various VFX can be spawned and the game can react to the presence of clouds at given locations. Scattering query support was also added so transparent and forward-shaded objects properly take clouds into account when rendered. The work on SDFs for efficient space skipping continued too.\n\n\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nMay saw the Feature Team take the basics of the PU\u2019s reputation system and create a single-player version for use in SQ42. The live version is a service separate from the game, writing out the reputation values to a database, whereas the single-player version runs as a part of the game itself, storing reputations in memory that can then be stored to the save game system. Outside of that, they made quality-of-life improvements and completed several smaller tasks, such as improving the video comm setup for multiple parties.\n\nGameplay Story\nLast month, Gameplay Story focused on the second walk-and-talk for chapter 5 following successful work on the previous scene. This involved restructuring animations and getting them to work with AI and creating interrupt, idle, encouragement, and rejoin animations. \u201cThis is quite an undertaking, but it\u2019s been great to maintain momentum and see this chapter rapidly taking shape.\u201d -The Gameplay Story Team\n\nAlongside this, they set up a holographic character, created accurate holstering animations, and updated several scenes to include the new medical gun. Support was also given to Design\u2019s work on chapter 13 and a prototype was made for a scene in chapter 19.\n\n\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nThroughout May, the Graphics & VFX Programming teams made significant improvements to several systems. Work started on a window shader extension to allow views into \u2018fake\u2019 interiors with support for randomized room sizes, rotations, colors, and lighting. When live, this will bring extra life to cities and space stations.\n\nThe render-to-texture system was modified to allow a more bespoke compositing and post-effect pipeline for the UI Team, which will bring greater visual consistency and higher-quality effects. The level of detail (LOD) merger system was updated so that it can be used in New Babbage and Orison to improve performance and reduce the art burden of creating super-low\/distant LODs. Pre-streaming support was added for various game systems (such as vehicle death-masks, muzzle flashes, and quantum travel) to pre-stream any textures required for particle effects before the particles are spawned. This should solve some long-standing visual bugs.\n\nThe shield effects setup was reworked to enable a single effect to be used on multiple ships of varying scales, with all effects scaling appropriately. Work on the fire hazard system mentioned in previous reports continued, with May\u2019s focus on the heat management of the room system. The streaming support for gas clouds was also developed to reduce memory use and improve loading times.\n\nFor the Gen12 renderer, a new Vulkan extension reporting system was added so that, from Alpha 3.14 onwards, the team will be able to gather data on what hardware and driver support they have for various Vulkan features. This will help them use newer features when sufficiently supported. The team also generalized the GPU-to-CPU read-back system and ported the DX9-era texture sampling code to a modern equivalent.\n\n\n\nLevel Design\nThe Space\/Dogfight Team continued to ensure the company-wide focus from last quarter\u2019s milestone was applied to the chapters beyond the scope of their milestone work. Some functionality came in late in the quarter and is now being refined to fit what was designed and expected in terms of polish. The Level Design Team had several detailed discussions regarding non-combat AI and behaviors that are now being put into practice for the pre-combat\/stealth elements of the current milestone, with significant focus on combat behaviors within small spaces.\n\nAs always, the Social Design Team implemented scenes for the various chapter reviews and sign-offs.\n\n\n\nNarrative\nThroughout May, the Narrative Team focused on an expanded environmental storytelling pass for the Shubin Interstellar Archon Station, which included additional posters and advertising to help set the desired mood; the hope is to create a dynamic, living station that immerses the player wherever they look. They also had several reviews of one chapter, discussing how a player\u2019s personal playstyle could impact the narrative and then making sure that the content would react appropriately. These reviews helped highlight a few areas where scenes could be placed differently and additional dialogue could help the gameplay experience. These will be scripted shortly.\n\nAdditionally, Narrative planned a mo-cap session to begin getting final recordings of some of the placeholder content outlined in previous reports.\n\n\n\nQA\nCinematics continued to rely on QA for recordings of each level for review, while support was given to the various development teams, with their changes and updates to the project tested as needed. QA also continued to support AI, testing the behavior implementations into SQ42, with a focus on Vanduul improvements. They also pushed to clear out any outdated issues and performed an open bug-sweep to ensure their databases were up to date.\n\n\n\nTech Animation\nTech Animation\u2019s quarterly deliverables and long-standing initiatives progressed well throughout May. The team also invested time into R&D around their animation pipeline and exporting processes. \u201cBoth are bedrocks of our team and now have many nice-to-have features that the Tech Animation and Animation teams have discussed for a long time.\u201d -The Tech Animation Team\n\nThey spent time clearing up several animation bugs, implemented animations, and worked alongside the Art Team on asset skinning too.\n\n\n\nVFX\nLast month, the much-anticipated particle lighting system was integrated into the artists\u2019 builds, so VFX began updating existing environmental effects to make use of the new settings. The new lighting system is much more physically accurate, which allows the artists to make their effects sit more naturally in the environments regardless of lighting conditions. It generally improves overall visual quality too. As always, the team continued their collaboration with Art and Design on gas clouds. Following on from last month, the VFX artists took a more hands-on approach to the creation of VDBs (previously it was more of an advisory role) along with the gas cloud particle effects.\n\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":9,"created_at":"2021-06-09T18:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"4 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-08 04:24:47","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":18179,"next_id":18182}}