{"data":{"id":18300,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: August 2021","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/18300-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-August-2021","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/18300","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/18300","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"Monthly Reports","images":[{"id":30963,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/vjhp2njbokvxb\/source.png","alt":"","size":4895804,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-05-02T18:53:45+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30963","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30963\/similar"},{"id":31194,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/dyu8i559admn1\/source.png","alt":"","size":3831731,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-06-06T16:13:24+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31194","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31194\/similar"},{"id":31403,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/p34sp3q2kl01b\/source.png","alt":"","size":3014864,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-07-04T13:35:01+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31403","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31403\/similar"},{"id":31536,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/6u5x9e23ftrw7\/source.png","alt":"","size":3531870,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-08-01T14:29:26+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31536","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31536\/similar"},{"id":31783,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/gaazjx0n1kop2\/source.png","alt":"","size":3223870,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-09-12T14:59:52+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31783","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/31783\/similar"},{"id":32961,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/8m2c1vusdb0hj\/source.png","alt":"","size":4757052,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-10-03T12:11:38+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/32961","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/32961\/similar"},{"id":32962,"name":"source.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/4x3lw5w4vk3o4\/source.jpg","alt":"","size":584749,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2023-10-31T19:13:02+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/32962","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/32962\/similar"},{"id":38000,"name":"source.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/x5aus9nndxu4s\/source.jpg","alt":"","size":1186506,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2025-02-05T13:01:54+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38000","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38000\/similar"},{"id":38060,"name":"source.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/fe6j2ifv3ash4\/source.jpg","alt":"","size":1773870,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2025-03-04T15:04:48+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38060","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38060\/similar"},{"id":38084,"name":"source.jpg","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/pgmk7f9gt3j9y\/source.jpg","alt":"","size":2091105,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","last_modified":"2025-04-01T17:29:16+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38084","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/38084\/similar"},{"id":40391,"name":"source.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/media.robertsspaceindustries.com\/svep7j1purh1f\/source.png","alt":"","size":5543040,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2025-07-01T15:37:40+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/40391","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/40391\/similar"}],"images_count":42,"translations":{"en_EN":"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.\nTO: SQUADRON 42 RECRUITS\nSUBJ: DEVELOPMENT UPDATE 09:01:2021\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 recruits.\n\nWelcome to August\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you\u2019ll find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including updates to key cinematics, additions to essential vehicles, and engine developments that will benefit the whole project.\n\nThank you for you continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS AI (Content)\nThroughout August, AI Content supported Level Design by creating a new \u2018worker\u2019 behavior. This enables the designers to apply traits to the various AI archetypes, refining which usables they use, such as sitting, leaning, inspecting, and cooking. The team modified various usables to utilize the first reaction system, which allows NPCs to break out of usables during animations. For example, if an NPC is typing at a console and hears a gunshot or sees an enemy, they will stop typing and react appropriately. This was completed for the standing and sitting console, leans, seats, stairs, railings, search spots, attack spots, and more. They\u2019re currently working with the Engine and Animation teams to improve the visuals.\n\nAI (Feature)\nAI Features continued to work on combat scenarios. Throughout August, they improved visual perception by adjusting the field-of-view form and exposing more information for the designers to tweak. The aim of this is to create a stealth combat mechanism from the player\u2019s perspective, which requires adjustable perception timings and field of view. New functionality was also added to the tactical point system. This enables it to compute path distances when selecting viable relocation points or cover locations during combat, rather than just direct distance. NPCs were also set up to use missile turrets.\n\nAI (Tech)\nAI Tech improved the pathfinder system to work with planetary navigation mesh tiles, enabling them to place NPCs on planets and move them from one location to another. They also started the work for generating planet navigation mesh automatically based on a player\u2019s proximity. One feature delivered this month allows the player to lead a formation of AI ships. This was initially requested for Squadron 42 but should be available in the PU in the future.\n\nImprovements were also made to the collision avoidance system, including physics optimizations for obstacle queries and a small restructure of related data.\n\nSignificant effort was also directed at improving AI design paths and how NPCs follow them. As the design paths can be quite complex with multiple branches, they were updated to allow NPCs to follow them from any starting place.\n\nWork also continued on the Subsumption editor, this time completing the multi-graph view.\n\nAnimation\nThe Animation team progressed with zero-g traversal, Vanduul combat, medical-gun self-healing, and various story scenes. The Motion-Capture team supported a story shoot, while the Facial Animation team finalized animations on the newly improved head models. For level gameplay, the AI team worked on a useable that exists in one of the level environments to give it life, story context, and provide an opportunity for stealth gameplay. They also supported Tech Animation in pursuit of a more tactile feel to interacting with player outfits, and planned an upcoming Vanduul mo-cap shoot.\n\nArt (Characters)\nCharacter Art continued with their ongoing polish and update passes for character heads, all of which incorporated the new eye assembly and skin shader developed last month. They also updated many of the crew outfits and officer uniforms to elevate them to the current quality level. Tech Design also updated their zoos, systematically going through hair, skin, and DNA for the entire project.\n\nArt (Environment)\nEnvironment Art worked on locations for the quarterly milestone, assisting the Flight Design and Cinematic teams in bringing spacescapes and internal spaces to life in the game\u2019s opening chapter. \u201cWe\u2019ve been super proud of the team\u2019s progress over the past few months and we are extremely excited moving forward in bringing Squadron 42\u2019s environments together.\u201d \u2013 Environment Art Team\n\nElsewhere, focus was on Archon station and chapters 7, 15, and 19.\n\nCinematics\nAt the beginning of the month, Cinematics closed out the remaining tasks on a significant sequence for the Q2 milestone. The sequence features Cydnus mining ticks, and the team ensured the cutaway properly highlights the animation of the articulated legs to help the related teams properly close out the vehicle. For the Q3 milestone, the team revisited earlier sequences in the game\u2019s opening chapter to bring them one step closer to final delivery. They can now animate all the bridge consoles and chairs on the Bengal carrier, which wasn\u2019t set up when they last worked on major sequences in that location. So, their most recent pass included proper chair, screen, console, stick, and throttle animations alongside the motion-captured animations.\n\n\u201cIn tradition with other sci-fi universes, there are of course no seat belts on those bridge seats, so when the ship gets hit, we have some nice wiggling and shaking going on.\u201d \u2013 Cinematics Team\n\nThe Bengal\u2019s bridge is huge, with the area around the captain alone having eight seated officers, so the team spent time ensuring the whole area had proper animations and polish. For example, crew members properly looking at events or characters.\n\nCinematics also improved the blockout for an \u2018escape\u2019 level, which is in a state where it\u2019s \u201csafe\u201d to polish the various splines throughout the sequence. This also shows the level artists where they could polish and add further meshes or detail.\n\nOn the character side, a lot of important sequences are now in a state where the team can assess how the current hairstyles and costumes look on key actors. For example, Gary Oldman playing Admiral Bishop.\n\nFinally, they received a selection of special enemy ships and the ability to animate the M50\u2019s cockpit controls, so lifted a related cutaway to the next level.\n\nEngine\nIn August, the Physics team progressed with physical quantum travel. In their development stream, they now have a proper quantum grid (per solar system) and a quantum-obstacle component that registers an analytical representation of an obstacle. Some to-be-sorted issues aside, they can now make the equivalent of a blind quantum jump and drop out before hitting a moon along the travel path. They also continued to improve performance. Among other things, the destruction of static physical entities now runs time-sliced, while querying and processing parts of a physical entity during collision detection was improved. The physics system code cleanup continued too. For example, the physical world\u2019s time-step function now makes individual phases of the time step clearer.\n\nThe transition to the Gen12 renderer progressed throughout August. Shader activation was made thread-safe and no longer requires explicit synchronization via locks, volumetric fog volumes now run natively in Gen12, and the team refactored the use of several reflected shader parameters throughout render code and shaders. Tint support was added as well as scattering query support for forward-shaded objects, and several pieces of legacy code across the renderer code base were cleaned up.\n\nRegarding atmosphere and volumetric clouds, time was spent reworking the reprojection and filter chain to ultimately allow raymarching at lower resolutions for improved GPU performance. Improvements were made to the placement of samples for raymarching. This involved reprojecting results from previous frames, filtering and denoising cloud depth, and up-sampling inscatter and transmittance results to full resolution for various problematic view scenarios. These scenarios include orbital views, scenes with high depth complexity, and any scene with strong camera movement. This is all still work in progress, though the team hopes to roll it out shortly.\n\nWork was submitted to improve cloud shading by better blending between forward and backward scattering inside them, which is important for rendering the silver lining. Moreover, improvements were made to the look of cloud edges to give them a more volumetric feel. The stepping code for local cloud shadow details was reworked to allow more details for the same performance cost.\n\nOn the core-engine side, time was spent optimizing the low-level system. For example, various improvements were made to CigFunction, which serves as a vehicle to capture and pass C++ lambdas (in this particular case code and data for deferred asynchronous execution as a job). The next focus was optimizing the entity unloading stalls plaguing the PU. As a result, several entity-unload bottlenecks were rectified. Furthermore, the management of component events was optimized and code to create and destroy them improved.\n\nWork was also done to deliver multiple optimizations in the spatial culling system, which will be used for server meshing. Lastly, the entity component update scheduler was changed to allow more than one update per component pass to enable the more flexible use of components.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe SQ42 Feature team improved the scripting setup of the checkpoint tool. The initial implementation was completed, allowing Design to begin cleaning up their scripting. They\u2019re currently adding new functionality for Object Container Streaming to better control what\u2019s loaded in an area, which will allow them to enable it in more locations.\n\nTemporary UI and nodes were also prototyped to allow the player to dynamically change their character\u2019s gender, allowing Design to see how it fits into the game flow.\n\nGameplay Story\nAugust saw the Gameplay Story team update the helmet attachment method across all scenes in chapters 1 and 16. Further work is still required, but they\u2019re pleased to see the helmets beginning to function correctly. Chapter 4b received several updates: a complicated scene was completely mirrored, two scenes had superfluous footsteps removed, and several scenes in the mess hall were updated with a new, bigger bowl. Gameplay Story also assisted Cinematics with animations for the deck crew during the take-off sequence.\n\nThe biggest visual update of the month was to a key ship that now has a large, animated welding arm at the front. So, the team finalized several scenes with characters using and interacting with it.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nLast month, the Graphics team progressed with the render-to-texture system, which is receiving a mini-overhaul to cope with some new UI systems that make extensive use of 3D icons and compositing, such as the personal inventory. They enabled dynamically rendered textures to be cached to allow them to generate a large number of high-quality, super-sampled images with minimal cost. They also dynamically reduced texture resolution in out-of-focus areas to reallocate more resources to the rest of the game.\n\nFor Gen12, the shadow and real-time-probe systems were converted and will soon be activated by default. Streaming of real-time probes was also completed and enabled.\n\nAlongside this, they began adding support for refraction into the GPU particle system, matching the functionality of the CPU particle system and surpassing its visual quality. This marks the end of a long-standing goal to implement counterparts of all legacy mesh and sprite functionality in the new CPU particle system.\n\nThe VFX Programming team also continued with the fire hazard system. It now utilizes the new compressed physics render-mesh, which obtains accurate surface data without relying on lower-resolution and lower-accuracy physics proxy meshes. The way fire spreads through doorways was improved too.\n\nLevel Design\nThe Space\/Dogfight team continued the AI implementation for friendly, neutral, and hostile ships. This is an ongoing process alongside the AI Feature team, who are still in the process of developing features like quantum travel boost and scan pulse. They also worked closely with the other Design teams to ensure that the player experience is seamless. The Level Design team utilized extra resources to focus on the game flow and pacing details in various chapters. Social Design continued to implement all in-game scenes for review and sign-off.\n\nNarrative\nAs Art and Design continued to develop the game\u2019s various levels, Narrative began determining what kind of additional documentation was needed. This included a variety of locations requiring sign and branding updates along with proposals for the types of NPC populating the areas. Following Design completing a key set piece, the team generated scripts for additional narrative vignettes and wildlines that better reflect the current game flow and story moments. As with other sequences, Narrative will work with Audio to generate placeholder recordings for Design to implement in the level. Once in place, Narrative will iterate on and refine the lines to ensure they have everything they need before organizing a capture session with final performances.\n\nThe team also began initial discussions into their next mo-cap shoot, which included completing some of the work that was postponed due to the pandemic.\n\nQA\nQA continued to provide Cinematics with level recordings for review and supported the dev teams by testing changes and investigating issues. Support was also given to the AI team, testing their various implementations throughout the campaign. Video recordings were captured and reviewed weekly to ensure that new behaviors and fixes are in line with the intended direction.\n\nVFX\nLast month, VFX focusing on a significant space battle scene that features a mixture of cinematic and in-game vehicle destruction along with various cinematic background sequences. The team are putting several techniques and workflow processes to use that they learned while working on a huge destruction sequence in Theaters of War, which proved to be a valuable testbed for Squadron 42 as well as the PU. These techniques include combining bespoke, offline simulations done in third-party software, such as Houdini, with in-engine destruction and particle effects. Work also commenced on a fire propagation sequence that takes place within a key interior location.\n\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026","de_DE":"Dies ist ein Querverweis auf den Bericht, der k\u00fcrzlich \u00fcber den monatlichen Newsletter von Squadron 42 verschickt wurde. Wir ver\u00f6ffentlichen ihn ein zweites Mal als Comm-Link, damit die Community leichter darauf zur\u00fcckgreifen kann.\nTO: STAFFEL 42 REKRUTEN\nSUBJ: ENTWICKLUNG UPDATE 09:01:2021\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Geschwader 42 rekrutiert.\n\nWillkommen zum Entwicklungsbericht f\u00fcr Squadron 42 im August. Anbei findest du Details zu den neuesten Fortschritten in der Kampagne, darunter Updates f\u00fcr wichtige Filmsequenzen, neue Fahrzeuge und Entwicklungen an der Engine, die dem gesamten Projekt zugute kommen werden.\n\nVielen Dank f\u00fcr eure anhaltende Unterst\u00fctzung von Squadron 42.\n\nMit freundlichen Gr\u00fc\u00dfen,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Inhalt)\n\nDen ganzen August \u00fcber hat AI Content das Level Design unterst\u00fctzt, indem es ein neues \"Arbeiter\"-Verhalten erstellt hat. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es den Designern, den verschiedenen KI-Archetypen Eigenschaften zuzuweisen und zu verfeinern, welche Usables sie verwenden, z. B. Sitzen, Anlehnen, Inspizieren und Kochen. Das Team \u00e4nderte verschiedene Usables, um das erste Reaktionssystem zu nutzen, mit dem NSCs w\u00e4hrend der Animationen aus den Usables ausbrechen k\u00f6nnen. Wenn ein NSC zum Beispiel an einer Konsole tippt und einen Schuss h\u00f6rt oder einen Feind sieht, h\u00f6rt er auf zu tippen und reagiert entsprechend. Dies wurde f\u00fcr die stehende und sitzende Konsole, Anlehnungen, Sitze, Treppen, Gel\u00e4nder, Suchpunkte, Angriffspunkte und vieles mehr abgeschlossen. Zurzeit arbeiten sie mit den Engine- und Animationsteams zusammen, um die Grafik zu verbessern.\n\n\n\nKI (Feature)\n\nDie KI-Funktionen arbeiteten weiter an den Kampfszenarien. Im August verbesserten sie die visuelle Wahrnehmung, indem sie die Sichtfeldform anpassten und den Designern mehr Informationen zur Verf\u00fcgung stellten, an denen sie feilen konnten. Ziel ist es, einen Stealth-Kampfmechanismus aus der Spielerperspektive zu schaffen, der anpassbare Wahrnehmungszeiten und Sichtfelder erfordert. Auch das taktische Punktesystem wurde um neue Funktionen erweitert. Dadurch kann es bei der Auswahl von m\u00f6glichen Verlagerungspunkten oder Deckungsorten w\u00e4hrend des Kampfes nicht nur die direkte Entfernung, sondern auch die Wegstrecke berechnen. NSCs wurden au\u00dferdem so eingerichtet, dass sie Raketent\u00fcrme benutzen k\u00f6nnen.\n\n\n\nKI (Technik)\n\nDie KI-Techniker haben das Pfadfindersystem so verbessert, dass es mit Planeten-Navigationsmesh-Kacheln funktioniert, so dass sie NSCs auf Planeten platzieren und von einem Ort zum anderen bewegen k\u00f6nnen. Au\u00dferdem haben sie mit der Arbeit begonnen, um das Planetennavigationsnetz automatisch anhand der N\u00e4he des Spielers zu erstellen. Eine Funktion, die diesen Monat eingef\u00fchrt wurde, erm\u00f6glicht es dem Spieler, eine Formation von KI-Schiffen anzuf\u00fchren. Diese Funktion wurde urspr\u00fcnglich f\u00fcr Squadron 42 angefordert, sollte aber in Zukunft auch im PU verf\u00fcgbar sein.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde das System zur Kollisionsvermeidung verbessert, u. a. durch physikalische Optimierungen bei der Abfrage von Hindernissen und eine kleine Umstrukturierung der zugeh\u00f6rigen Daten.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden die KI-Entwurfspfade und die Art und Weise, wie die NSCs ihnen folgen, erheblich verbessert. Da die Konstruktionspfade recht komplex sein k\u00f6nnen und mehrere Verzweigungen aufweisen, wurden sie so aktualisiert, dass die NSCs ihnen von jedem beliebigen Startpunkt aus folgen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAuch die Arbeit am Subsumption-Editor wurde fortgesetzt, diesmal mit der Fertigstellung der Multi-Graph-Ansicht.\n\n\n\nAnimation\n\nDas Animationsteam machte Fortschritte bei der Schwerelosigkeit, dem Vanduul-Kampf, der Selbstheilung mit der medizinischen Waffe und verschiedenen Story-Szenen. Das Motion-Capture-Team unterst\u00fctzte einen Story-Dreh, w\u00e4hrend das Team f\u00fcr die Gesichtsanimation die Animationen f\u00fcr die neu verbesserten Kopfmodelle fertigstellte. F\u00fcr das Gameplay der Levels arbeitete das KI-Team an einer nutzbaren Figur, die in einer der Level-Umgebungen existiert, um ihr Leben und einen Story-Kontext zu verleihen und eine M\u00f6glichkeit zum Stealth-Gameplay zu bieten. Au\u00dferdem unterst\u00fctzte das Team die Tech-Animation dabei, die Interaktion mit der Spielerkleidung greifbarer zu machen, und plante ein bevorstehendes Vanduul-Mo-Cap-Shooting.\n\n\n\nKunst (Charaktere)\n\nCharacter Art hat die laufenden Polier- und Aktualisierungsdurchg\u00e4nge f\u00fcr die Charakterk\u00f6pfe fortgesetzt, die alle die neue Augenanordnung und den im letzten Monat entwickelten Haut-Shader enthalten. Au\u00dferdem wurden viele der Crew-Outfits und Offiziersuniformen aktualisiert, um sie auf das aktuelle Qualit\u00e4tsniveau zu heben. Tech Design aktualisierte auch die Zoos und ging systematisch Haare, Haut und DNA f\u00fcr das gesamte Projekt durch.\n\n\n\nKunst (Umwelt)\n\nEnvironment Art arbeitete an den Schaupl\u00e4tzen f\u00fcr den viertelj\u00e4hrlichen Meilenstein und unterst\u00fctzte das Flight Design- und das Cinematic-Team dabei, Raumlandschaften und Innenr\u00e4ume im ersten Kapitel des Spiels zum Leben zu erwecken. \"Wir sind sehr stolz auf die Fortschritte, die das Team in den letzten Monaten gemacht hat, und wir freuen uns sehr darauf, die Umgebungen von Squadron 42 zu gestalten\". - Environment Art Team\n\nAn anderer Stelle lag der Fokus auf der Archon-Station und den Kapiteln 7, 15 und 19.\n\n\n\nCinematics\n\nZu Beginn des Monats schloss das Cinematics-Team die verbleibenden Aufgaben an einer wichtigen Sequenz f\u00fcr den Meilenstein Q2 ab. In der Sequenz geht es um Cydnus Bergbauzecken, und das Team stellte sicher, dass der Schnitt die Animation der Gelenkbeine richtig hervorhebt, damit die dazugeh\u00f6rigen Teams das Fahrzeug richtig abschlie\u00dfen k\u00f6nnen. F\u00fcr den Meilenstein Q3 hat das Team fr\u00fchere Sequenzen im Er\u00f6ffnungskapitel des Spiels \u00fcberarbeitet, um sie der endg\u00fcltigen Auslieferung einen Schritt n\u00e4her zu bringen. Sie k\u00f6nnen jetzt alle Br\u00fcckenkonsolen und St\u00fchle auf dem bengalischen Transporter animieren, der bei der letzten Arbeit an wichtigen Sequenzen an diesem Ort noch nicht eingerichtet war. Der letzte Durchgang umfasste also neben den Motion-Capture-Animationen auch richtige Stuhl-, Bildschirm-, Konsolen-, Stick- und Gashebel-Animationen.\n\n\"Wie in anderen Sci-Fi-Universen \u00fcblich, gibt es auf den Br\u00fcckensitzen nat\u00fcrlich keine Sicherheitsgurte, und wenn das Schiff getroffen wird, wackelt und sch\u00fcttelt es ganz sch\u00f6n. - Cinematics Team\n\nDie Br\u00fccke der Bengal ist riesig, allein im Bereich um den Kapit\u00e4n sitzen acht Offiziere, also hat das Team viel Zeit damit verbracht, den gesamten Bereich mit den richtigen Animationen und dem richtigen Schliff zu versehen. Zum Beispiel schauen die Besatzungsmitglieder richtig auf Ereignisse oder Charaktere.\n\nCinematics hat auch das Blockout f\u00fcr ein \"Flucht\"-Level verbessert, das sich in einem Zustand befindet, in dem es \"sicher\" ist, die verschiedenen Splines in der Sequenz zu polieren. Das zeigt den Levelk\u00fcnstlern auch, wo sie noch weitere Meshes oder Details hinzuf\u00fcgen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAuf der Charakterseite sind viele wichtige Sequenzen jetzt in einem Zustand, in dem das Team beurteilen kann, wie die aktuellen Frisuren und Kost\u00fcme an den Hauptdarstellern aussehen. Zum Beispiel Gary Oldman als Admiral Bishop.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich erhielten sie eine Auswahl spezieller feindlicher Schiffe und die M\u00f6glichkeit, die Cockpit-Bedienelemente des M50 zu animieren, so dass ein damit verbundener Cutaway auf die n\u00e4chste Stufe gehoben wurde.\n\n\n\nMotor\n\nIm August hat das Physikteam Fortschritte bei der physikalischen Quantenreise gemacht. In ihrem Entwicklungsstrom haben sie jetzt ein richtiges Quantengitter (pro Sonnensystem) und eine Quanten-Hindernis-Komponente, die eine analytische Darstellung eines Hindernisses registriert. Abgesehen von einigen noch zu kl\u00e4renden Problemen k\u00f6nnen sie jetzt das \u00c4quivalent eines blinden Quantensprungs machen und aussteigen, bevor sie auf einen Mond auf dem Reisepfad treffen. Sie haben auch die Leistung weiter verbessert. Unter anderem l\u00e4uft die Zerst\u00f6rung von statischen physikalischen Objekten jetzt zeitlich gestaffelt ab, w\u00e4hrend die Abfrage und Verarbeitung von Teilen eines physikalischen Objekts w\u00e4hrend der Kollisionserkennung verbessert wurde. Auch der Code des Physiksystems wurde weiter aufger\u00e4umt. Zum Beispiel macht die Zeitschrittfunktion der physischen Welt jetzt die einzelnen Phasen des Zeitschritts deutlicher.\n\nDie Umstellung auf den Gen12-Renderer wurde im August vorangetrieben. Die Shader-Aktivierung wurde thread-sicher gemacht und erfordert nun keine explizite Synchronisierung \u00fcber Sperren mehr, volumetrische Nebelvolumina laufen jetzt nativ in Gen12 und das Team hat die Verwendung mehrerer reflektierter Shader-Parameter im gesamten Rendercode und in den Shadern \u00fcberarbeitet. Au\u00dferdem wurde die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr T\u00f6nungen und Streuungsabfragen f\u00fcr vorw\u00e4rts schattierte Objekte hinzugef\u00fcgt und einige alte Codebestandteile in der Renderer-Codebasis wurden bereinigt.\n\nBei der Atmosph\u00e4re und den volumetrischen Wolken wurde die Reprojektion und die Filterkette \u00fcberarbeitet, um das Raymarching bei niedrigeren Aufl\u00f6sungen zu erm\u00f6glichen und so die GPU-Leistung zu verbessern. Die Platzierung von Samples f\u00fcr das Raymarching wurde verbessert. Dazu geh\u00f6rten die Reprojektion von Ergebnissen aus fr\u00fcheren Frames, die Filterung und Entrauschung der Wolkentiefe und das Upsampling von Inscatter- und Transmittance-Ergebnissen auf die volle Aufl\u00f6sung f\u00fcr verschiedene problematische Ansichtsszenarien. Zu diesen Szenarien geh\u00f6ren Orbitalansichten, Szenen mit hoher Tiefenkomplexit\u00e4t und alle Szenen mit starken Kamerabewegungen. Das Team hofft jedoch, dass es bald auf den Markt kommen wird.\n\nEs wurde daran gearbeitet, die Schattierung von Wolken zu verbessern, indem man besser zwischen vorw\u00e4rts- und r\u00fcckw\u00e4rtsgerichteter Streuung in ihnen \u00fcberblendet, was f\u00fcr die Darstellung des Silberstreifens wichtig ist. Au\u00dferdem wurde das Aussehen der Wolkenr\u00e4nder verbessert, um ihnen ein volumetrischeres Gef\u00fchl zu geben. Der Stepping-Code f\u00fcr lokale Wolkenschattendetails wurde \u00fcberarbeitet, um mehr Details bei gleichem Leistungsaufwand zu erm\u00f6glichen.\n\nAuf der Seite der Core-Engine wurde Zeit auf die Optimierung des Low-Level-Systems verwendet. So wurden zum Beispiel verschiedene Verbesserungen an CigFunction vorgenommen, das als Vehikel f\u00fcr die Erfassung und Weitergabe von C++-Lambdas dient (in diesem speziellen Fall Code und Daten f\u00fcr die zeitversetzte asynchrone Ausf\u00fchrung als Job). Der n\u00e4chste Schwerpunkt war die Optimierung des Entladens von Entit\u00e4ten, das die PU plagt. Dadurch wurden mehrere Engp\u00e4sse beim Entladen von Entit\u00e4ten beseitigt. Au\u00dferdem wurde die Verwaltung von Komponentenereignissen optimiert und der Code f\u00fcr ihre Erstellung und Zerst\u00f6rung verbessert.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden mehrere Optimierungen im System f\u00fcr das r\u00e4umliche Culling vorgenommen, das f\u00fcr das Server-Meshing verwendet wird. Schlie\u00dflich wurde der Zeitplan f\u00fcr die Aktualisierung der Entit\u00e4tskomponenten ge\u00e4ndert, um mehr als eine Aktualisierung pro Komponentendurchlauf zu erm\u00f6glichen und so eine flexiblere Nutzung der Komponenten zu erm\u00f6glichen.\n\n\n\nFunktionen (Gameplay)\n\nDas SQ42-Feature-Team hat die Skripterstellung f\u00fcr das Checkpoint-Tool verbessert. Die anf\u00e4ngliche Implementierung wurde abgeschlossen, so dass das Design-Team mit der Bereinigung der Skripte beginnen konnte. Sie f\u00fcgen derzeit neue Funktionen f\u00fcr das Objekt-Container-Streaming hinzu, um besser kontrollieren zu k\u00f6nnen, was in einem Gebiet geladen wird, so dass es an mehr Stellen aktiviert werden kann.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde ein Prototyp f\u00fcr eine tempor\u00e4re Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che und Knoten erstellt, die es dem Spieler erm\u00f6glichen, das Geschlecht seines Charakters dynamisch zu \u00e4ndern, damit Design sehen kann, wie das in den Spielfluss passt.\n\n\n\nGameplay Story\n\nIm August hat das Gameplay Story Team die Helmbefestigung in allen Szenen der Kapitel 1 und 16 aktualisiert. Es sind noch weitere Arbeiten n\u00f6tig, aber sie freuen sich, dass die Helme jetzt richtig funktionieren. Kapitel 4b erhielt mehrere Updates: Eine komplizierte Szene wurde komplett gespiegelt, zwei Szenen wurden von \u00fcberfl\u00fcssigen Schritten befreit und mehrere Szenen in der Kantine wurden mit einer neuen, gr\u00f6\u00dferen Sch\u00fcssel aktualisiert. Gameplay Story unterst\u00fctzte auch die Cinematics mit Animationen f\u00fcr die Deckcrew w\u00e4hrend der Startsequenz.\n\nDas gr\u00f6\u00dfte visuelle Update des Monats betraf ein wichtiges Schiff, das jetzt einen gro\u00dfen, animierten Schwei\u00dfarm an der Vorderseite hat. Das Team hat mehrere Szenen fertiggestellt, in denen die Charaktere ihn benutzen und mit ihm interagieren.\n\n\n\nGrafik & VFX-Programmierung\n\nIm letzten Monat hat das Grafikteam das Render-to-Texture-System weiterentwickelt, das eine kleine \u00dcberarbeitung erf\u00e4hrt, um mit einigen neuen UI-Systemen zurechtzukommen, die ausgiebig von 3D-Symbolen und Compositing Gebrauch machen, wie zum Beispiel das pers\u00f6nliche Inventar. Sie erm\u00f6glichten es, dynamisch gerenderte Texturen zwischenzuspeichern, damit sie eine gro\u00dfe Anzahl hochwertiger, super-abgetasteter Bilder mit minimalen Kosten erzeugen k\u00f6nnen. Au\u00dferdem haben sie die Texturaufl\u00f6sung in unscharfen Bereichen dynamisch reduziert, um mehr Ressourcen f\u00fcr den Rest des Spiels zu verwenden.\n\nF\u00fcr Gen12 wurden die Schatten- und Echtzeit-Sondensysteme umgestellt und werden bald standardm\u00e4\u00dfig aktiviert sein. Das Streaming von Echtzeitsonden wurde ebenfalls fertiggestellt und aktiviert.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde damit begonnen, das GPU-Partikel-System mit Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Brechung auszustatten, um die Funktionalit\u00e4t des CPU-Partikel-Systems zu erreichen und dessen visuelle Qualit\u00e4t zu \u00fcbertreffen. Damit wurde ein langj\u00e4hriges Ziel erreicht: die Implementierung der Gegenst\u00fccke aller alten Mesh- und Sprite-Funktionen in das neue CPU-Partikel-System.\n\nDas VFX-Programmierungsteam hat auch das Feuergefahrensystem weiterentwickelt. Es nutzt jetzt das neue komprimierte Physik-Rendermesh, das genaue Oberfl\u00e4chendaten erh\u00e4lt, ohne auf weniger aufgel\u00f6ste und ungenaue Physik-Proxy-Meshes angewiesen zu sein. Auch die Art und Weise, wie sich das Feuer durch T\u00fcr\u00f6ffnungen ausbreitet, wurde verbessert.\n\n\n\nLevel Design\n\nDas Space\/Dogfight-Team hat die Implementierung der KI f\u00fcr freundliche, neutrale und feindliche Schiffe fortgesetzt. Dies ist ein fortlaufender Prozess, an dem auch das Team f\u00fcr die KI-Features beteiligt ist, das immer noch an der Entwicklung von Funktionen wie dem Quantenreise-Boost und dem Scan-Puls arbeitet. Sie arbeiteten auch eng mit den anderen Design-Teams zusammen, um sicherzustellen, dass das Spielerlebnis nahtlos ist. Das Level Design Team hat zus\u00e4tzliche Ressourcen eingesetzt, um sich auf den Spielfluss und das Tempo in den verschiedenen Kapiteln zu konzentrieren. Das Social Design-Team implementierte weiterhin alle Spielszenen zur \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung und Freigabe.\n\n\n\nNarrative\n\nW\u00e4hrend Art und Design mit der Entwicklung der verschiedenen Levels des Spiels fortfuhren, begann Narrative zu bestimmen, welche Art von zus\u00e4tzlicher Dokumentation ben\u00f6tigt wurde. Dazu geh\u00f6rten eine Reihe von Orten, die eine Aktualisierung der Beschilderung und des Brandings erforderten, sowie Vorschl\u00e4ge f\u00fcr die Arten von NSC, die die Gebiete bev\u00f6lkern. Nach der Fertigstellung eines wichtigen Schauplatzes erstellte das Team Skripte f\u00fcr zus\u00e4tzliche erz\u00e4hlerische Vignetten und Wildlines, die den aktuellen Spielfluss und die Story-Momente besser widerspiegeln. Wie bei anderen Sequenzen auch, wird Narrative mit Audio zusammenarbeiten, um Platzhalter-Aufnahmen zu erstellen, die das Design in den Level einbauen kann. Danach wird Narrative die Zeilen \u00fcberarbeiten und verfeinern, um sicherzustellen, dass sie alles haben, was sie brauchen, bevor sie eine Aufnahmesitzung mit endg\u00fcltigen Performances organisieren.\n\nDas Team begann auch mit ersten Gespr\u00e4chen \u00fcber den n\u00e4chsten Mo-Cap-Dreh, bei dem einige der Arbeiten, die aufgrund der Pandemie verschoben wurden, abgeschlossen werden sollen.\n\n\n\nQA\n\nDie QA versorgte Cinematics weiterhin mit Level-Aufnahmen zur \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung und unterst\u00fctzte die Entwicklerteams, indem sie \u00c4nderungen testete und Probleme untersuchte. Auch das KI-Team wurde unterst\u00fctzt, indem es die verschiedenen Implementierungen w\u00e4hrend der Kampagne testete. Die Videoaufnahmen wurden w\u00f6chentlich aufgezeichnet und \u00fcberpr\u00fcft, um sicherzustellen, dass neue Verhaltensweisen und Fehlerbehebungen mit der beabsichtigten Richtung \u00fcbereinstimmen.\n\n\n\nVFX\nIm letzten Monat konzentrierten sich die VFX auf eine bedeutende Weltraumschlachtszene, die eine Mischung aus filmischer und spielinterner Fahrzeugzerst\u00f6rung sowie verschiedene filmische Hintergrundsequenzen beinhaltet. Das Team setzt verschiedene Techniken und Arbeitsabl\u00e4ufe ein, die es bei der Arbeit an einer gro\u00dfen Zerst\u00f6rungssequenz in Theaters of War gelernt hat, die sich sowohl f\u00fcr Squadron 42 als auch f\u00fcr die PU als wertvolle Testumgebung erwiesen hat. Zu diesen Techniken geh\u00f6rt die Kombination von ma\u00dfgeschneiderten Offline-Simulationen in Software von Drittanbietern, wie z. B. Houdini, mit Zerst\u00f6rungs- und Partikeleffekten in der Maschine. Au\u00dferdem wurde mit der Arbeit an einer Brandausbreitungssequenz begonnen, die an einem wichtigen Ort im Inneren des Flugzeugs stattfindet.\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.\nTO: SQUADRON 42 RECRUITS\nSUBJ: DEVELOPMENT UPDATE 09:01:2021\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 recruits.\n\nWelcome to August\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you\u2019ll find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including updates to key cinematics, additions to essential vehicles, and engine developments that will benefit the whole project.\n\nThank you for you continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS AI (Content)\nThroughout August, AI Content supported Level Design by creating a new \u2018worker\u2019 behavior. This enables the designers to apply traits to the various AI archetypes, refining which usables they use, such as sitting, leaning, inspecting, and cooking. The team modified various usables to utilize the first reaction system, which allows NPCs to break out of usables during animations. For example, if an NPC is typing at a console and hears a gunshot or sees an enemy, they will stop typing and react appropriately. This was completed for the standing and sitting console, leans, seats, stairs, railings, search spots, attack spots, and more. They\u2019re currently working with the Engine and Animation teams to improve the visuals.\n\nAI (Feature)\nAI Features continued to work on combat scenarios. Throughout August, they improved visual perception by adjusting the field-of-view form and exposing more information for the designers to tweak. The aim of this is to create a stealth combat mechanism from the player\u2019s perspective, which requires adjustable perception timings and field of view. New functionality was also added to the tactical point system. This enables it to compute path distances when selecting viable relocation points or cover locations during combat, rather than just direct distance. NPCs were also set up to use missile turrets.\n\nAI (Tech)\nAI Tech improved the pathfinder system to work with planetary navigation mesh tiles, enabling them to place NPCs on planets and move them from one location to another. They also started the work for generating planet navigation mesh automatically based on a player\u2019s proximity. One feature delivered this month allows the player to lead a formation of AI ships. This was initially requested for Squadron 42 but should be available in the PU in the future.\n\nImprovements were also made to the collision avoidance system, including physics optimizations for obstacle queries and a small restructure of related data.\n\nSignificant effort was also directed at improving AI design paths and how NPCs follow them. As the design paths can be quite complex with multiple branches, they were updated to allow NPCs to follow them from any starting place.\n\nWork also continued on the Subsumption editor, this time completing the multi-graph view.\n\nAnimation\nThe Animation team progressed with zero-g traversal, Vanduul combat, medical-gun self-healing, and various story scenes. The Motion-Capture team supported a story shoot, while the Facial Animation team finalized animations on the newly improved head models. For level gameplay, the AI team worked on a useable that exists in one of the level environments to give it life, story context, and provide an opportunity for stealth gameplay. They also supported Tech Animation in pursuit of a more tactile feel to interacting with player outfits, and planned an upcoming Vanduul mo-cap shoot.\n\nArt (Characters)\nCharacter Art continued with their ongoing polish and update passes for character heads, all of which incorporated the new eye assembly and skin shader developed last month. They also updated many of the crew outfits and officer uniforms to elevate them to the current quality level. Tech Design also updated their zoos, systematically going through hair, skin, and DNA for the entire project.\n\nArt (Environment)\nEnvironment Art worked on locations for the quarterly milestone, assisting the Flight Design and Cinematic teams in bringing spacescapes and internal spaces to life in the game\u2019s opening chapter. \u201cWe\u2019ve been super proud of the team\u2019s progress over the past few months and we are extremely excited moving forward in bringing Squadron 42\u2019s environments together.\u201d \u2013 Environment Art Team\n\nElsewhere, focus was on Archon station and chapters 7, 15, and 19.\n\nCinematics\nAt the beginning of the month, Cinematics closed out the remaining tasks on a significant sequence for the Q2 milestone. The sequence features Cydnus mining ticks, and the team ensured the cutaway properly highlights the animation of the articulated legs to help the related teams properly close out the vehicle. For the Q3 milestone, the team revisited earlier sequences in the game\u2019s opening chapter to bring them one step closer to final delivery. They can now animate all the bridge consoles and chairs on the Bengal carrier, which wasn\u2019t set up when they last worked on major sequences in that location. So, their most recent pass included proper chair, screen, console, stick, and throttle animations alongside the motion-captured animations.\n\n\u201cIn tradition with other sci-fi universes, there are of course no seat belts on those bridge seats, so when the ship gets hit, we have some nice wiggling and shaking going on.\u201d \u2013 Cinematics Team\n\nThe Bengal\u2019s bridge is huge, with the area around the captain alone having eight seated officers, so the team spent time ensuring the whole area had proper animations and polish. For example, crew members properly looking at events or characters.\n\nCinematics also improved the blockout for an \u2018escape\u2019 level, which is in a state where it\u2019s \u201csafe\u201d to polish the various splines throughout the sequence. This also shows the level artists where they could polish and add further meshes or detail.\n\nOn the character side, a lot of important sequences are now in a state where the team can assess how the current hairstyles and costumes look on key actors. For example, Gary Oldman playing Admiral Bishop.\n\nFinally, they received a selection of special enemy ships and the ability to animate the M50\u2019s cockpit controls, so lifted a related cutaway to the next level.\n\nEngine\nIn August, the Physics team progressed with physical quantum travel. In their development stream, they now have a proper quantum grid (per solar system) and a quantum-obstacle component that registers an analytical representation of an obstacle. Some to-be-sorted issues aside, they can now make the equivalent of a blind quantum jump and drop out before hitting a moon along the travel path. They also continued to improve performance. Among other things, the destruction of static physical entities now runs time-sliced, while querying and processing parts of a physical entity during collision detection was improved. The physics system code cleanup continued too. For example, the physical world\u2019s time-step function now makes individual phases of the time step clearer.\n\nThe transition to the Gen12 renderer progressed throughout August. Shader activation was made thread-safe and no longer requires explicit synchronization via locks, volumetric fog volumes now run natively in Gen12, and the team refactored the use of several reflected shader parameters throughout render code and shaders. Tint support was added as well as scattering query support for forward-shaded objects, and several pieces of legacy code across the renderer code base were cleaned up.\n\nRegarding atmosphere and volumetric clouds, time was spent reworking the reprojection and filter chain to ultimately allow raymarching at lower resolutions for improved GPU performance. Improvements were made to the placement of samples for raymarching. This involved reprojecting results from previous frames, filtering and denoising cloud depth, and up-sampling inscatter and transmittance results to full resolution for various problematic view scenarios. These scenarios include orbital views, scenes with high depth complexity, and any scene with strong camera movement. This is all still work in progress, though the team hopes to roll it out shortly.\n\nWork was submitted to improve cloud shading by better blending between forward and backward scattering inside them, which is important for rendering the silver lining. Moreover, improvements were made to the look of cloud edges to give them a more volumetric feel. The stepping code for local cloud shadow details was reworked to allow more details for the same performance cost.\n\nOn the core-engine side, time was spent optimizing the low-level system. For example, various improvements were made to CigFunction, which serves as a vehicle to capture and pass C++ lambdas (in this particular case code and data for deferred asynchronous execution as a job). The next focus was optimizing the entity unloading stalls plaguing the PU. As a result, several entity-unload bottlenecks were rectified. Furthermore, the management of component events was optimized and code to create and destroy them improved.\n\nWork was also done to deliver multiple optimizations in the spatial culling system, which will be used for server meshing. Lastly, the entity component update scheduler was changed to allow more than one update per component pass to enable the more flexible use of components.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe SQ42 Feature team improved the scripting setup of the checkpoint tool. The initial implementation was completed, allowing Design to begin cleaning up their scripting. They\u2019re currently adding new functionality for Object Container Streaming to better control what\u2019s loaded in an area, which will allow them to enable it in more locations.\n\nTemporary UI and nodes were also prototyped to allow the player to dynamically change their character\u2019s gender, allowing Design to see how it fits into the game flow.\n\nGameplay Story\nAugust saw the Gameplay Story team update the helmet attachment method across all scenes in chapters 1 and 16. Further work is still required, but they\u2019re pleased to see the helmets beginning to function correctly. Chapter 4b received several updates: a complicated scene was completely mirrored, two scenes had superfluous footsteps removed, and several scenes in the mess hall were updated with a new, bigger bowl. Gameplay Story also assisted Cinematics with animations for the deck crew during the take-off sequence.\n\nThe biggest visual update of the month was to a key ship that now has a large, animated welding arm at the front. So, the team finalized several scenes with characters using and interacting with it.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nLast month, the Graphics team progressed with the render-to-texture system, which is receiving a mini-overhaul to cope with some new UI systems that make extensive use of 3D icons and compositing, such as the personal inventory. They enabled dynamically rendered textures to be cached to allow them to generate a large number of high-quality, super-sampled images with minimal cost. They also dynamically reduced texture resolution in out-of-focus areas to reallocate more resources to the rest of the game.\n\nFor Gen12, the shadow and real-time-probe systems were converted and will soon be activated by default. Streaming of real-time probes was also completed and enabled.\n\nAlongside this, they began adding support for refraction into the GPU particle system, matching the functionality of the CPU particle system and surpassing its visual quality. This marks the end of a long-standing goal to implement counterparts of all legacy mesh and sprite functionality in the new CPU particle system.\n\nThe VFX Programming team also continued with the fire hazard system. It now utilizes the new compressed physics render-mesh, which obtains accurate surface data without relying on lower-resolution and lower-accuracy physics proxy meshes. The way fire spreads through doorways was improved too.\n\nLevel Design\nThe Space\/Dogfight team continued the AI implementation for friendly, neutral, and hostile ships. This is an ongoing process alongside the AI Feature team, who are still in the process of developing features like quantum travel boost and scan pulse. They also worked closely with the other Design teams to ensure that the player experience is seamless. The Level Design team utilized extra resources to focus on the game flow and pacing details in various chapters. Social Design continued to implement all in-game scenes for review and sign-off.\n\nNarrative\nAs Art and Design continued to develop the game\u2019s various levels, Narrative began determining what kind of additional documentation was needed. This included a variety of locations requiring sign and branding updates along with proposals for the types of NPC populating the areas. Following Design completing a key set piece, the team generated scripts for additional narrative vignettes and wildlines that better reflect the current game flow and story moments. As with other sequences, Narrative will work with Audio to generate placeholder recordings for Design to implement in the level. Once in place, Narrative will iterate on and refine the lines to ensure they have everything they need before organizing a capture session with final performances.\n\nThe team also began initial discussions into their next mo-cap shoot, which included completing some of the work that was postponed due to the pandemic.\n\nQA\nQA continued to provide Cinematics with level recordings for review and supported the dev teams by testing changes and investigating issues. Support was also given to the AI team, testing their various implementations throughout the campaign. Video recordings were captured and reviewed weekly to ensure that new behaviors and fixes are in line with the intended direction.\n\nVFX\nLast month, VFX focusing on a significant space battle scene that features a mixture of cinematic and in-game vehicle destruction along with various cinematic background sequences. The team are putting several techniques and workflow processes to use that they learned while working on a huge destruction sequence in Theaters of War, which proved to be a valuable testbed for Squadron 42 as well as the PU. These techniques include combining bespoke, offline simulations done in third-party software, such as Houdini, with in-engine destruction and particle effects. Work also commenced on a fire propagation sequence that takes place within a key interior location.\n\nWE\u2019LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH\u2026"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":10,"created_at":"2021-09-09T00:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"4 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 19:48:18","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":18299,"next_id":18301}}