{"data":{"id":18580,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: February 2022","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/18580-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-February-2022","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/18580","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/18580","channel":"Feedback","category":"Undefined","series":"None","images":[{"id":26651,"name":"STARCITIZEN_WHITE.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/y1f0boj8fak5rr\/source\/STARCITIZEN_WHITE.png","alt":"","size":73278,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2021-02-03T06:54:29+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/26651","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/26651\/similar"}],"images_count":1,"translations":{"en_EN":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report\nFebruary 2022\nThis 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.\n\nTO: SQUADRON 42 RECRUITS\n\nSUBJ: DEVELOPMENT UPDATE 03:02:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits\n\nWelcome to February\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including updates to deck crew behaviors, character customizer design, and the new Starmap.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI Content Team\nAI Content began closing down the first pass on the coffee-shop vendor. This is an example of the existing bartender behavior (with minor extensions) being used to deliver different shop experiences. In this instance, additional content was only required on the art, animation, and level-design sides. The team also added template particle effects, set up VFX animation triggers, and added the counter terminal to allow some more idle activity for the vendor. They\u2019re currently devising additional coffee shop layouts and creating wildlines.\n\nFor the security behavior, the team added new wildlines, fixed the transition between \u2018at ease' and \u2018to attention,\u2019 and playtested guard reactions to players moving around or loitering in front of restricted locations.\n\nThe vending-machine usable used in the eat-and-drink NPC flow progressed throughout February. This behavior allows certain NPCs to try to steal items from the usable and get frustrated if their attempt doesn\u2019t succeed. The team also added malfunctions that cause items to not be delivered. Vending machines currently have a placeholder Building Blocks UI that changes whether the NPC is buying or attempting to steal.\n\nSpecifically for SQ42, the team focused on implementing deck crew behaviors. Last month, they integrated multiple roles, set up the right usables for each individual, fixed the air-traffic-controller behavior to correctly work with the landing officers, and started adding wildlines.\n\nFor the medical and worker behaviors, the team began creating proper documentation to allow the Location teams to replicate the respawn vignette in multiple locations around the game.\n\nFinally for Content, Animations were polished for the firing range animations.\n\nAI Feature Team\nThe AI Feature team continued to iterate on Vanduul combat, balancing and tweaking functionality so that it works together. For example, multiple NPCs attacking the player and friendly AI targets. The aim is to ensure players are challenged but not overwhelmed if they follow the correct tactics. With this in mind, they improved some existing behaviors, including adding a 180-degree back attack when the player moves behind the Vanduul. They also further developed force reactions from different attacks and improved the look of the Vanduul stagger and dodging animations.\n\nOn the Human combat side, the team finalized the basic skeleton of NPCs reacting to finding a dead body. This includes functionality to notify friendly AI so they can coordinate and hunt down the player. They also worked closely with Design to implement a new combat behavior design with support for different tactics.\n\nThe firing range and weapons training behaviors are approaching completion, with the team creating feature testmaps for the automated testing system, enabling them to maintain functionality as they move onto new areas of code.\n\nAI Tech Team\nAI Tech progressed with the planetary navigation mesh and navigation links discussed in last month\u2019s report.\n\nNavigation links were also extended to include an easier way to debug additional markers, enabling the team to identify locations in space that can align specific animations to the environments. For example, when an NPC needs to jump to a rail to climb up to a higher location. In this instance, the character\u2019s hand must perfectly align with the rail asset while using motion-warp technology to account for the required height.\n\nOn the Subsumption side, the team added interesting functionalities to allow mission logic to branch its flow based on what\u2019s happening systemically in the world. They implemented a solution where mission logic can use NPC and EntityTracker variables to \u201clisten\u201d to broadcasted systemic events from specific agents. In support of this, systemic behaviors can now expose the information that they want missions or any other \u201clistener\u201d to be notified of.\n\nDynamic conversations progressed last month too, with the team exposing functionalities for activities to mark up areas where NPCs can talk to each other. When in usables that contain multiple characters, routing functionality retrieves all possible participants and then dynamically spawns conversations relevant to the available characters. NPC trolley push\/pull was also updated - the Subsumption interface now allows the explicit \u2018Push\u2019 semantic as a move request, while improvements were made to path-follower precision.\n\nWhile debugging movement issues related to NPCs ending up outside the playable area, new functionality was added to allow NPCs to store \u2018breadcrumbs.\u2019 This lets them trace back their most recent movements, allowing the team to better investigate what went wrong.\n\nOn the ship side, AI Features continued to work on functionality to allow ships to land anywhere. This month, they focused on dynamically placing landing splines to give a unique flavor to each ship type, as the splines can define some visual style. These splines are procedurally adjusted at runtime so that the environment is correctly evaluated and the spline lands the ship even in locations that contain major obstacles.\n\nNPC locomotion improvements progressed well. For example, this month they focused on improving the basics for NPC-to-NPC collision, implementing a collision resolver that allows NPCs to detect when they're stuck and resolve the situation.\n\nAlongside specific locomotion work, improvements to the \u2018look\u2019 and \u2018aim\u2019 components continued so that both can share as much of the same code, and therefore improvements, as possible.\n\nRegarding the ongoing initiative to bring the Subsumption editor inside the main game engine editor, the team are currently in the narrow feedback phase. This involves going over the editor with the designers to fix bugs and address their initial feedback.\n\nAnimation\nAnimation broke down their level needs after a briefing session with game leadership. They then worked on 'selects' and 'deselects' for a selection of new weapons, the fire extinguisher, combat Multi-Tool, and zero-g traversal.\n\nFor AI, they worked on the armory, vending machine, cowering and surrender, and consoles. Facial animation was also improved across some key character scenes.\n\nArt (Characters)\nCharacter Art continued to focus on navy uniform assets and development began on armor for the Screaming Galsons. They also looked at the base character bodies, tweaking them for better shape and realism.\n\nThe concept artists investigated animated helmets to allow seamless transitions when putting them on or off.\n\nArt (Environment)\nEnvironment Art focused on major locations to coincide with a collaborative Design and Project push.\n\nFor Chemline, they envisioned what the dam, facility, and other locations would have looked like when new. They\u2019ll then age and damage the designs to depict the facility\u2019s years of abandonment. Progress was also made on Shubin\u2019s processing area and train station.\n\nLighting and art tweaks were made to the opening chapter to support the overall vision too.\n\nArt (Weapons)\nThe Weapons team continued to work on the extinguisher required for fire gameplay. They also completed a pass on all iron sights to improve them from gameplay and design standpoints, which will help players fire more accurately.\n\nThey\u2019re currently producing whitebox assets for all incomplete weapons and gadgets across the campaign.\n\nEngine\nIn February, the Physics team continued to work on soft bodies. Among other things, the system now allows visual skins to blend between skinned and simmed positions. The stepping rate of soft bodies was also increased to 120 Hz. Work continued on general physics optimizations, while improvements to wheeled vehicles progressed. Ropes are being overhauled and received a new simulation mode too.\n\nOn the renderer, further progress was made on the transition to Gen12: The rendering of brushes into G-buffers is now enabled by default, support for transient vertex and constant buffers was added, and viewport handling in graphics passes improved. Tint support was added for massively instanced objects as well as render proxies. Further progress was made on porting HW skinning to Gen12. Additionally, CGAs can now render into RTTs and closeup RTTs are no longer rendered within the G-buffer stage (instead they will be rendered dynamically in G-buffer or forward stage depending on their distance to the camera). The team is also working to generalize some of the Gen12 concepts and changed the render pass API to be compatible with \u2018VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering\u2019.\n\nRegarding atmosphere and cloud rendering, time was spent porting code over to Gen12. Planet terrain height maps (used for various effects including large-scale planet terrain shadows, VFX spawning, and ground fog) already render using the new Gen12 pass. This work will be completed shortly, after which passes for atmosphere, clouds, ground fog, and planet terrain shadows will be converted.\n\nWith the introduction of entity-centric component updates last month, time was spent further revising and improving related systems, such as the ECUS inspector. Contention in zone host updates was improved and update calls of various systems were shuffled around to reduce (or even prevent) stalls. Further optimizations include the deactivation of thread safety around function static variables on Linux DGS builds (matching the behavior of the Windows game client).\n\nAdditional improvements were made to the profiling tools and their integration into the engine along with collected telemetry visualization. Lastly, the team continued to refactor some of the engine's main header files.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe SQ42 Feature team developed a new icon for initializing conversations with NPCs. This enables players to see whether an NPC will talk to them as they approach. Its position and brightness also indicate what orientation players need to be at to trigger conversations; once close enough, the icon will change to inner-thought text.\n\nThe team also reviewed the latest character customizer design then iterated on its functionality to hide a lot of underlying complexity and streamline the interface. They also looked at more technical challenges, including how to seamlessly go from the frontend straight into the game and then gameplay without a loading screen.\n\nAs SQ42 is a single-player-only experience, the team can determine what they want to be loaded at particular points in the game. So, they began adding more fine-grained control over what object containers stream in, and looked into overriding the systemic entity streaming system.\n\nGameplay Story\nDuring February, a new animator was trained and worked through several increasingly complex scenes. They began with relatively simple finger polishing work before moving onto more involved mess-hall and tram scenes.\n\nThe wider team undertook a comprehensive review of chapters one and five before prototyping new animations to meet the latest direction.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nThe Graphics team continued their push on the Gen12 renderer, with a large portion of scene rendering enabled in the main branch. While this doesn\u2019t have all the optimizations yet, it\u2019s a crucial first step in seeing significant performance improvements. They\u2019re currently awaiting engine optimizations on the main thread so they can get the most from the Gen12 improvements.\n\nThe team also continued making the shader authoring process more modular, developing the fire hazard system, and improving the auto test system to ensure they don\u2019t introduce instability to the rest of the development team.\n\nLevel Design\nThe Space\/Dogfight team chose two chapters to push to \u2018vertical-slice' quality alongside the Social and FPS teams. They also continued to work on the turret gameplay experience mentioned in previous reports.\n\nThe FPS team also worked to bring several chapters to vertical-slice quality, with a seamless player experience a high priority.\n\nAlongside working collaboratively with the other design teams, Social Design progressed with their ongoing task of implementing all in-game scenes.\n\nNarrative\nLast month, Narrative continued to work with Design to refine the triggers and scripts for a new dynamic communication system. Once the scripts were discussed, they were prepped for inclusion in a motion-capture session planned for March. Some of the team traveled to the UK to work alongside the Mo-Cap and Audio teams to capture vignettes and complete the first pass of content for the female player character, including a handful of cinematic scenes developed since the last shoot.\n\nThey also began working with the AI team on the behavior for a new NPC profession. After the initial conversation of what this character is intended to do, the teams began fleshing out an initial set of lines. To keep progress moving, quick placeholder recordings will be created for a more fully functioning prototype. These will then be reviewed and iterated on, adding or subtracting lines as needed until they define the best behavior flow. Once approved, full scripts will be written and put on the docket for capture.\n\nFinally, some of the team sat in with various directors and leads to walk through social areas and assess whether more content is needed and, if so, whether it can be created from existing assets or needs something new.\n\nQA\nCinematics continued to rely on QA for regular chapter testing, with last month\u2019s focus on bug validation and support. They also looked into tool feedback to help improve the quality of the cutscenes. The Frankfurt-based QA team moved to cover more SQ42 checks while continuing behavior testing.\n\nTech Animation\nFollowing the upgrade to Maya 2022.3, Tech Animation took time to debug various issues, including one that caused Maya to freeze intermittently.\n\nAfter this, they continued to drive the upgrade to the in-house DNA system.\n\n\u201cThis has been an incredibly long process to refactor the systems to be data-driven and it\u2019s very near to completion. Just a few tasks remain for us before we're able to commit to the testing procedure and integration into the main game.\u201d Tech Animation\n\nThey also continued to process head assets in-house. They're trialing the scan processing, extraction algorithms, and toolsets with a completely new head asset with the aim to achieve a 1:1 likeness with the actor while retaining cross-rig animation compatibility.\n\nTech Animation also supported many other teams with their initiatives, including animation implementation and debug, animated asset creation, and the toolsets around these teams. This included outsourced vendor toolset collation, generation, and support.\n\nFebruary saw the team kick off new initiatives to speed up the animator\u2019s workflow and offer new solutions to issues they have with some current pipelines. Firstly, an engine animation file importer that will give the team new ways to save or regenerate source data directly from engine animation, with the goal to be able to record animations in-engine and recreate them in Maya.\n\nSecondly, they\u2019re looking to create tooling to recreate and effectively import assets directly from the engine. They supported a loadout system in the Maya animation toolset that uses source data (Maya files) to add to and change the rig that the animators interact with. This allows them to animate to the attire that the character will be animated with in-game and achieve a higher fidelity of interaction.\n\nUI\nIn February, the UI team progressed with the visuals and underlying features of the new Starmap. This included creating an in-editor concept and implementing the controls and marker icon transitions.\n\nUI also began converting the visor and lens to Building Blocks, with many of the actor widgets being completed. Additional polish on the medical screens was undertaken, including new idle animations for the character model representing the player\u2019s body. The UI Feature team made the final polish and bug-fixing passes on refueling too.\n\nThe UI Tech team continued refactoring the AR marker system, with the UI artists creating different icons. The functionality and developer experience for Building Blocks was further developed, with a variety of feature requests completed throughout the month.\n\nVFX\nThroughout February, VFX worked closely with Flight Experience to implement effects for several key combat set pieces to give the players the best possible experience of a battle raging around them.\n\nThe VFX Tech Art team continued working on several destruction set pieces and began investigating the Houdini-based Mighty Bridge tool being developed by the Montreal team. This opens up several workflow opportunities. For example, allowing the team to generate gas cloud within the editor rather than Houdini. This is still in the prototype stage but the team are enjoying the prospect of faster iteration times on what is otherwise a very complex workflow.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION","de_DE":"Geschwader 42 Monatsbericht\nFebruar 2022\nDies ist ein Querverweis auf den Bericht, 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.\n\nTO: REKRUTEN DES GESCHWADERS 42\n\nSUBJ: ENTWICKLUNG UPDATE 03:02:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Geschwader 42 Rekruten\n\nWillkommen zum Entwicklungsbericht f\u00fcr Squadron 42 im Februar. Anbei findest du Details zu den neuesten Fortschritten in der Kampagne, darunter Updates f\u00fcr das Verhalten der Deckbesatzung, das Design des Charakteranpassers und die neue Sternenkarte.\n\nVielen Dank f\u00fcr eure anhaltende Unterst\u00fctzung von Squadron 42.\n\nMit freundlichen Gr\u00fc\u00dfen,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI Content Team\nAI Content hat damit begonnen, den ersten Durchlauf des Coffeeshop-Anbieters abzuschlie\u00dfen. Dies ist ein Beispiel daf\u00fcr, wie das bestehende Verhalten des Barkeepers (mit kleinen Erweiterungen) genutzt wird, um verschiedene Shop-Erlebnisse zu schaffen. In diesem Fall wurden zus\u00e4tzliche Inhalte nur in den Bereichen Grafik, Animation und Leveldesign ben\u00f6tigt. Das Team f\u00fcgte au\u00dferdem Partikeleffekte hinzu, richtete VFX-Animationstrigger ein und f\u00fcgte das Counter-Terminal hinzu, um dem Verk\u00e4ufer mehr Leerlauf zu erm\u00f6glichen. Zurzeit arbeiten sie an weiteren Coffeeshop-Layouts und erstellen Wildlines.\n\nF\u00fcr das Sicherheitsverhalten f\u00fcgte das Team neue Wildlinien hinzu, korrigierte den \u00dcbergang zwischen \"entspannt\" und \"aufmerksam\" und testete die Reaktionen der Wachen auf Spieler, die sich bewegen oder vor gesperrten Orten herumlungern.\n\nDer Verkaufsautomat, der f\u00fcr den Essen-und-Trinken-NSC-Fluss verwendet wird, wurde im Februar weiterentwickelt. Dadurch k\u00f6nnen bestimmte NSCs versuchen, Gegenst\u00e4nde aus dem Automaten zu stehlen und sind frustriert, wenn ihr Versuch scheitert. Das Team f\u00fcgte auch Fehlfunktionen hinzu, die dazu f\u00fchren, dass Gegenst\u00e4nde nicht ausgeliefert werden. Verkaufsautomaten haben derzeit eine Platzhalter-Baustein-UI, die sich \u00e4ndert, wenn der NSC kauft oder versucht zu stehlen.\n\nBei SQ42 konzentrierte sich das Team darauf, das Verhalten der Deckbesatzung zu implementieren. Im letzten Monat haben sie mehrere Rollen integriert, die richtigen Usables f\u00fcr jede Person eingerichtet, das Verhalten der Fluglotsen korrigiert, damit sie korrekt mit den Landungsoffizieren zusammenarbeiten, und begonnen, Wildlines hinzuzuf\u00fcgen.\n\nF\u00fcr das Verhalten des Sanit\u00e4ters und des Arbeiters hat das Team damit begonnen, die richtige Dokumentation zu erstellen, damit die Standortteams die Respawn-Vignette an verschiedenen Orten im Spiel replizieren k\u00f6nnen.\n\nIm Bereich Inhalt wurden schlie\u00dflich die Animationen f\u00fcr die Schie\u00dfplatzanimationen aufpoliert.\n\nKI-Feature-Team\nDas Team f\u00fcr die KI-Features arbeitete weiter an der Verbesserung des Vanduul-Kampfes, indem es die Funktionen ausbalancierte und optimierte, damit sie zusammen funktionieren. Zum Beispiel greifen mehrere NSCs den Spieler und befreundete KI-Ziele an. Ziel ist es, dass die Spieler herausgefordert, aber nicht \u00fcberw\u00e4ltigt werden, wenn sie die richtige Taktik anwenden. Zu diesem Zweck haben sie einige bestehende Verhaltensweisen verbessert, z. B. einen Angriff um 180 Grad nach hinten, wenn sich der Spieler hinter den Vanduul bewegt. Au\u00dferdem haben sie die Kraftreaktionen auf verschiedene Angriffe weiterentwickelt und das Aussehen der Taumel- und Ausweichanimationen der Vanduul verbessert.\n\nAuf der Seite der menschlichen K\u00e4mpfer hat das Team das Grundger\u00fcst der NSCs fertiggestellt, die auf den Fund einer Leiche reagieren. Dazu geh\u00f6rt auch die Funktion, befreundete KI zu benachrichtigen, damit sie sich abstimmen und den Spieler zur Strecke bringen k\u00f6nnen. Au\u00dferdem arbeitete das Team eng mit dem Design zusammen, um ein neues Kampfverhaltensdesign mit Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr verschiedene Taktiken zu implementieren.\n\nDer Schie\u00dfplatz und das Waffentraining stehen kurz vor der Fertigstellung, und das Team hat Testmaps f\u00fcr das automatisierte Testsystem erstellt, um die Funktionalit\u00e4t zu erhalten, w\u00e4hrend sie sich neuen Bereichen des Codes zuwenden.\n\nAI Tech Team\nDas KI-Tech-Team hat Fortschritte beim planetaren Navigationsnetz und den Navigationslinks gemacht, die im letzten Bericht beschrieben wurden.\n\nDie Navigationslinks wurden au\u00dferdem um eine einfachere M\u00f6glichkeit zum Debuggen zus\u00e4tzlicher Markierungen erweitert, die es dem Team erm\u00f6glichen, Orte im Weltraum zu identifizieren, die bestimmte Animationen auf die Umgebungen abstimmen k\u00f6nnen. Zum Beispiel, wenn ein NSC auf ein Gel\u00e4nder springen muss, um an einen h\u00f6her gelegenen Ort zu gelangen. In diesem Fall muss die Hand des Charakters perfekt an der Schiene ausgerichtet werden, w\u00e4hrend die Motion-Warp-Technologie die erforderliche H\u00f6he ber\u00fccksichtigt.\n\nAuf der Subsumtionsseite hat das Team interessante Funktionen hinzugef\u00fcgt, die es der Missionslogik erm\u00f6glichen, ihren Fluss auf der Grundlage von systemischen Ereignissen in der Welt zu verzweigen. Sie haben eine L\u00f6sung implementiert, bei der die Missionslogik NPC- und EntityTracker-Variablen nutzen kann, um auf systemische Ereignisse von bestimmten Agenten zu \"h\u00f6ren\". So k\u00f6nnen systemische Verhaltensweisen die Informationen preisgeben, \u00fcber die sie Missionen oder andere \"Zuh\u00f6rer\" benachrichtigen wollen.\n\nDynamische Unterhaltungen wurden im letzten Monat ebenfalls vorangetrieben, indem das Team Funktionen f\u00fcr Aktivit\u00e4ten freigab, um Bereiche zu markieren, in denen NSCs miteinander reden k\u00f6nnen. Bei Aktivit\u00e4ten, die mehrere Charaktere enthalten, werden durch die Routing-Funktionalit\u00e4t alle m\u00f6glichen Teilnehmer\/innen abgerufen und dann dynamisch Unterhaltungen f\u00fcr die verf\u00fcgbaren Charaktere erzeugt. Auch das Schieben\/Ziehen von NSC-Wagen wurde aktualisiert - die Subsumption-Schnittstelle erlaubt jetzt die explizite Semantik \"Schieben\" als Bewegungsanforderung, w\u00e4hrend die Pr\u00e4zision der Pfadverfolger verbessert wurde.\n\nBei der Behebung von Bewegungsproblemen im Zusammenhang mit NSCs, die au\u00dferhalb des spielbaren Bereichs landen, wurde eine neue Funktion hinzugef\u00fcgt, mit der NSCs \"Brotkr\u00fcmel\" speichern k\u00f6nnen. So k\u00f6nnen sie ihre letzten Bewegungen zur\u00fcckverfolgen und das Team kann besser herausfinden, was schief gelaufen ist.\n\nAuf der Schiffsseite arbeiteten die KI-Funktionen weiter daran, dass Schiffe \u00fcberall landen k\u00f6nnen. In diesem Monat konzentrierten sie sich auf die dynamische Platzierung von Landungssplines, um jedem Schiffstyp eine einzigartige Note zu verleihen, da die Splines einen gewissen visuellen Stil definieren k\u00f6nnen. Diese Splines werden zur Laufzeit prozedural angepasst, so dass die Umgebung korrekt ausgewertet wird und der Spline das Schiff auch an Orten mit gro\u00dfen Hindernissen landet.\n\nDie Verbesserungen an der Fortbewegung der NSCs sind gut vorangekommen. Diesen Monat wurden zum Beispiel die Grundlagen f\u00fcr Kollisionen zwischen NPCs verbessert und ein Kollisionsaufl\u00f6ser implementiert, mit dem NPCs erkennen k\u00f6nnen, wenn sie feststecken und die Situation aufl\u00f6sen.\n\nNeben der spezifischen Arbeit an der Fortbewegung wurden auch die Komponenten \"Aussehen\" und \"Zielen\" weiter verbessert, damit beide so viel wie m\u00f6glich vom gleichen Code und damit von den Verbesserungen profitieren k\u00f6nnen.\n\nWas die laufende Initiative betrifft, den Subsumption-Editor in den Editor der Spiel-Engine zu integrieren, befindet sich das Team derzeit in der engen Feedback-Phase. Dabei geht es darum, den Editor mit den Designern durchzugehen, um Fehler zu beheben und auf ihr erstes Feedback einzugehen.\n\nAnimation\nDas Animationsteam hat nach einem Briefing mit der Spielleitung die Anforderungen an die Level festgelegt. Dann arbeiteten sie an den \"Selects\" und \"Deselects\" f\u00fcr eine Auswahl neuer Waffen, den Feuerl\u00f6scher, das Kampf-Multi-Tool und die Zero-G-Traversal.\n\nBei der KI arbeiteten sie an der Waffenkammer, dem Verkaufsautomaten, dem Kauern und der Kapitulation und den Konsolen. Auch die Gesichtsanimation wurde in einigen Schl\u00fcsselszenen der Charaktere verbessert.\n\nKunst (Charaktere)\nCharacter Art konzentrierte sich weiterhin auf die Uniformen der Marine und begann mit der Entwicklung der R\u00fcstungen f\u00fcr die Screaming Galsons. Au\u00dferdem wurden die Grundk\u00f6rper der Charaktere \u00fcberarbeitet, um ihre Form und ihren Realismus zu verbessern.\n\nDie Konzeptk\u00fcnstler untersuchten animierte Helme, um nahtlose \u00dcberg\u00e4nge beim Auf- und Absetzen der Helme zu erm\u00f6glichen.\n\nKunst (Umgebung)\nDie Umgebungskunst konzentrierte sich auf die wichtigsten Schaupl\u00e4tze, um einen gemeinsamen Design- und Projektschub zu erreichen.\n\nF\u00fcr Chemline haben sie sich vorgestellt, wie der Damm, die Anlage und andere Orte im Neuzustand ausgesehen h\u00e4tten. Anschlie\u00dfend werden die Entw\u00fcrfe gealtert und besch\u00e4digt, um die Jahre der Stilllegung der Anlage darzustellen. Auch beim Verarbeitungsbereich und dem Bahnhof von Shubin wurden Fortschritte erzielt.\n\nAuch die Beleuchtung und das Design des Er\u00f6ffnungskapitels wurden \u00fcberarbeitet, um die Gesamtvision zu unterst\u00fctzen.\n\nKunst (Waffen)\nDas Waffenteam hat weiter an dem Feuerl\u00f6scher gearbeitet, der f\u00fcr das Feuer-Gameplay ben\u00f6tigt wird. Au\u00dferdem wurden alle Eisenzielger\u00e4te \u00fcberarbeitet, um sie aus Sicht des Gameplays und des Designs zu verbessern, damit die Spieler\/innen genauer schie\u00dfen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDerzeit werden Whitebox-Assets f\u00fcr alle unvollst\u00e4ndigen Waffen und Gadgets in der Kampagne erstellt.\n\nEngine\nIm Februar hat das Physikteam weiter an den weichen K\u00f6rpern gearbeitet. Unter anderem erm\u00f6glicht das System jetzt, dass visuelle Skins zwischen geskinnten und gesimten Positionen \u00fcbergehen. Au\u00dferdem wurde die Schrittfrequenz von Soft Bodies auf 120 Hz erh\u00f6ht. Die Arbeit an allgemeinen Optimierungen der Physik wurde fortgesetzt, w\u00e4hrend die Verbesserungen an Radfahrzeugen voranschritten. Auch die Seile wurden \u00fcberarbeitet und erhielten einen neuen Simulationsmodus.\n\nBeim Renderer wurde der \u00dcbergang zu Gen12 weiter vorangetrieben: Das Rendering von Pinseln in G-Buffers ist jetzt standardm\u00e4\u00dfig aktiviert, Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr transiente Vertex- und Konstantpuffer wurde hinzugef\u00fcgt und das Viewport-Handling in Grafikp\u00e4ssen verbessert. Die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Tinting wurde f\u00fcr massiv instanzierte Objekte und Render-Proxys hinzugef\u00fcgt. Weitere Fortschritte wurden bei der Portierung von HW-Skinning auf Gen12 gemacht. Au\u00dferdem k\u00f6nnen CGAs jetzt in RTTs gerendert werden und RTTs aus der N\u00e4he werden nicht mehr in der G-Buffer-Stage gerendert (stattdessen werden sie dynamisch in der G-Buffer- oder Forward-Stage gerendert, je nach Abstand zur Kamera). Das Team arbeitet au\u00dferdem daran, einige der Gen12-Konzepte zu verallgemeinern und hat die Renderpass-API ge\u00e4ndert, damit sie mit \"VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering\" kompatibel ist.\n\nF\u00fcr das Rendering von Atmosph\u00e4re und Wolken wurde Zeit aufgewendet, um den Code auf Gen12 zu portieren. Die H\u00f6henkarten des Planetengel\u00e4ndes (die f\u00fcr verschiedene Effekte wie gro\u00dffl\u00e4chige Schatten des Planetengel\u00e4ndes, VFX-Spawning und Bodennebel verwendet werden) werden bereits mit dem neuen Gen12-Pass gerendert. Diese Arbeit wird in K\u00fcrze abgeschlossen sein. Danach werden die P\u00e4sse f\u00fcr die Atmosph\u00e4re, die Wolken, den Bodennebel und die Schatten des Planetengel\u00e4ndes konvertiert.\n\nMit der Einf\u00fchrung der entit\u00e4tszentrierten Komponenten-Updates im letzten Monat wurde die Zeit genutzt, um damit verbundene Systeme wie den ECUS-Inspektor weiter zu \u00fcberarbeiten und zu verbessern. Der Wettbewerb bei der Aktualisierung von Zonenhosts wurde verbessert und die Aktualisierungsaufrufe verschiedener Systeme wurden so umgestellt, dass sie weniger oder gar nicht mehr ins Stocken geraten. Zu den weiteren Optimierungen geh\u00f6rt die Deaktivierung der Thread-Sicherheit f\u00fcr statische Funktionsvariablen in Linux-DGS-Builds (entsprechend dem Verhalten des Windows-Spielclients).\n\nZus\u00e4tzliche Verbesserungen wurden an den Profiling-Tools und ihrer Integration in die Engine vorgenommen, ebenso wie an der Visualisierung der gesammelten Telemetriedaten. Schlie\u00dflich hat das Team einige der wichtigsten Header-Dateien der Engine \u00fcberarbeitet.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nDas SQ42-Feature-Team entwickelte ein neues Symbol f\u00fcr die Einleitung von Gespr\u00e4chen mit NSCs. Damit k\u00f6nnen Spieler\/innen erkennen, ob ein\/e NPC mit ihnen sprechen wird, wenn sie sich n\u00e4hern. Die Position und die Helligkeit des Symbols zeigen au\u00dferdem an, wie weit der Spieler\/die Spielerin entfernt sein muss, um ein Gespr\u00e4ch auszul\u00f6sen; sobald er\/sie nahe genug ist, wechselt das Symbol zu einem Text in Gedanken.\n\nDas Team \u00fcberpr\u00fcfte auch das letzte Design des Charakteranpassers und \u00fcberarbeitete die Funktionen, um die Komplexit\u00e4t zu verbergen und die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che zu vereinfachen. Sie besch\u00e4ftigten sich auch mit weiteren technischen Herausforderungen, wie z. B. der Frage, wie man nahtlos vom Frontend direkt ins Spiel und dann ins Gameplay \u00fcbergehen kann, ohne dass ein Ladebildschirm erscheint.\n\nDa SQ42 ein reines Einzelspieler-Erlebnis ist, kann das Team selbst bestimmen, was an bestimmten Stellen im Spiel geladen werden soll. Also begannen sie, die Objektcontainer genauer zu steuern und pr\u00fcften, ob sie das systemische Entity-Streaming-System au\u00dfer Kraft setzen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nGameplay Story\nIm Februar wurde ein neuer Animator eingearbeitet und arbeitete sich durch mehrere immer komplexere Szenen. Sie begannen mit relativ einfachen Polierarbeiten an den Fingern, bevor sie zu komplizierteren Messehallen- und Stra\u00dfenbahnszenen \u00fcbergingen.\n\nDas gesamte Team unterzog Kapitel eins und f\u00fcnf einer umfassenden Pr\u00fcfung, bevor es neue Animationen entwarf, um die neue Ausrichtung zu erf\u00fcllen.\n\nGrafik & VFX-Programmierung\nDas Grafikteam hat weiter am Gen12-Renderer gearbeitet und einen gro\u00dfen Teil der Szenen im Hauptzweig gerendert. Das sind zwar noch nicht alle Optimierungen, aber es ist ein wichtiger erster Schritt, um die Leistung deutlich zu verbessern. Derzeit warten sie auf Engine-Optimierungen im Hauptzweig, damit sie das Beste aus den Gen12-Verbesserungen herausholen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDas Team hat au\u00dferdem den Shader-Authoring-Prozess weiter modularisiert, das Feuergef\u00e4hrdungssystem entwickelt und das Autotestsystem verbessert, um sicherzustellen, dass das restliche Entwicklungsteam keine Instabilit\u00e4t erf\u00e4hrt.\n\nLeveldesign\nDas Space\/Dogfight-Team w\u00e4hlte zwei Kapitel aus, um gemeinsam mit den Social- und FPS-Teams die Qualit\u00e4t der \"vertikalen Schnitte\" zu verbessern. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie weiter an dem in fr\u00fcheren Berichten erw\u00e4hnten Turm-Gameplay-Erlebnis.\n\nDas FPS-Team arbeitete ebenfalls daran, mehrere Kapitel auf vertikale Schnittqualit\u00e4t zu bringen, wobei ein nahtloses Spielerlebnis hohe Priorit\u00e4t hatte.\n\nNeben der Zusammenarbeit mit den anderen Design-Teams machte das Social Design-Team Fortschritte bei der Implementierung aller Szenen im Spiel.\n\nNarrative\nIm letzten Monat arbeitete Narrative weiter mit Design zusammen, um die Ausl\u00f6ser und Skripte f\u00fcr ein neues dynamisches Kommunikationssystem zu verfeinern. Sobald die Skripte besprochen waren, wurden sie f\u00fcr eine im M\u00e4rz geplante Motion-Capture-Session vorbereitet. Ein Teil des Teams reiste nach Gro\u00dfbritannien, um gemeinsam mit den Mo-Cap- und Audio-Teams Vignetten aufzunehmen und den ersten Durchgang der Inhalte f\u00fcr den weiblichen Spielercharakter fertigzustellen, einschlie\u00dflich einer Handvoll Filmszenen, die seit dem letzten Dreh entwickelt wurden.\n\nAu\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie zusammen mit dem KI-Team an dem Verhalten eines neuen NSC-Berufs. Nach dem ersten Gespr\u00e4ch dar\u00fcber, was diese Figur tun soll, begannen die Teams damit, einen ersten Satz von Zeilen zu formulieren. Um den Fortschritt voranzutreiben, werden schnelle Platzhalteraufnahmen f\u00fcr einen voll funktionsf\u00e4higen Prototyp erstellt. Diese werden dann \u00fcberpr\u00fcft und \u00fcberarbeitet, wobei je nach Bedarf Zeilen hinzugef\u00fcgt oder entfernt werden, bis sie den besten Verhaltensablauf definieren. Sobald sie genehmigt sind, werden vollst\u00e4ndige Skripte geschrieben und f\u00fcr die Aufnahme auf den Tisch gelegt.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich hat sich ein Teil des Teams mit verschiedenen Direktoren und Leitern zusammengesetzt, um die sozialen Bereiche zu besprechen und festzustellen, ob weitere Inhalte ben\u00f6tigt werden und ob diese aus vorhandenen Ressourcen erstellt werden k\u00f6nnen oder ob etwas Neues ben\u00f6tigt wird.\n\nQA\nCinematics setzte weiterhin auf QA f\u00fcr regelm\u00e4\u00dfige Kapiteltests, wobei der Schwerpunkt im letzten Monat auf der Fehlerpr\u00fcfung und dem Support lag. Au\u00dferdem haben sie sich mit dem Feedback der Tools besch\u00e4ftigt, um die Qualit\u00e4t der Zwischensequenzen zu verbessern. Das in Frankfurt ans\u00e4ssige QA-Team hat mehr SQ42-Pr\u00fcfungen durchgef\u00fchrt und gleichzeitig die Verhaltenstests fortgesetzt.\n\nTechnische Animation\nNach dem Upgrade auf Maya 2022.3 nahm sich Tech Animation Zeit, um verschiedene Probleme zu beheben, darunter auch eines, das dazu f\u00fchrte, dass Maya zeitweise einfror.\n\nDanach wurde das Upgrade auf das hauseigene DNA-System weiter vorangetrieben.\n\n\"Es war ein unglaublich langer Prozess, die Systeme datengesteuert umzugestalten, und wir stehen kurz vor dem Abschluss. Es bleiben nur noch ein paar Aufgaben \u00fcbrig, bevor wir uns dem Testverfahren und der Integration in das Hauptspiel widmen k\u00f6nnen.\" Technische Animation\n\nAuch die Kopfdaten werden weiterhin intern bearbeitet. Sie testen die Scan-Verarbeitung, die Extraktionsalgorithmen und die Werkzeuge mit einem v\u00f6llig neuen Kopf-Asset, um eine 1:1-\u00dcbereinstimmung mit dem Schauspieler zu erreichen und gleichzeitig die Kompatibilit\u00e4t der Animationen mit anderen Rigs zu gew\u00e4hrleisten.\n\nTech Animation unterst\u00fctzte auch viele andere Teams bei ihren Initiativen, einschlie\u00dflich der Implementierung und Fehlersuche bei Animationen, der Erstellung von animierten Assets und den Toolsets f\u00fcr diese Teams. Dazu geh\u00f6rte auch die Zusammenstellung, Erstellung und Unterst\u00fctzung von Toolsets externer Anbieter.\n\nIm Februar startete das Team neue Initiativen, um die Arbeitsabl\u00e4ufe der Animatoren zu beschleunigen und neue L\u00f6sungen f\u00fcr Probleme mit einigen aktuellen Pipelines anzubieten. Zum einen wurde ein Importer f\u00fcr Engine-Animationsdateien entwickelt, der dem Team neue M\u00f6glichkeiten bietet, Quelldaten direkt aus der Engine-Animation zu speichern oder neu zu generieren, mit dem Ziel, Animationen in der Engine aufzuzeichnen und sie in Maya neu zu erstellen.\n\nZweitens soll ein Tool entwickelt werden, mit dem Assets direkt aus der Engine neu erstellt und effektiv importiert werden k\u00f6nnen. Sie unterst\u00fctzten ein Loadout-System in den Maya-Animationswerkzeugen, das Quelldaten (Maya-Dateien) verwendet, um das Rig, mit dem die Animatoren interagieren, zu erg\u00e4nzen und zu ver\u00e4ndern. Dies erm\u00f6glicht es ihnen, die Kleidung zu animieren, mit der die Figur im Spiel animiert wird, und so eine realistischere Interaktion zu erreichen.\n\nUI\nIm Februar hat das UI-Team die visuellen und grundlegenden Funktionen der neuen Starmap weiterentwickelt. Dazu geh\u00f6rten die Erstellung eines In-Editor-Konzepts und die Implementierung der Steuerelemente und der \u00dcberg\u00e4nge zwischen den Markierungssymbolen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem begann das UI-Team mit der Umwandlung des Visiers und der Linse in Building Blocks, und viele der Schauspieler-Widgets wurden fertiggestellt. Die medizinischen Bildschirme wurden weiter aufpoliert, einschlie\u00dflich neuer Leerlaufanimationen f\u00fcr das Charaktermodell, das den K\u00f6rper des Spielers darstellt. Das UI-Feature-Team hat auch das Tanken aufpoliert und letzte Fehler behoben.\n\nDas UI Tech Team setzte die \u00dcberarbeitung des AR-Markersystems fort, wobei die UI Artists verschiedene Icons erstellten. Die Funktionalit\u00e4t und das Entwicklererlebnis f\u00fcr Building Blocks wurden weiterentwickelt, wobei im Laufe des Monats eine Reihe von Feature Requests abgeschlossen wurden.\n\nVFX\nIm Februar arbeitete das VFX-Team eng mit Flight Experience zusammen, um Effekte f\u00fcr mehrere wichtige Kampfszenen zu implementieren, damit die Spieler\/innen die Schlacht, die um sie herum tobt, bestm\u00f6glich erleben k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDas VFX Tech Art Team arbeitete weiter an mehreren Zerst\u00f6rungselementen und begann mit der Erforschung des Houdini-basierten Mighty Bridge Tools, das vom Team in Montreal entwickelt wurde. Dies er\u00f6ffnet verschiedene M\u00f6glichkeiten f\u00fcr den Arbeitsablauf. So kann das Team zum Beispiel Gaswolken im Editor und nicht in Houdini erzeugen. Dies ist noch im Prototypenstadium, aber das Team freut sich \u00fcber die Aussicht auf schnellere Iterationszeiten in einem ansonsten sehr komplexen Arbeitsablauf.\n\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...\n\/\/ ENDE DER \u00dcBERTRAGUNG","zh_CN":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report\nFebruary 2022\nThis 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.\n\nTO: SQUADRON 42 RECRUITS\n\nSUBJ: DEVELOPMENT UPDATE 03:02:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits\n\nWelcome to February\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including updates to deck crew behaviors, character customizer design, and the new Starmap.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI Content Team\nAI Content began closing down the first pass on the coffee-shop vendor. This is an example of the existing bartender behavior (with minor extensions) being used to deliver different shop experiences. In this instance, additional content was only required on the art, animation, and level-design sides. The team also added template particle effects, set up VFX animation triggers, and added the counter terminal to allow some more idle activity for the vendor. They\u2019re currently devising additional coffee shop layouts and creating wildlines.\n\nFor the security behavior, the team added new wildlines, fixed the transition between \u2018at ease' and \u2018to attention,\u2019 and playtested guard reactions to players moving around or loitering in front of restricted locations.\n\nThe vending-machine usable used in the eat-and-drink NPC flow progressed throughout February. This behavior allows certain NPCs to try to steal items from the usable and get frustrated if their attempt doesn\u2019t succeed. The team also added malfunctions that cause items to not be delivered. Vending machines currently have a placeholder Building Blocks UI that changes whether the NPC is buying or attempting to steal.\n\nSpecifically for SQ42, the team focused on implementing deck crew behaviors. Last month, they integrated multiple roles, set up the right usables for each individual, fixed the air-traffic-controller behavior to correctly work with the landing officers, and started adding wildlines.\n\nFor the medical and worker behaviors, the team began creating proper documentation to allow the Location teams to replicate the respawn vignette in multiple locations around the game.\n\nFinally for Content, Animations were polished for the firing range animations.\n\nAI Feature Team\nThe AI Feature team continued to iterate on Vanduul combat, balancing and tweaking functionality so that it works together. For example, multiple NPCs attacking the player and friendly AI targets. The aim is to ensure players are challenged but not overwhelmed if they follow the correct tactics. With this in mind, they improved some existing behaviors, including adding a 180-degree back attack when the player moves behind the Vanduul. They also further developed force reactions from different attacks and improved the look of the Vanduul stagger and dodging animations.\n\nOn the Human combat side, the team finalized the basic skeleton of NPCs reacting to finding a dead body. This includes functionality to notify friendly AI so they can coordinate and hunt down the player. They also worked closely with Design to implement a new combat behavior design with support for different tactics.\n\nThe firing range and weapons training behaviors are approaching completion, with the team creating feature testmaps for the automated testing system, enabling them to maintain functionality as they move onto new areas of code.\n\nAI Tech Team\nAI Tech progressed with the planetary navigation mesh and navigation links discussed in last month\u2019s report.\n\nNavigation links were also extended to include an easier way to debug additional markers, enabling the team to identify locations in space that can align specific animations to the environments. For example, when an NPC needs to jump to a rail to climb up to a higher location. In this instance, the character\u2019s hand must perfectly align with the rail asset while using motion-warp technology to account for the required height.\n\nOn the Subsumption side, the team added interesting functionalities to allow mission logic to branch its flow based on what\u2019s happening systemically in the world. They implemented a solution where mission logic can use NPC and EntityTracker variables to \u201clisten\u201d to broadcasted systemic events from specific agents. In support of this, systemic behaviors can now expose the information that they want missions or any other \u201clistener\u201d to be notified of.\n\nDynamic conversations progressed last month too, with the team exposing functionalities for activities to mark up areas where NPCs can talk to each other. When in usables that contain multiple characters, routing functionality retrieves all possible participants and then dynamically spawns conversations relevant to the available characters. NPC trolley push\/pull was also updated - the Subsumption interface now allows the explicit \u2018Push\u2019 semantic as a move request, while improvements were made to path-follower precision.\n\nWhile debugging movement issues related to NPCs ending up outside the playable area, new functionality was added to allow NPCs to store \u2018breadcrumbs.\u2019 This lets them trace back their most recent movements, allowing the team to better investigate what went wrong.\n\nOn the ship side, AI Features continued to work on functionality to allow ships to land anywhere. This month, they focused on dynamically placing landing splines to give a unique flavor to each ship type, as the splines can define some visual style. These splines are procedurally adjusted at runtime so that the environment is correctly evaluated and the spline lands the ship even in locations that contain major obstacles.\n\nNPC locomotion improvements progressed well. For example, this month they focused on improving the basics for NPC-to-NPC collision, implementing a collision resolver that allows NPCs to detect when they're stuck and resolve the situation.\n\nAlongside specific locomotion work, improvements to the \u2018look\u2019 and \u2018aim\u2019 components continued so that both can share as much of the same code, and therefore improvements, as possible.\n\nRegarding the ongoing initiative to bring the Subsumption editor inside the main game engine editor, the team are currently in the narrow feedback phase. This involves going over the editor with the designers to fix bugs and address their initial feedback.\n\nAnimation\nAnimation broke down their level needs after a briefing session with game leadership. They then worked on 'selects' and 'deselects' for a selection of new weapons, the fire extinguisher, combat Multi-Tool, and zero-g traversal.\n\nFor AI, they worked on the armory, vending machine, cowering and surrender, and consoles. Facial animation was also improved across some key character scenes.\n\nArt (Characters)\nCharacter Art continued to focus on navy uniform assets and development began on armor for the Screaming Galsons. They also looked at the base character bodies, tweaking them for better shape and realism.\n\nThe concept artists investigated animated helmets to allow seamless transitions when putting them on or off.\n\nArt (Environment)\nEnvironment Art focused on major locations to coincide with a collaborative Design and Project push.\n\nFor Chemline, they envisioned what the dam, facility, and other locations would have looked like when new. They\u2019ll then age and damage the designs to depict the facility\u2019s years of abandonment. Progress was also made on Shubin\u2019s processing area and train station.\n\nLighting and art tweaks were made to the opening chapter to support the overall vision too.\n\nArt (Weapons)\nThe Weapons team continued to work on the extinguisher required for fire gameplay. They also completed a pass on all iron sights to improve them from gameplay and design standpoints, which will help players fire more accurately.\n\nThey\u2019re currently producing whitebox assets for all incomplete weapons and gadgets across the campaign.\n\nEngine\nIn February, the Physics team continued to work on soft bodies. Among other things, the system now allows visual skins to blend between skinned and simmed positions. The stepping rate of soft bodies was also increased to 120 Hz. Work continued on general physics optimizations, while improvements to wheeled vehicles progressed. Ropes are being overhauled and received a new simulation mode too.\n\nOn the renderer, further progress was made on the transition to Gen12: The rendering of brushes into G-buffers is now enabled by default, support for transient vertex and constant buffers was added, and viewport handling in graphics passes improved. Tint support was added for massively instanced objects as well as render proxies. Further progress was made on porting HW skinning to Gen12. Additionally, CGAs can now render into RTTs and closeup RTTs are no longer rendered within the G-buffer stage (instead they will be rendered dynamically in G-buffer or forward stage depending on their distance to the camera). The team is also working to generalize some of the Gen12 concepts and changed the render pass API to be compatible with \u2018VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering\u2019.\n\nRegarding atmosphere and cloud rendering, time was spent porting code over to Gen12. Planet terrain height maps (used for various effects including large-scale planet terrain shadows, VFX spawning, and ground fog) already render using the new Gen12 pass. This work will be completed shortly, after which passes for atmosphere, clouds, ground fog, and planet terrain shadows will be converted.\n\nWith the introduction of entity-centric component updates last month, time was spent further revising and improving related systems, such as the ECUS inspector. Contention in zone host updates was improved and update calls of various systems were shuffled around to reduce (or even prevent) stalls. Further optimizations include the deactivation of thread safety around function static variables on Linux DGS builds (matching the behavior of the Windows game client).\n\nAdditional improvements were made to the profiling tools and their integration into the engine along with collected telemetry visualization. Lastly, the team continued to refactor some of the engine's main header files.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe SQ42 Feature team developed a new icon for initializing conversations with NPCs. This enables players to see whether an NPC will talk to them as they approach. Its position and brightness also indicate what orientation players need to be at to trigger conversations; once close enough, the icon will change to inner-thought text.\n\nThe team also reviewed the latest character customizer design then iterated on its functionality to hide a lot of underlying complexity and streamline the interface. They also looked at more technical challenges, including how to seamlessly go from the frontend straight into the game and then gameplay without a loading screen.\n\nAs SQ42 is a single-player-only experience, the team can determine what they want to be loaded at particular points in the game. So, they began adding more fine-grained control over what object containers stream in, and looked into overriding the systemic entity streaming system.\n\nGameplay Story\nDuring February, a new animator was trained and worked through several increasingly complex scenes. They began with relatively simple finger polishing work before moving onto more involved mess-hall and tram scenes.\n\nThe wider team undertook a comprehensive review of chapters one and five before prototyping new animations to meet the latest direction.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nThe Graphics team continued their push on the Gen12 renderer, with a large portion of scene rendering enabled in the main branch. While this doesn\u2019t have all the optimizations yet, it\u2019s a crucial first step in seeing significant performance improvements. They\u2019re currently awaiting engine optimizations on the main thread so they can get the most from the Gen12 improvements.\n\nThe team also continued making the shader authoring process more modular, developing the fire hazard system, and improving the auto test system to ensure they don\u2019t introduce instability to the rest of the development team.\n\nLevel Design\nThe Space\/Dogfight team chose two chapters to push to \u2018vertical-slice' quality alongside the Social and FPS teams. They also continued to work on the turret gameplay experience mentioned in previous reports.\n\nThe FPS team also worked to bring several chapters to vertical-slice quality, with a seamless player experience a high priority.\n\nAlongside working collaboratively with the other design teams, Social Design progressed with their ongoing task of implementing all in-game scenes.\n\nNarrative\nLast month, Narrative continued to work with Design to refine the triggers and scripts for a new dynamic communication system. Once the scripts were discussed, they were prepped for inclusion in a motion-capture session planned for March. Some of the team traveled to the UK to work alongside the Mo-Cap and Audio teams to capture vignettes and complete the first pass of content for the female player character, including a handful of cinematic scenes developed since the last shoot.\n\nThey also began working with the AI team on the behavior for a new NPC profession. After the initial conversation of what this character is intended to do, the teams began fleshing out an initial set of lines. To keep progress moving, quick placeholder recordings will be created for a more fully functioning prototype. These will then be reviewed and iterated on, adding or subtracting lines as needed until they define the best behavior flow. Once approved, full scripts will be written and put on the docket for capture.\n\nFinally, some of the team sat in with various directors and leads to walk through social areas and assess whether more content is needed and, if so, whether it can be created from existing assets or needs something new.\n\nQA\nCinematics continued to rely on QA for regular chapter testing, with last month\u2019s focus on bug validation and support. They also looked into tool feedback to help improve the quality of the cutscenes. The Frankfurt-based QA team moved to cover more SQ42 checks while continuing behavior testing.\n\nTech Animation\nFollowing the upgrade to Maya 2022.3, Tech Animation took time to debug various issues, including one that caused Maya to freeze intermittently.\n\nAfter this, they continued to drive the upgrade to the in-house DNA system.\n\n\u201cThis has been an incredibly long process to refactor the systems to be data-driven and it\u2019s very near to completion. Just a few tasks remain for us before we're able to commit to the testing procedure and integration into the main game.\u201d Tech Animation\n\nThey also continued to process head assets in-house. They're trialing the scan processing, extraction algorithms, and toolsets with a completely new head asset with the aim to achieve a 1:1 likeness with the actor while retaining cross-rig animation compatibility.\n\nTech Animation also supported many other teams with their initiatives, including animation implementation and debug, animated asset creation, and the toolsets around these teams. This included outsourced vendor toolset collation, generation, and support.\n\nFebruary saw the team kick off new initiatives to speed up the animator\u2019s workflow and offer new solutions to issues they have with some current pipelines. Firstly, an engine animation file importer that will give the team new ways to save or regenerate source data directly from engine animation, with the goal to be able to record animations in-engine and recreate them in Maya.\n\nSecondly, they\u2019re looking to create tooling to recreate and effectively import assets directly from the engine. They supported a loadout system in the Maya animation toolset that uses source data (Maya files) to add to and change the rig that the animators interact with. This allows them to animate to the attire that the character will be animated with in-game and achieve a higher fidelity of interaction.\n\nUI\nIn February, the UI team progressed with the visuals and underlying features of the new Starmap. This included creating an in-editor concept and implementing the controls and marker icon transitions.\n\nUI also began converting the visor and lens to Building Blocks, with many of the actor widgets being completed. Additional polish on the medical screens was undertaken, including new idle animations for the character model representing the player\u2019s body. The UI Feature team made the final polish and bug-fixing passes on refueling too.\n\nThe UI Tech team continued refactoring the AR marker system, with the UI artists creating different icons. The functionality and developer experience for Building Blocks was further developed, with a variety of feature requests completed throughout the month.\n\nVFX\nThroughout February, VFX worked closely with Flight Experience to implement effects for several key combat set pieces to give the players the best possible experience of a battle raging around them.\n\nThe VFX Tech Art team continued working on several destruction set pieces and began investigating the Houdini-based Mighty Bridge tool being developed by the Montreal team. This opens up several workflow opportunities. For example, allowing the team to generate gas cloud within the editor rather than Houdini. This is still in the prototype stage but the team are enjoying the prospect of faster iteration times on what is otherwise a very complex workflow.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2022-03-09T18:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"4 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 19:29:46","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":18579,"next_id":18581}}