{"data":{"id":18621,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: March 2022","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/18621-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-March-2022","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/18621","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/18621","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\nMarch 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 04:06:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits\n\nWelcome to March\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including updates to Vanduul and Human combat, the Archon mining facility, and NPC behaviors.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI Content Team\nLast month, the AI Content team began taking the AI behaviors from test levels and adding them to Squadron 42\u2019s locations.\n\nThe development of the deck-crew wildlines progressed well, with the devs taking placeholder dialogue created by the Narrative team and implementing it into the behavior. AI Content recently gained the ability to trigger wildlines when an NPC enters a usable. For example, an engineer saying, \u201cLet\u2019s see if I can fix this,\u201d as they inspect a damaged pipe. The next step is to have AI react audibly if a ship returns to the hangar without a wing or with heavy damage.\n\nUsing tech recently created by AI Tech, AI Content enabled the deck crew and utility AI behaviors to push movable consoles and trolleys around a hangar. This adds more variety to the background life and makes the location feel more distinctive.\n\nUntil recently, all \u2018red shirt' NPCs (procedurally generated characters with randomized faces and bodies) shared the same walk locomotion animations. In March, the team implemented 25 different walk cycles, which led to a significant visual improvement as approximately 70% of the game\u2019s population now walk and run with varying styles and speeds.\n\nThe AI Content team also progressed with several other features currently in development, including the eat and drink behavior that allows NPCs to obtain sustenance from usables, such as the chowline or vending machines. The leisure behavior progressed too, which controls how NPCs spend their downtime. For example, playing games on the arcade machine, talking with each other in the mess hall, or relaxing in their bunk watching TV.\n\nAI Feature Team\nAI Features continued to work on Vanduul AI, last month playtesting the first encounter to tighten up the gameplay experience. They then focused on the player shooting down Vanduul waves before they reach close-combat range, with ranged enemies providing covering fire.\n\n\u201cHaving a lot of the main building blocks in place is allowing us to focus on different encounters, making sure we are addressing not only the technical implementation but also the \u201cfun\u201d element of the game.\" AI Feature Team\n\nOn the Human combat side, AI Features wrapped up support for reactions to dead bodies and continued to work closely with Design to implement their tactic-based combat design. As many technical pieces now work reliably, the designers can dedicate time to polishing and tweaking tactics, with the current focus on three main roles: the defender, pusher, and flanker.\n\nThe team also polished the behavior that allows marines to use the firing range. This allows NPCs to go through the same training as the player, react to their results, and collect weapons from the master-at-arms or environment as necessary. Feature test maps were also created to help maintain the feature.\n\nAI Tech\nAI Tech began the month addressing feedback on the initial implementation of planetary navigation tech, which was then passed onto several teams for use in various scenarios.\n\nOne improvement is the addition of a priority manager to help calculate which areas require navigation mesh regeneration; the positions of players, NPCs, and vehicles are currently used to determine where nav-mesh is required.\n\nTo enable the designers to request realistic NPC reinforcements on planets via spaceship (as mentioned in February\u2019s report), the team began developing functionality to allow NPC pilots to spawn and adjust the dynamic landing and take-off splines. They also improved the spline creation process for smoother landings and takeoffs, and adjusted the tactical point system queries to work on planets and find the points where NPCs will move to as they disembark. Simple behaviors were implemented to showcase this new feature too.\n\nThe development of technology allowing NPCs to correctly push and operate movable entities, like trolleys, continued. The team also added further improvements for locomotion and grip-posing on trolleys with different layouts and began implementing parking spots for movable objects.\n\nSeveral fixes and improvements were implemented into the Subsumption editor tool, including a full graph map of outlier behaviors, a visual grid and snap functionality, the ability to quick-insert nodes at the mouse cursor position, and an easier way to drop connections from a node.\n\nAI Tech continued to refactor the NPC movement request system to allow for more consistent synchronization of states between server and client and to unify the way NPC movements are processed to reduce inconsistencies.\n\nAI Vehicle Features\nThe Vehicle Features team was working alongside AI on behaviors that will benefit both the PU and Squadron 42. The aim is to improve flight behaviors to be more dynamic and closer to how Human players behave in combat. They also focused on a ship tactic for fighters taking on capital ships.\n\nAnimation\nThroughout March, the Animation team worked on: zero-g movement, helmet equipping, standing at and using tables, work zones, blockouts for Big Benny\u2019s noodles, tactile chair animations, Vanduul combat, consoles, and cowering and surrender.\n\nThey also set up work for female spec-ops development, progressed with generic enter and exit improvements to help streamline the development of AI useables, and worked through the second pass finalization for the story cast characters.\n\nArt (Environment)\nEnvironment Art continued working on three key chapters alongside Design, while R&D and large-asset passes on several late-game chapters began. They also collaborated with the Flight Design team to create an appropriate sense of scale for the overworld spacescapes.\n\nCinematics\nCinematics predominately worked on three chapters during March; the first featuring the Archon mining facility, the second consisting of FPS sections on a planet, and the third being the opening chapter.\n\nFor the mining facility, they further developed the station's tram system used in several sequences. The station will be approximately 8km in length, with players using the tram to progress. This involved taking the tram cabin into the sequencer to animate its spline. The team are currently investigating how to get impulses from the tram\u2019s exterior to transfer to the physicalized entities and actors inside. The team also prototyped a scene involving a mining tick landing and then walking into the main hangar to be unloaded to a cargo train.\n\nFor the planet-side chapter, an older scene shown during a vertical slice stream was further polished, receiving improved animations, cameras, and player inclusion.\n\n\u201cWe wanted to have the player presence upped in this scene and decided to resurrect more of the original mo-cap for the player. In a lot of scenes, the player mo-cap was done as reference, with the aim to have full agency during the actual conversation. However, we found that during dramatic critical-path scenes, we can justify the player being \"locked in\" to help build the player's character and presence.\u201d Cinematics Team\n\nFor the opening chapter, the team created splines for fighters, capital ships, the player's hub ship, and more. They also further expanded the Vanduul fleet with newly created ship types and are currently progressing with the remaining battle sequences. They also added more hangar activity scenes that occur before a large battle.\n\nEngine\nIn March, the Physics team added a new soft-body deformation approach for character cloth. They also implemented island-wide, broad phase collision detection to reduce the number of external parts of entities to check against. The steering of vehicles' rear wheels at high speeds was reduced too.\n\n\nFor physical damage, initial changes were submitted for the tracking of breakable clusters. Furthermore, an action was added to move a spaceship entity to a specific state in a set amount of time. Lastly, a prototype using batch workers to step physics to improve thread wakeups and concurrency was implemented.\n\n\nOn the renderer, the transition to Gen12 continued. For example, the handling of decals in RTT passes was refactored, and various bugs caused by the enabling of brush rendering via Gen12 were fixed. Planet terrain rendering was optimized and support for the sunlight render node was added. Various APIs were improved to make them more consistent, efficient, and less verbose to use. The team also started refining the constant correctness of APIs when dealing with returned weak pointers. The shadow mask stage was also refactored to use transient constant buffers and remove reflected constants and binding constants via an explicit layout and buffer instead.\n\n\nPlanet terrain height maps and planet terrain shadows are now fully ported. Tessellation code for rendering planet terrain patches into height maps was improved for a more consistent triangle density. Meanwhile, a bug in the processing of scattering queries for clouds was revealed to be an application issue and fixed (it was previously worked around).\n\n\nOn the core engine side, more code was cleaned up using Include-What-You-Use. Additionally, more time was spent on integrating EASTL. Various optimizations were made, including updates to animated lights. More system updates (to the main camera and flagging of vis areas affected by the sun) were moved into parallel jobs to reduce the runtime cost of the main thread. Lastly, global locks were replaced with per-instance locks for fuzzy entity access.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe Feature team progressed with object container streaming overrides, with the aim to get an example use-case into the game. They also worked on a weapons kiosk screen for the master-at-arms, where players can see what weapons, attachments, and grenades are available along with descriptions and statistics. From there, players can ask the master-at-arms to provide them weapons to try out in the firing range or have them delivered to their weapons locker for use in the next mission.\n\nGameplay Story\nMarch saw the Gameplay Story team progress with some \"big ticket\" updates on complicated scenes. As part of this, they polished a walk-and-talk scene in chapter 5, improved a major scene in chapter 12, and progressed with a complicated scene in chapter 14 involving a medical gurney.\n\nThe team also continued to add new audio and facials to the random-to-NPC scenes. They delivered 8 this month, with only a couple remaining. A major scene in chapter 5 with multiple characters quickly boarding a tram was delivered before the team moved onto looking at how characters exit scenes early when the situation changes in-game.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nLast month, the Graphics team made updates to various shaders, with submits for the per-material auto C-buffer layout and minor improvements for Booleans as shader parameters.\n\nFor the ongoing Gen12 transition, the team fixed various bugs, such as shadow flickering, LOD ratio issues caused by the porting of skinned meshes, and multiple crash fixes. The team continued with the Gen12 scaleform porting, making modifications to the execution order and interface to match the current behavior of RTTM. Work also began on moving scattering query analytical shadows to Gen12.\n\nFor Vulkan, minor changes were made to descriptor indexing for internal bugs, while fixes were made to a crash relating to headless client metric gathering and warning updates for RenderDoc.\n\nSpecifically for SQ42, fixes were implemented for gas cloud-related bugs and the team continued to develop the retro reflective effect in LayerBlend.\n\nLevel Design\nThe FPS team completed the final gameplay implementation for several early chapters. Work is currently ongoing on moving a number of mechanics and chapters toward Alpha so that they can begin testing and balancing gameplay.\n\nThe Space\/Dogfight team supported the other design teams in bringing early chapters to vertical-slice quality. They also worked alongside the Art team to finalize the size and gameplay locations in the Odin system now that the quantum travel and quantum boost mechanics are closer to final.\n\nAlongside working collaboratively with the other design teams, Social Design continued their long-term task of implementing all in-game scenes.\n\nNarrative\nLast month, the Narrative team had several playthrough sessions with the Design team to look closely at the moment-to-moment experiences of two specific levels. This part of the refinement process ensures that the player\u2019s motivations are clear, that the emotions and tone of the world are properly conveyed, and allows the team to see if there are any further opportunities to create a more immersive experience. For example, to better highlight where a sniper nest was located, the team discussed a possible scene addition to draw the player\u2019s attention.\n\nThe team also began creating and implementing discoverable lore throughout the game to help players learn more about the narrative of the universe and provide further rewards for level exploration.\n\nFollowing up on last month\u2019s report, development progressed on a new NPC profession, with the initial script being written, adjusted, and recorded as scratch dialogue. The next step is to see how the temporary dialogue feels in-game and make adjustments.\n\nFinally for Narrative, mo-cap sessions were concluded and selects were made to be processed for implementation.\n\nQA\nQA continued to support the Cinematics team by reproducing issues found during development and chasing up outstanding bugs. They also focused on AI bug validation and refactored the JIRA process to help organize existing and future tasks.\n\nTech Animation\nThe Technical Animation team spent the month iterating on their rework of the internal DNA system. This update will allow them to expand the gene pool used to create believable heads in-game and ultimately offer more variety to players.\n\nAlongside this, they revisited several head assets requiring updates and, in some cases, a complete overhaul. The ongoing head-scanning initiative is currently supplying the team with new archetypes that are being extracted and turned into full, game-ready facial rigs.\n\nTech Animation also maintained the existing animation pipeline alongside spearheading initiatives to supersede older technology to expedite in-house workflows.\n\nUI\nThe UI designers and artists worked alongside the system designers on pre-production for a variety of screens, including the layout and visuals of several interactive screens throughout the game. An improved concept for the door UI panels was signed off too.\n\nThe team continued to update the design and look of the mobiGlas and Starmap to fit the feel and gameplay of SQ42. The visor and lens were also set up to run in Building Blocks, which gives the team new optimizations and lays the groundwork for the Actor Feature team to add new features.\n\nVFX\nMarch saw VFX complete an implementation pass on a key location, with involved fully populating the location with representative effects that they\u2019ll return to later to polish and fully optimize.\n\nThey also continued to fine-tune several important weapon effects, including rendering a new muzzle-flash firing texture sequence from Houdini to help emphasize a weapon\u2019s power.\n\nGreat progress was made on a key destruction sequence utilizing some clever simulation techniques to help give the appearance of metal bending and tearing rather than fracturing like stone.\n\nFinally, the VFX Tech Art team continued to explore the options that the Montreal team\u2019s Mighty Bridge Houdini interface offers.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION","de_DE":"Geschwader 42 Monatsbericht\nM\u00e4rz 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 04:06:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Geschwader 42 Rekruten\n\nWillkommen zum Entwicklungsbericht f\u00fcr das Geschwader 42 im M\u00e4rz. Anbei findest du Details zu den neuesten Fortschritten in der Kampagne, einschlie\u00dflich Updates f\u00fcr den Kampf zwischen Vanduul und Menschen, die Archon-Minenanlage und das Verhalten der NSCs.\n\nVielen Dank f\u00fcr eure anhaltende Unterst\u00fctzung von Squadron 42.\n\nMit freundlichen Gr\u00fc\u00dfen,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nKI-Inhaltsteam\nLetzten Monat hat das KI-Inhaltsteam damit begonnen, die KI-Verhaltensweisen aus den Testebenen zu \u00fcbernehmen und zu den Schaupl\u00e4tzen von Squadron 42 hinzuzuf\u00fcgen.\n\nDie Entwicklung der Wildlines f\u00fcr die Deckcrew kam gut voran. Die Entwickler haben Platzhalterdialoge, die vom Narrative Team erstellt wurden, in das Verhalten eingebaut. Die KI-Inhalte k\u00f6nnen seit kurzem Wildlines ausl\u00f6sen, wenn ein NSC einen nutzbaren Bereich betritt. Zum Beispiel, wenn ein Ingenieur sagt: \"Mal sehen, ob ich das reparieren kann\", w\u00e4hrend er ein besch\u00e4digtes Rohr untersucht. Der n\u00e4chste Schritt ist, dass die KI h\u00f6rbar reagiert, wenn ein Schiff ohne Fl\u00fcgel oder mit schweren Sch\u00e4den in den Hangar zur\u00fcckkehrt.\n\nMithilfe der k\u00fcrzlich von AI Tech entwickelten Technologie hat AI Content die Deckscrew und die KI der Versorgungsbetriebe in die Lage versetzt, bewegliche Konsolen und Karren im Hangar zu schieben. Das bringt mehr Abwechslung in das Hintergrundleben und macht den Ort unverwechselbarer.\n\nBis vor Kurzem hatten alle \"Rothemden\"-NPCs (prozedural generierte Charaktere mit zuf\u00e4lligen Gesichtern und K\u00f6rpern) die gleichen Bewegungsanimationen. Im M\u00e4rz implementierte das Team 25 verschiedene Laufzyklen, was zu einer deutlichen visuellen Verbesserung f\u00fchrte, da nun etwa 70% der Spielbev\u00f6lkerung mit unterschiedlichen Stilen und Geschwindigkeiten gehen und laufen.\n\nDas Team f\u00fcr KI-Inhalte hat auch einige andere Funktionen weiterentwickelt, die sich derzeit in der Entwicklung befinden, darunter das Ess- und Trinkverhalten, das es NSCs erm\u00f6glicht, sich an der Essensausgabe oder an Automaten zu ern\u00e4hren. Auch das Freizeitverhalten, mit dem die NSCs ihre Freizeit verbringen, wurde weiterentwickelt. So k\u00f6nnen sie zum Beispiel am Spielautomaten spielen, in der Kantine miteinander reden oder in ihrer Koje vor dem Fernseher entspannen.\n\nKI-Feature-Team\nDas KI-Team hat weiter an der KI der Vanduul gearbeitet und im letzten Monat die erste Begegnung getestet, um das Spielerlebnis zu verbessern. Anschlie\u00dfend konzentrierten sie sich darauf, dass der Spieler die Vanduul-Wellen abschie\u00dft, bevor sie in Nahkampfreichweite kommen, w\u00e4hrend die Fernk\u00e4mpfer f\u00fcr Feuerschutz sorgen.\n\n\"Wir haben viele der Hauptbausteine fertiggestellt und k\u00f6nnen uns nun auf verschiedene Begegnungen konzentrieren, um sicherzustellen, dass wir nicht nur die technische Umsetzung, sondern auch den Spa\u00df am Spiel im Blick haben. KI-Feature-Team\n\nAuf der Seite der menschlichen K\u00e4mpfe haben die KI-Features die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Reaktionen auf Leichen abgeschlossen und weiter eng mit dem Designteam zusammengearbeitet, um ihr taktikbasiertes Kampfdesign umzusetzen. Da viele technische Komponenten nun zuverl\u00e4ssig funktionieren, k\u00f6nnen sich die Designerinnen und Designer dem Feinschliff und der Optimierung der Taktiken widmen, wobei der Schwerpunkt derzeit auf drei Hauptrollen liegt: dem Verteidiger, dem Schieber und dem Flanker.\n\nDas Team hat auch das Verhalten der Marines \u00fcberarbeitet, die den Schie\u00dfstand benutzen. So k\u00f6nnen NSCs das gleiche Training wie der Spieler absolvieren, auf ihre Ergebnisse reagieren und bei Bedarf Waffen vom Waffenmeister oder der Umgebung einsammeln. Au\u00dferdem wurden Testkarten f\u00fcr das Feature erstellt, um es zu pflegen.\n\nKI-Technik\nZu Beginn des Monats befasste sich die KI-Abteilung mit dem Feedback zur anf\u00e4nglichen Implementierung der Planetennavigationstechnologie, die dann an mehrere Teams zur Verwendung in verschiedenen Szenarien weitergegeben wurde.\n\nEine Verbesserung ist die Hinzuf\u00fcgung eines Priorit\u00e4tsmanagers, mit dessen Hilfe berechnet werden kann, welche Gebiete eine Regeneration des Navigationsnetzes ben\u00f6tigen. Die Positionen von Spielern, NSCs und Fahrzeugen werden derzeit verwendet, um zu bestimmen, wo das Navigationsnetz ben\u00f6tigt wird.\n\nUm den Designern die M\u00f6glichkeit zu geben, realistische NSC-Verst\u00e4rkungen auf Planeten per Raumschiff anzufordern (wie im Bericht vom Februar erw\u00e4hnt), begann das Team mit der Entwicklung von Funktionen, die es NSC-Piloten erm\u00f6glichen, zu spawnen und die dynamischen Lande- und Startsplines anzupassen. Au\u00dferdem verbesserten sie die Spline-Erstellung f\u00fcr sanftere Landungen und Starts und passten die Abfragen des taktischen Punktesystems so an, dass sie auf Planeten funktionieren und die Punkte finden, zu denen sich NSCs bewegen, wenn sie von Bord gehen. Au\u00dferdem wurden einfache Verhaltensweisen implementiert, um diese neue Funktion zu pr\u00e4sentieren.\n\nDie Entwicklung von Technologien, die es NSCs erm\u00f6glichen, bewegliche Objekte wie Trolleys korrekt zu schieben und zu bedienen, wurde fortgesetzt. Das Team f\u00fcgte au\u00dferdem weitere Verbesserungen f\u00fcr die Fortbewegung und das Greifen von Trolleys mit verschiedenen Layouts hinzu und begann mit der Implementierung von Parkpl\u00e4tzen f\u00fcr bewegliche Objekte.\n\nIm Subsumption-Editor wurden mehrere Korrekturen und Verbesserungen vorgenommen, darunter eine vollst\u00e4ndige Graphikkarte f\u00fcr Ausrei\u00dferverhalten, ein visuelles Raster und eine Fangfunktion, die M\u00f6glichkeit, Knoten an der Position des Mauszeigers schnell einzuf\u00fcgen, und eine einfachere M\u00f6glichkeit, Verbindungen von einem Knoten zu l\u00f6schen.\n\nAI Tech hat das System zur Anforderung von NSC-Bewegungen weiter \u00fcberarbeitet, um eine konsistentere Synchronisierung von Zust\u00e4nden zwischen Server und Client zu erm\u00f6glichen und die Verarbeitung von NSC-Bewegungen zu vereinheitlichen, um Inkonsistenzen zu verringern.\n\nKI-Fahrzeugfunktionen\nDas Team f\u00fcr Fahrzeugfunktionen hat zusammen mit der KI an Verhaltensweisen gearbeitet, die sowohl der PU als auch dem Geschwader 42 zugute kommen werden. Das Ziel ist es, das Flugverhalten zu verbessern, damit es dynamischer wird und dem Verhalten menschlicher Spieler im Kampf n\u00e4her kommt. Au\u00dferdem haben sie sich auf eine Schiffstaktik f\u00fcr J\u00e4ger konzentriert, die es mit Gro\u00dfkampfschiffen aufnehmen.\n\nAnimation\nIm M\u00e4rz hat das Animationsteam an folgenden Themen gearbeitet: Schwerelosigkeit, Helmausr\u00fcstung, Stehen und Benutzen von Tischen, Arbeitsbereiche, Blockouts f\u00fcr Big Benny's Nudeln, taktile Stuhlanimationen, Vanduul-Kampf, Konsolen sowie Kauern und Kapitulation.\n\nAu\u00dferdem haben sie die Entwicklung der weiblichen Spezialeinheiten vorbereitet, Verbesserungen an den allgemeinen Ein- und Ausg\u00e4ngen vorgenommen, um die Entwicklung der KI zu vereinfachen, und den zweiten Durchgang f\u00fcr die Charaktere der Geschichte fertiggestellt.\n\nKunst (Umwelt)\nDas Team f\u00fcr Umweltgestaltung arbeitete weiter an drei wichtigen Kapiteln an der Seite des Designteams, w\u00e4hrend die Forschungs- und Entwicklungsarbeiten und die Arbeiten an mehreren Kapiteln des sp\u00e4ten Spiels begannen. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie mit dem Flight Design Team zusammen, um ein angemessenes Gef\u00fchl f\u00fcr die Gr\u00f6\u00dfe der Weltraumlandschaften zu schaffen.\n\nCinematics\nIm M\u00e4rz arbeiteten die Cinematiker\/innen haupts\u00e4chlich an drei Kapiteln: dem ersten mit der Archon-Bergbauanlage, dem zweiten, das aus FPS-Abschnitten auf einem Planeten besteht, und dem dritten, dem Er\u00f6ffnungskapitel.\n\nF\u00fcr die Minenanlage haben sie das Stra\u00dfenbahnsystem der Station weiterentwickelt, das in mehreren Sequenzen verwendet wird. Die Station wird etwa 8 km lang sein, und die Spieler\/innen m\u00fcssen die Stra\u00dfenbahn benutzen, um voranzukommen. Dazu mussten sie die Stra\u00dfenbahnkabine in den Sequenzer bringen, um ihren Spline zu animieren. Das Team untersucht derzeit, wie die Impulse von der Stra\u00dfenbahn auf die physischen Objekte und Akteure im Inneren \u00fcbertragen werden k\u00f6nnen. Das Team hat auch eine Szene entwickelt, in der ein Minen-Tick landet und dann in den Haupthangar geht, um auf einen G\u00fcterzug umgeladen zu werden.\n\nF\u00fcr das Kapitel auf der Planetenseite wurde eine \u00e4ltere Szene, die w\u00e4hrend eines vertikalen Slice-Streams gezeigt wurde, weiter aufpoliert und mit verbesserten Animationen, Kameras und der Einbeziehung der Spieler versehen.\n\n\"Wir wollten die Spielerpr\u00e4senz in dieser Szene erh\u00f6hen und beschlossen, mehr von der urspr\u00fcnglichen Mo-Cap f\u00fcr den Spieler wieder aufleben zu lassen. In vielen Szenen diente das Mo-Cap des Spielers als Referenz, damit er w\u00e4hrend des eigentlichen Gespr\u00e4chs die volle Handlungsf\u00e4higkeit hat. Wir haben jedoch festgestellt, dass wir es in dramatischen Szenen mit kritischem Verlauf rechtfertigen k\u00f6nnen, dass der Spieler \"eingesperrt\" ist, um den Charakter und die Pr\u00e4senz des Spielers zu st\u00e4rken.\" Cinematics Team\n\nF\u00fcr das Er\u00f6ffnungskapitel hat das Team Splines f\u00fcr Raumj\u00e4ger, Gro\u00dfkampfschiffe, das Hauptschiff des Spielers und mehr erstellt. Au\u00dferdem haben sie die Flotte der Vanduul mit neu erstellten Schiffstypen erweitert und arbeiten derzeit an den restlichen Kampfsequenzen. Sie f\u00fcgten auch weitere Szenen mit Hangaraktivit\u00e4ten hinzu, die vor einer gro\u00dfen Schlacht stattfinden.\n\nMotor\nIm M\u00e4rz f\u00fcgte das Physikteam einen neuen Ansatz f\u00fcr die Verformung von Stofffiguren hinzu. Au\u00dferdem wurde eine inselweite, breit angelegte Phasen-Kollisionserkennung implementiert, um die Anzahl der zu pr\u00fcfenden externen Teile von Entit\u00e4ten zu reduzieren. Die Lenkung der Hinterr\u00e4der von Fahrzeugen bei hohen Geschwindigkeiten wurde ebenfalls reduziert.\n\n\nF\u00fcr physischen Schaden wurden erste \u00c4nderungen f\u00fcr die Verfolgung von zerbrechlichen Clustern eingereicht. Au\u00dferdem wurde eine Aktion hinzugef\u00fcgt, um ein Raumschiff in einer bestimmten Zeit in einen bestimmten Zustand zu versetzen. Schlie\u00dflich wurde ein Prototyp implementiert, der Batch-Worker f\u00fcr die Physik einsetzt, um das Aufwachen von Threads und die Gleichzeitigkeit zu verbessern.\n\n\nBeim Renderer wurde der \u00dcbergang zu Gen12 fortgesetzt. So wurde zum Beispiel die Behandlung von Abziehbildern in RTT-Durchl\u00e4ufen \u00fcberarbeitet und verschiedene Fehler behoben, die durch die Aktivierung des Brush-Renderings mit Gen12 verursacht wurden. Das Rendering des Planetengel\u00e4ndes wurde optimiert und die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr den Sonnenlicht-Rendering-Knoten wurde hinzugef\u00fcgt. Verschiedene APIs wurden verbessert, um sie konsistenter, effizienter und weniger langatmig zu machen. Das Team hat auch damit begonnen, die konstante Korrektheit der APIs beim Umgang mit zur\u00fcckgegebenen schwachen Zeigern zu verfeinern. Die Schattenmaskenstufe wurde ebenfalls \u00fcberarbeitet, um transiente Konstantenpuffer zu verwenden und stattdessen reflektierte Konstanten und Bindungskonstanten \u00fcber ein explizites Layout und Puffer zu entfernen.\n\n\nDie H\u00f6henkarten f\u00fcr das Planetengel\u00e4nde und die Schatten des Planetengel\u00e4ndes sind nun vollst\u00e4ndig portiert. Der Tessellierungscode f\u00fcr das Rendern von Planetengel\u00e4ndest\u00fccken in H\u00f6henkarten wurde verbessert, um eine einheitlichere Dreiecksdichte zu erreichen. Au\u00dferdem wurde ein Fehler bei der Verarbeitung von Streuungsabfragen f\u00fcr Wolken als Anwendungsproblem erkannt und behoben (er wurde zuvor umgangen).\n\n\nAuf der Seite der Kern-Engine wurde mehr Code mit Include-What-You-Use bereinigt. Au\u00dferdem wurde mehr Zeit auf die Integration von EASTL verwendet. Es wurden verschiedene Optimierungen vorgenommen, darunter auch Aktualisierungen der animierten Lichter. Weitere Systemaktualisierungen (f\u00fcr die Hauptkamera und die Markierung der von der Sonne betroffenen Sichtbereiche) wurden in parallele Jobs ausgelagert, um die Laufzeitkosten des Hauptthreads zu reduzieren. Schlie\u00dflich wurden globale Sperren durch Sperren pro Instanz f\u00fcr den unscharfen Zugriff auf Entit\u00e4ten ersetzt.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nDas Feature-Team arbeitete weiter an der \u00dcberschreibung von Objekt-Containern, um einen Anwendungsfall ins Spiel zu bringen. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie an einem Waffenkiosk f\u00fcr den Waffenmeister, auf dem die Spieler\/innen sehen k\u00f6nnen, welche Waffen, Aufs\u00e4tze und Granaten verf\u00fcgbar sind, sowie Beschreibungen und Statistiken. Von dort aus k\u00f6nnen die Spieler\/innen den Waffenmeister bitten, ihnen Waffen zur Verf\u00fcgung zu stellen, die sie auf dem Schie\u00dfplatz ausprobieren oder in ihren Waffenkasten liefern lassen k\u00f6nnen, um sie in der n\u00e4chsten Mission einzusetzen.\n\nGameplay Story\nIm M\u00e4rz hat das Gameplay-Story-Team einige \"gro\u00dfe\" Updates f\u00fcr komplizierte Szenen vorgenommen. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die \u00dcberarbeitung einer Gespr\u00e4chsszene in Kapitel 5, die Verbesserung einer wichtigen Szene in Kapitel 12 und eine komplizierte Szene in Kapitel 14, in der es um eine medizinische Trage geht.\n\nAu\u00dferdem f\u00fcgte das Team den Zufalls-NPC-Szenen neues Audio und neue Gesichtsz\u00fcge hinzu. Diesen Monat wurden 8 Szenen fertiggestellt, von denen nur noch ein paar \u00fcbrig sind. Eine wichtige Szene in Kapitel 5, in der mehrere Charaktere schnell in eine Stra\u00dfenbahn einsteigen, wurde fertiggestellt, bevor sich das Team damit besch\u00e4ftigte, wie Charaktere Szenen fr\u00fchzeitig verlassen, wenn sich die Situation im Spiel \u00e4ndert.\n\nGrafik & VFX-Programmierung\nIm letzten Monat hat das Grafikteam verschiedene Shader aktualisiert und das automatische C-Buffer-Layout pro Material sowie kleinere Verbesserungen f\u00fcr Boolesche Parameter in Shadern vorgelegt.\n\nF\u00fcr die laufende Gen12-Umstellung hat das Team verschiedene Fehler behoben, z. B. Schattenflimmern, Probleme mit dem LOD-Verh\u00e4ltnis, die durch die Portierung von Skinned Meshes verursacht wurden, und mehrere Absturzbehebungen. Das Team fuhr mit der Portierung der Gen12-Skalenform fort und nahm \u00c4nderungen an der Ausf\u00fchrungsreihenfolge und der Schnittstelle vor, um sie an das aktuelle Verhalten von RTTM anzupassen. Au\u00dferdem wurde damit begonnen, die analytischen Schatten der Streuungsabfrage auf Gen12 zu \u00fcbertragen.\n\nF\u00fcr Vulkan wurden kleinere \u00c4nderungen an der Deskriptor-Indizierung vorgenommen, um interne Fehler zu beheben, w\u00e4hrend ein Absturz im Zusammenhang mit dem Sammeln von Metriken f\u00fcr den Headless-Client behoben wurde und Warnmeldungen f\u00fcr RenderDoc aktualisiert wurden.\n\nSpeziell f\u00fcr SQ42 wurden Fehler im Zusammenhang mit Gaswolken behoben und das Team entwickelte den Retro-Reflexionseffekt in LayerBlend weiter.\n\nLevel-Design\nDas FPS-Team hat die endg\u00fcltige Gameplay-Implementierung f\u00fcr mehrere fr\u00fche Kapitel abgeschlossen. Derzeit wird daran gearbeitet, einige Mechaniken und Kapitel in die Alpha-Phase zu \u00fcberf\u00fchren, um mit dem Testen und Ausbalancieren des Gameplays beginnen zu k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDas Space\/Dogfight-Team unterst\u00fctzte die anderen Design-Teams dabei, fr\u00fche Kapitel auf die Qualit\u00e4t von Vertical Slices zu bringen. Au\u00dferdem haben sie mit dem Art-Team zusammengearbeitet, um die Gr\u00f6\u00dfe und die Schaupl\u00e4tze im Odin-System zu finalisieren, nachdem die Mechanik der Quantenreise und des Quantenschubs fast fertig ist.\n\nNeben der Zusammenarbeit mit den anderen Designteams setzte das Social Design seine langfristige Aufgabe fort, alle Szenen im Spiel zu implementieren.\n\nNarrative\nIm letzten Monat hat das Narrative Team mehrere Playthrough-Sitzungen mit dem Design-Team abgehalten, um die Moment-zu-Moment-Erfahrungen von zwei bestimmten Levels genau unter die Lupe zu nehmen. Dieser Teil des Verfeinerungsprozesses stellt sicher, dass die Motivationen der Spieler\/innen klar sind, dass die Emotionen und der Ton der Welt richtig vermittelt werden und erm\u00f6glicht es dem Team zu sehen, ob es noch weitere M\u00f6glichkeiten gibt, das Erlebnis noch intensiver zu gestalten. Um zum Beispiel besser hervorzuheben, wo sich ein Scharfsch\u00fctzennest befand, diskutierte das Team eine m\u00f6gliche Erg\u00e4nzung der Szene, um die Aufmerksamkeit des Spielers auf sich zu ziehen.\n\nDas Team begann au\u00dferdem mit der Erstellung und Implementierung von auffindbarem Wissen im Spiel, damit die Spieler\/innen mehr \u00fcber die Geschichte des Universums erfahren und weitere Belohnungen f\u00fcr die Erkundung der Level erhalten.\n\nAnkn\u00fcpfend an den Bericht vom letzten Monat wurde die Entwicklung eines neuen NSC-Berufs vorangetrieben und das erste Skript geschrieben, angepasst und als Scratch-Dialog aufgenommen. Der n\u00e4chste Schritt ist, zu sehen, wie sich der vorl\u00e4ufige Dialog im Spiel anf\u00fchlt und Anpassungen vorzunehmen.\n\nIm Bereich Narrative wurden die Mo-Cap-Sitzungen abgeschlossen und eine Auswahl getroffen, die nun f\u00fcr die Umsetzung bearbeitet wird.\n\nQA\nDie QA unterst\u00fctzte das Cinematics-Team weiterhin, indem sie Probleme reproduzierte, die w\u00e4hrend der Entwicklung aufgetreten waren, und sich um ausstehende Bugs k\u00fcmmerte. Au\u00dferdem konzentrierten sie sich auf die Validierung von KI-Fehlern und \u00fcberarbeiteten den JIRA-Prozess, um bestehende und zuk\u00fcnftige Aufgaben zu organisieren.\n\nTechnische Animation\nDas Team der Technischen Animation hat den Monat damit verbracht, die \u00dcberarbeitung des internen DNA-Systems voranzutreiben. Mit diesem Update k\u00f6nnen sie den Genpool erweitern, um glaubw\u00fcrdige K\u00f6pfe im Spiel zu erstellen und den Spielern mehr Vielfalt zu bieten.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden mehrere K\u00f6pfe \u00fcberarbeitet, die aktualisiert und in einigen F\u00e4llen sogar komplett \u00fcberarbeitet wurden. Die laufende Kopfscan-Initiative versorgt das Team derzeit mit neuen Archetypen, die extrahiert und in vollst\u00e4ndige, spielfertige Gesichts-Rigs verwandelt werden.\n\nTech Animation hat auch die bestehende Animationspipeline gepflegt und gleichzeitig Initiativen zur Abl\u00f6sung \u00e4lterer Technologien eingeleitet, um die internen Arbeitsabl\u00e4ufe zu beschleunigen.\n\nUI\nDie UI-Designer und -K\u00fcnstler arbeiteten gemeinsam mit den Systemdesignern an der Vorproduktion einer Reihe von Bildschirmen, einschlie\u00dflich des Layouts und der visuellen Gestaltung mehrerer interaktiver Bildschirme im Spiel. Ein verbessertes Konzept f\u00fcr die T\u00fcr-UI-Panels wurde ebenfalls abgesegnet.\n\nDas Team aktualisierte weiterhin das Design und den Look des mobiGlas und der Starmap, um sie an das Spielgef\u00fchl und den Spielablauf von SQ42 anzupassen. Das Visier und die Linse wurden au\u00dferdem so eingerichtet, dass sie in Building Blocks laufen, was dem Team neue Optimierungen erm\u00f6glicht und die Grundlage daf\u00fcr schafft, dass das Actor Feature Team neue Funktionen hinzuf\u00fcgen kann.\n\nVFX\nIm M\u00e4rz hat das VFX-Team einen Implementierungsdurchgang an einem wichtigen Schauplatz abgeschlossen. Dabei wurde der Schauplatz mit repr\u00e4sentativen Effekten ausgestattet, die sp\u00e4ter noch einmal \u00fcberarbeitet und optimiert werden.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde die Feinabstimmung mehrerer wichtiger Waffeneffekte fortgesetzt, einschlie\u00dflich des Renderns einer neuen M\u00fcndungsfeuer-Textursequenz aus Houdini, um die Kraft einer Waffe zu unterstreichen.\n\nGro\u00dfe Fortschritte wurden bei einer wichtigen Zerst\u00f6rungssequenz gemacht, bei der einige clevere Simulationstechniken eingesetzt wurden, um den Eindruck zu erwecken, dass sich Metall verbiegt und rei\u00dft, anstatt wie Stein zu zerbrechen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich erkundete das VFX Tech Art Team weiter die M\u00f6glichkeiten, die das Mighty Bridge Houdini Interface des Montreal Teams bietet.\n\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...\n\/\/ ENDE DER \u00dcBERTRAGUNG","zh_CN":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report\nMarch 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 04:06:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits\n\nWelcome to March\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including updates to Vanduul and Human combat, the Archon mining facility, and NPC behaviors.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI Content Team\nLast month, the AI Content team began taking the AI behaviors from test levels and adding them to Squadron 42\u2019s locations.\n\nThe development of the deck-crew wildlines progressed well, with the devs taking placeholder dialogue created by the Narrative team and implementing it into the behavior. AI Content recently gained the ability to trigger wildlines when an NPC enters a usable. For example, an engineer saying, \u201cLet\u2019s see if I can fix this,\u201d as they inspect a damaged pipe. The next step is to have AI react audibly if a ship returns to the hangar without a wing or with heavy damage.\n\nUsing tech recently created by AI Tech, AI Content enabled the deck crew and utility AI behaviors to push movable consoles and trolleys around a hangar. This adds more variety to the background life and makes the location feel more distinctive.\n\nUntil recently, all \u2018red shirt' NPCs (procedurally generated characters with randomized faces and bodies) shared the same walk locomotion animations. In March, the team implemented 25 different walk cycles, which led to a significant visual improvement as approximately 70% of the game\u2019s population now walk and run with varying styles and speeds.\n\nThe AI Content team also progressed with several other features currently in development, including the eat and drink behavior that allows NPCs to obtain sustenance from usables, such as the chowline or vending machines. The leisure behavior progressed too, which controls how NPCs spend their downtime. For example, playing games on the arcade machine, talking with each other in the mess hall, or relaxing in their bunk watching TV.\n\nAI Feature Team\nAI Features continued to work on Vanduul AI, last month playtesting the first encounter to tighten up the gameplay experience. They then focused on the player shooting down Vanduul waves before they reach close-combat range, with ranged enemies providing covering fire.\n\n\u201cHaving a lot of the main building blocks in place is allowing us to focus on different encounters, making sure we are addressing not only the technical implementation but also the \u201cfun\u201d element of the game.\" AI Feature Team\n\nOn the Human combat side, AI Features wrapped up support for reactions to dead bodies and continued to work closely with Design to implement their tactic-based combat design. As many technical pieces now work reliably, the designers can dedicate time to polishing and tweaking tactics, with the current focus on three main roles: the defender, pusher, and flanker.\n\nThe team also polished the behavior that allows marines to use the firing range. This allows NPCs to go through the same training as the player, react to their results, and collect weapons from the master-at-arms or environment as necessary. Feature test maps were also created to help maintain the feature.\n\nAI Tech\nAI Tech began the month addressing feedback on the initial implementation of planetary navigation tech, which was then passed onto several teams for use in various scenarios.\n\nOne improvement is the addition of a priority manager to help calculate which areas require navigation mesh regeneration; the positions of players, NPCs, and vehicles are currently used to determine where nav-mesh is required.\n\nTo enable the designers to request realistic NPC reinforcements on planets via spaceship (as mentioned in February\u2019s report), the team began developing functionality to allow NPC pilots to spawn and adjust the dynamic landing and take-off splines. They also improved the spline creation process for smoother landings and takeoffs, and adjusted the tactical point system queries to work on planets and find the points where NPCs will move to as they disembark. Simple behaviors were implemented to showcase this new feature too.\n\nThe development of technology allowing NPCs to correctly push and operate movable entities, like trolleys, continued. The team also added further improvements for locomotion and grip-posing on trolleys with different layouts and began implementing parking spots for movable objects.\n\nSeveral fixes and improvements were implemented into the Subsumption editor tool, including a full graph map of outlier behaviors, a visual grid and snap functionality, the ability to quick-insert nodes at the mouse cursor position, and an easier way to drop connections from a node.\n\nAI Tech continued to refactor the NPC movement request system to allow for more consistent synchronization of states between server and client and to unify the way NPC movements are processed to reduce inconsistencies.\n\nAI Vehicle Features\nThe Vehicle Features team was working alongside AI on behaviors that will benefit both the PU and Squadron 42. The aim is to improve flight behaviors to be more dynamic and closer to how Human players behave in combat. They also focused on a ship tactic for fighters taking on capital ships.\n\nAnimation\nThroughout March, the Animation team worked on: zero-g movement, helmet equipping, standing at and using tables, work zones, blockouts for Big Benny\u2019s noodles, tactile chair animations, Vanduul combat, consoles, and cowering and surrender.\n\nThey also set up work for female spec-ops development, progressed with generic enter and exit improvements to help streamline the development of AI useables, and worked through the second pass finalization for the story cast characters.\n\nArt (Environment)\nEnvironment Art continued working on three key chapters alongside Design, while R&D and large-asset passes on several late-game chapters began. They also collaborated with the Flight Design team to create an appropriate sense of scale for the overworld spacescapes.\n\nCinematics\nCinematics predominately worked on three chapters during March; the first featuring the Archon mining facility, the second consisting of FPS sections on a planet, and the third being the opening chapter.\n\nFor the mining facility, they further developed the station's tram system used in several sequences. The station will be approximately 8km in length, with players using the tram to progress. This involved taking the tram cabin into the sequencer to animate its spline. The team are currently investigating how to get impulses from the tram\u2019s exterior to transfer to the physicalized entities and actors inside. The team also prototyped a scene involving a mining tick landing and then walking into the main hangar to be unloaded to a cargo train.\n\nFor the planet-side chapter, an older scene shown during a vertical slice stream was further polished, receiving improved animations, cameras, and player inclusion.\n\n\u201cWe wanted to have the player presence upped in this scene and decided to resurrect more of the original mo-cap for the player. In a lot of scenes, the player mo-cap was done as reference, with the aim to have full agency during the actual conversation. However, we found that during dramatic critical-path scenes, we can justify the player being \"locked in\" to help build the player's character and presence.\u201d Cinematics Team\n\nFor the opening chapter, the team created splines for fighters, capital ships, the player's hub ship, and more. They also further expanded the Vanduul fleet with newly created ship types and are currently progressing with the remaining battle sequences. They also added more hangar activity scenes that occur before a large battle.\n\nEngine\nIn March, the Physics team added a new soft-body deformation approach for character cloth. They also implemented island-wide, broad phase collision detection to reduce the number of external parts of entities to check against. The steering of vehicles' rear wheels at high speeds was reduced too.\n\n\nFor physical damage, initial changes were submitted for the tracking of breakable clusters. Furthermore, an action was added to move a spaceship entity to a specific state in a set amount of time. Lastly, a prototype using batch workers to step physics to improve thread wakeups and concurrency was implemented.\n\n\nOn the renderer, the transition to Gen12 continued. For example, the handling of decals in RTT passes was refactored, and various bugs caused by the enabling of brush rendering via Gen12 were fixed. Planet terrain rendering was optimized and support for the sunlight render node was added. Various APIs were improved to make them more consistent, efficient, and less verbose to use. The team also started refining the constant correctness of APIs when dealing with returned weak pointers. The shadow mask stage was also refactored to use transient constant buffers and remove reflected constants and binding constants via an explicit layout and buffer instead.\n\n\nPlanet terrain height maps and planet terrain shadows are now fully ported. Tessellation code for rendering planet terrain patches into height maps was improved for a more consistent triangle density. Meanwhile, a bug in the processing of scattering queries for clouds was revealed to be an application issue and fixed (it was previously worked around).\n\n\nOn the core engine side, more code was cleaned up using Include-What-You-Use. Additionally, more time was spent on integrating EASTL. Various optimizations were made, including updates to animated lights. More system updates (to the main camera and flagging of vis areas affected by the sun) were moved into parallel jobs to reduce the runtime cost of the main thread. Lastly, global locks were replaced with per-instance locks for fuzzy entity access.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe Feature team progressed with object container streaming overrides, with the aim to get an example use-case into the game. They also worked on a weapons kiosk screen for the master-at-arms, where players can see what weapons, attachments, and grenades are available along with descriptions and statistics. From there, players can ask the master-at-arms to provide them weapons to try out in the firing range or have them delivered to their weapons locker for use in the next mission.\n\nGameplay Story\nMarch saw the Gameplay Story team progress with some \"big ticket\" updates on complicated scenes. As part of this, they polished a walk-and-talk scene in chapter 5, improved a major scene in chapter 12, and progressed with a complicated scene in chapter 14 involving a medical gurney.\n\nThe team also continued to add new audio and facials to the random-to-NPC scenes. They delivered 8 this month, with only a couple remaining. A major scene in chapter 5 with multiple characters quickly boarding a tram was delivered before the team moved onto looking at how characters exit scenes early when the situation changes in-game.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nLast month, the Graphics team made updates to various shaders, with submits for the per-material auto C-buffer layout and minor improvements for Booleans as shader parameters.\n\nFor the ongoing Gen12 transition, the team fixed various bugs, such as shadow flickering, LOD ratio issues caused by the porting of skinned meshes, and multiple crash fixes. The team continued with the Gen12 scaleform porting, making modifications to the execution order and interface to match the current behavior of RTTM. Work also began on moving scattering query analytical shadows to Gen12.\n\nFor Vulkan, minor changes were made to descriptor indexing for internal bugs, while fixes were made to a crash relating to headless client metric gathering and warning updates for RenderDoc.\n\nSpecifically for SQ42, fixes were implemented for gas cloud-related bugs and the team continued to develop the retro reflective effect in LayerBlend.\n\nLevel Design\nThe FPS team completed the final gameplay implementation for several early chapters. Work is currently ongoing on moving a number of mechanics and chapters toward Alpha so that they can begin testing and balancing gameplay.\n\nThe Space\/Dogfight team supported the other design teams in bringing early chapters to vertical-slice quality. They also worked alongside the Art team to finalize the size and gameplay locations in the Odin system now that the quantum travel and quantum boost mechanics are closer to final.\n\nAlongside working collaboratively with the other design teams, Social Design continued their long-term task of implementing all in-game scenes.\n\nNarrative\nLast month, the Narrative team had several playthrough sessions with the Design team to look closely at the moment-to-moment experiences of two specific levels. This part of the refinement process ensures that the player\u2019s motivations are clear, that the emotions and tone of the world are properly conveyed, and allows the team to see if there are any further opportunities to create a more immersive experience. For example, to better highlight where a sniper nest was located, the team discussed a possible scene addition to draw the player\u2019s attention.\n\nThe team also began creating and implementing discoverable lore throughout the game to help players learn more about the narrative of the universe and provide further rewards for level exploration.\n\nFollowing up on last month\u2019s report, development progressed on a new NPC profession, with the initial script being written, adjusted, and recorded as scratch dialogue. The next step is to see how the temporary dialogue feels in-game and make adjustments.\n\nFinally for Narrative, mo-cap sessions were concluded and selects were made to be processed for implementation.\n\nQA\nQA continued to support the Cinematics team by reproducing issues found during development and chasing up outstanding bugs. They also focused on AI bug validation and refactored the JIRA process to help organize existing and future tasks.\n\nTech Animation\nThe Technical Animation team spent the month iterating on their rework of the internal DNA system. This update will allow them to expand the gene pool used to create believable heads in-game and ultimately offer more variety to players.\n\nAlongside this, they revisited several head assets requiring updates and, in some cases, a complete overhaul. The ongoing head-scanning initiative is currently supplying the team with new archetypes that are being extracted and turned into full, game-ready facial rigs.\n\nTech Animation also maintained the existing animation pipeline alongside spearheading initiatives to supersede older technology to expedite in-house workflows.\n\nUI\nThe UI designers and artists worked alongside the system designers on pre-production for a variety of screens, including the layout and visuals of several interactive screens throughout the game. An improved concept for the door UI panels was signed off too.\n\nThe team continued to update the design and look of the mobiGlas and Starmap to fit the feel and gameplay of SQ42. The visor and lens were also set up to run in Building Blocks, which gives the team new optimizations and lays the groundwork for the Actor Feature team to add new features.\n\nVFX\nMarch saw VFX complete an implementation pass on a key location, with involved fully populating the location with representative effects that they\u2019ll return to later to polish and fully optimize.\n\nThey also continued to fine-tune several important weapon effects, including rendering a new muzzle-flash firing texture sequence from Houdini to help emphasize a weapon\u2019s power.\n\nGreat progress was made on a key destruction sequence utilizing some clever simulation techniques to help give the appearance of metal bending and tearing rather than fracturing like stone.\n\nFinally, the VFX Tech Art team continued to explore the options that the Montreal team\u2019s Mighty Bridge Houdini interface offers.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2022-04-13T18:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"4 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-04-28 18:10:14","valid_relations":["images","links","translations"],"prev_id":18619,"next_id":18622}}