{"data":{"id":18811,"title":"Star Citizen Monthly Report: July 2022","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/18811-Star-Citizen-Monthly-Report-July-2022","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/18811","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/18811","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":5,"translations":{"en_EN":"PU Monthly Report\nJuly 2022\nWelcome to July\u2019s PU Monthly Report! With Alpha 3.17.2 making it to the live servers at the end of July, most teams shifted focus to tasks for the next patch release and beyond.\n\nSo, this month, you\u2019ll see progress on various dependencies for persistent streaming, Pyro, the economy, and more. Read on for all the details!\n\nAI (Content)\nLast month, AI Content dedicated time to bug-fixing existing features. They identified the top 20 usables that the AI interact with and set out to fix as many issues as possible in two weeks. The issues were triaged and arranged into three categories:\n\nBugs that the AI designers could solve\n\nBugs that AI animators could solve\n\nCode issues not solvable by AI Content\n\nBy the end, approximately 50 issues had been solved before the team returned to feature work.\n\nJuly\u2019s feature work included supporting the weapons vendor setup by creating weapon pickup and place animations, progressing with the locomotion polish mentioned last month, and retargeting overlay animations to the female skeleton.\n\nThe AI designers continued implementing the dynamic conversations feature, expanding it to the eat-and-drink behavior. Now, NPCs can have conversations between bites or drinks.\n\n\u201cWe are pleased with the result, as it makes the AI feel less individual and more connected with other NPCs.\u201d - AI Content Team\n\nAI engineers will now also seek out colleagues at wall panels and work zones (e.g. broken pipes) to start conversations. They\u2019re currently working on implementing chatter for AI in bunk beds and arcade machines too.\n\nAI (Features)\nFor human combat, AI Features continued to work on tactic selection, including implementing a more data-driven approach to setting up the scoring factors in Data-Forge. This will allow the designers to quickly tweak values to produce the best possible range of combat behaviors for the situation, including with multiple combatants with different setups and ranges. This solution extends the \u2018function selection\u2019 in Subsumption to allow the game code to register a custom probability calculator, which will provide benefits in general, not just for combat behaviors.\n\nThey also began aligning the existing perception systems to a new design where the perception meter rises depending on different stimuli (hearing footsteps or gunfire, seeing a target, etc.) and falls over time. Once different threshold levels on the meter are hit, they trigger different alertness levels that determine specific reaction animations and behaviors. For example, at the lowest level, the AI will react by simply turning their head toward the stimulus. At the middle level, they will investigate the stimulus and, at the highest, they will enter combat. Stimuli can also impact the meter in different ways based on the conditions of the target, including whether they\u2019re crouched or standing and the location\u2019s lighting.\n\nWork also started on the investigation behavior, with the devs implementing a system to allow NPCs to determine potential enemy hiding spots, check them, and keep track of which ones they\u2019ve seen. The next stage is for NPCs to share information so they can cover a level together.\n\nThey\u2019re also working to improve the consistency of cover selection using the automatic cover generation system. They\u2019re also planning to improve the quality of cover and provide more information to the AI so that less decision making has to be made at runtime.\n\nThey also blocked out animations for human-AI mantling and vaulting to give NPCs more locomotion options when moving around the environment. Clean-up and timing tasks were also completed for the spec-ops animation sets.\n\nAI (Tech)\nDuring July, AI Tech focused on extending the functionalities required to traverse navigation islands using special actions. This included implementing new adapters for navigation links to include mantling, jumping down, and vaulting.\n\n\u201cThe basic idea is that, using all the existing markup, we want to allow NPCs to perform similar actions to the player in the environment. For example, we adjusted the ledge objects to include specifications that evaluate the navmesh and link multiple islands correctly.\u201d - AI Tech Team\n\nThey also continued R&D on seamless transitions into usables. This time, they implemented a cleaner and more reliable system for sharp-turn animations, giving more natural movement to NPCs following paths around corners. This allows helps NPCs feel \u2018heavier\u2019 and show weight balancing when moving over sharp corners.\n\nProgress was also made on the locomotion refactor. Last month, the team began improving how AI actors process movement, which will allow them to decouple movement requests from what processes it. This is an important change to better support multiple path-followers used in different contexts. For example, actors, creatures, or NPCs driving a vehicle or pushing a trolley. They\u2019re currently preparing to integrate into the Squadron 42 branch and verify that everything works as expected.\n\nFor the Subsumption editor within the sandbox tool, AI Tech implemented new functionality and stabilized the tool to finally open up the usage to all the designers.\n\nA better AI-debug UI using imGUI is currently being implemented to allow the devs to select and inspect NPC behaviors. The tool can split the NPCs present in each zone, select multiple NPCs, and inspect their properties.\n\nProgress was also made on ship reinforcements for Alpha 3.17.2. The team made the feature more robust by adding better monitoring of the disembarking process from the pilot\u2019s perspective. They also added an abort phase for the dropship in case the drop location is occupied, and the pilot can now monitor the presence of a player inside the cargo area.\n\nThey also fixed several bugs relating to slow reaction time and desyncs\/teleports. These issues are mostly caused by a low server framerate but the devs optimized the code and implemented tweaks to allow the code to better handle some of those situations.\n\nAI (Vehicles)\nIn July, the AI Vehicle Team finished enabling AI to use different ship modes; AI is now fully integrated with the ability to swap modes when required by the task they want to perform. The designers will also soon be able to give AI access to higher SCM speeds when designing behaviors.\n\nBug fixes were also made throughout the month, including an issue with the \u2018FlyTo\u2019 not computing an efficient path and dive attacks not ignoring driverless space ships.\n\nAnimation\nLast month, the Facial Animation team further developed female vendors, outlaws, rescue and transport, and continued burning down emotes.\n\nThe Motion Capture team is currently building their new studio, which should be live by mid-August.\n\nArt (Characters)\nThe Character Art team continued work on the frontier and high-fashion outfits for upcoming releases. They also progressed with marketing items for both the Subscriber program and upcoming holiday events.\n\nArt (Ships)\nThroughout July, the UK Ship Art team continued the greybox pass on the Argo SRV, finishing the exterior work before moving on to the interior.\n\nDevelopment of an unannounced ship continued, which is currently moving from greybox to final art. July saw the greybox pass complete on the cockpit, dashboard, habitation, and cargo hold. The team also progressed the exterior hull to final art.\n\nThe final art pass on an unannounced ground vehicle was finalized. The artists then moved on to a pass of the MISC Hull C.\n\nThe whitebox pass began on an unannounced variant of an existing ship, with modifications to the exterior nearing completion.\n\nA resource-management pass on the Aegis Hammerhead also began. This includes adding relays and modifications to the existing component bays to make them all functional, with some tweaks to their placement for balance.\n\nIn the US, Art transitioned to their final pass on the Drake Corsair while supporting System Design on the greybox, taking the main, retro, and MAV thrusters to the final stage. The port wings were also detailed and are almost ready to hand off. On the exterior, the nose was further detailed and modifications were made to the decal texture to standardize the official Drake font. The team also took the interior cargo hold through to final art, with an initial lighting pass being completed throughout the interior.\n\nCommunity\nExpanding on last month\u2019s content, the team released two more Alpha 3.17.2 Patch Watch posts. Patch Watch #2 dealt with the quality-of-life improvements coming with Siege of Orison, while Patch Watch #3 detailed the new racing track, the Snake Pit.\n\nThe team also supported the Foundation Festival, a month-long celebration of the Star Citizen community that featured a Free Fly and the Tales Of Camaraderie contest.\n\nAlongside the Eve Online community team, they held the Battle of the Bricks stream, raising money for the Extra Life charity.\n\n\u201cWe hope that everyone watching had a great time as we celebrated our shared passion for space games. And don't forget that Donations for Extra Life are still open until late December!\u201d - Community Team\n\nThe team also progressed with the new Community Hub and are currently preparing for the launch of Ship Showdown in August.\n\nEngine\nIn July, the Physics team made several optimizations to the code. Ray\/box overlap checks were implemented in ISPC and are now also used in ray world intersections (RWI) to quickly skip entity parts if there's no overlap of a ray and an entity's local bounds. Further optimizations include using a box pruner to process vehicle wheels and all of their possible colliders (and their parts) more quickly, as well as SSE and AVX2 optimizations in the code that searches parts of a physical entity. Additionally, support for successive pulley attachments to rope entities was added, and the spatial configuration of interior grid types was changed to use more layers of internal nodes that are smaller in dimension. This, for instance, helped in Port Olisar, where a lot of time was spent maintaining thunk lists, which is completely removed by this change.\n\nOn the renderer, the Gen12 transition continued. For example, Gen12 Scaleform (UI) rendering was enabled by default, support for MIP map generation passes was added, and material overrides for render nodes are now supported, including for multi materials. The depth pre-pass submission is now skipped if motion vectors are rendered. Thread synchronization code in pipeline state object (PSO) cache refreshing as well as in the shader system was improved, and unnecessary stencil tests for the shadow map stage were removed. The render loading thread was replaced by a video rendering thread, which is needed for the sole purpose of rendering UI while the game is loading. Lastly, a bug that was crashing the video driver was fixed and the entire render code was changed to successfully compile via Include-What-You-Use (IWYU). Various issues in the form of buffer overruns in low-level VFX render code were also fixed.\n\nThe Gen12 ports of atmospheric and volumetric cloud rendering continued as look-up table generation for atmosphere, as well as volumetric cloud preprocessing steps, were successfully moved over to execute through the new APIs. The rendering of legacy (spherical) clouds was moved to Gen12 too and can now also render as part of the deferred pipeline\u2019s forward stage (which will be enabled soon). This recent progress also resulted in various suggestions (some of which have already been implemented) to refine the Gen12 APIs for special cases so they can be ported straightforwardly and integrate better. Lastly, work on porting the remaining passes for atmospheric and volumetric clouds will commence in August.\n\nOn the core engine, entity lifetime code was adjusted for the new needs of server meshing with the goal of it being easier to use as well as creating a more refined feeling of persistence. A time-sliced entity density manager was implemented as a part of the reworked entity lifetime for server meshing. The background job manager was changed to better cope with very long-running preempted background jobs to reduce runtime stalls. For example, stalls during shader compilation. Furthermore, component lifetime now uses a cheaper custom weak pointer approach that the current std::shared_ptr cannot provide. Moreover, StarHash bind culling of sub-zones was significantly optimized. The ability to set hardware (data) breakpoints from code was fixed and, lastly, Linux thread priority changed to use real-time FIFO scheduling.\n\nThe remainder of the time was spent supporting Alpha 3.18 and bug fixing 3.17.x; especially analyzing the impact of 100-player servers.\n\nFeatures (Arena Commander)\nLast month, the Arena Commander Feature team fixed issues in both Arena Commander (AC) and Star Marine (SM), including some with map- and game-mode selection, scoreboards, level geometry, respawning, and AI spawning.\n\n\u201cOur community has been very helpful in identifying such issues as they appear, which we greatly appreciate!\u201d - Arena Commander Feature Team\n\nAdditionally, ongoing improvements were made to how quickly and easily players get into sessions. Investigation into getting PU-based locations as environments in AC and SM also continued.\n\nSome changes to scanning\/ping\/radar design were implemented for both vehicles and FPS gameplay to allow players to find and identify contacts with greater ease.\n\nFinally, bugs were fixed to give the community as stable an experience as possible.\n\nFeatures (Characters & Weapons)\nWith the new actor movement synchronization enabled for the PTU, July saw the team focus on fixing issues, specifically with extrapolation (when a local machine tries to predict what another player will be doing). Extrapolation is necessary when network latency prevents data from arriving regularly. Incorrect prediction results in the player appearing to teleport, or rubber band, when up-to-date data arrives from the server. The team will continue to refine the algorithm over the coming releases and are specifically looking at improving the handling of look-input synchronization for the next patch.\n\nIn July, the team also started laying the groundwork for FPS devices. There are already some examples of these in the game, such as grenades and mining gadgets. But, as the list of devices expands, the team wants to take a more systemic approach to ensure the setup and flow are consistent across the board.\n\nEarlier in the year, the team reported work on \u2018Code Driven IK.\u2019 This system has now been combined with the dynamic hand placement feature mentioned last month. Together, this ensures that animators have control over when to use hand placement or not, as well as tweaking some of its settings directly in individual assets. This has allowed the Maya-side interface of this new IK-system to mature further, with several quality-of-life improvements.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe Features team continued to develop life-support and engineering gameplay. This included work on the MISC Hull A, as it\u2019s the first ship with interactable relay points that control resource distribution. The power plant and fuel tanks now power the system using the new tech, and UI work was extended to allow players to control the temperature per room.\n\nHull scraping is progressing well, with the team focusing on creating the commodity boxes and repair ammunition at the dedicated filler station in the Reclaimer and Vulture.\n\nGraphics, VFX Programming & Planet Tech\nJuly saw the implementation of a dynamic bitset data structure, which replaces the TJointBitSet, as well as the investigation and testing of offline damage maps with persistence. The team also worked on separating CPU & GPU implementation, ensuring they result in the same damage map.\n\nThe team finished porting Gas Clouds to Gen12 and fixed several issues, including a GPU crash related to this feature. Work began on Vulkan scaleform functionality and particle mesh rendering in Gen12. Progress was also made on porting refraction and light beams to Gen12.\n\nCanvas decal texture streaming was sped up and image testing now waits for it to complete. Support for silhouettes on editor entity objects was added alongside improvements to render-item sorting to make it consistent at different runs.\n\nHair color and specular improvements were finished for the hair shader. There were also updates to tessellation and displacement on the organic shader. For jump points, the team focused on branching tunnels, which included fixing situations where the connecting segments self-intersect.\n\nThe Planet Tech team made improvements to the world and biome builder by moving mesh building to background jobs, substantially reducing stutters in-editor. There were also fixes for mismatching physics meshes on servers as well as a refactor of procedural entities, which improved planet loading time. Four-point Bezier curves were also added to river generation alongside general improvements to the river placement tool. Collision detection was added to RaStar to prevent modules from being placed when they overlap with geometry too.\n\nLighting\nLast month, Lighting\u2019s primary task was making headway into their backlog of tech and dev debt. This is a list of tasks or bugs that have built up that they either didn\u2019t have time to work on or weren\u2019t high enough priority to tackle immediately. For the most part, this work entailed minor polish notes for Orison and fixing minor bugs across other locations.\n\nThey then moved on to supporting the new sand cave location archetype. Compared to rocky caves, sand caves feature more natural dappled light filtering in from the surface above to create a very different mood and atmosphere.\n\nThey also completed a lighting pass on the upcoming Origin 600i and Crusader Mercury derelict crash sites, integrating the nearby settlements into the landscape and stripping out the lighting from the ships.\n\nLastly, they worked on a full lighting pass of the upcoming racing circuit being added to the Orison convention hall.\n\nNarrative\nOver the past month, Narrative tackled tasks ranging from mission content to lore. On the mission front, the team generated text for the latest Reclaimer missions as well as a variety of new delivery missions while working with the Design teams in Montreal and the UK. July continued several other ongoing conversations into the development of new mission types, one of which presents a unique fusion of narrative and design. So, the team began figuring out how much content would be necessary to incorporate it into the game and whether it will be scalable to provide enough variety to keep it interesting.\n\nThe team met with the Environment and Design teams to talk over Pyro\u2019s shops and overall economy to help differentiate the player experience from Stanton. To help support this, the team continued to work through the mo-cap data for the frontier vendors captured at the end of June to get it into the pipeline.\n\nTwo new narrative designers recently joined the team, who have initially been tasked to other teams to learn the setup and software. These roles will ultimately provide narrative support in the technical areas of design setup and voice packs to make the characters and locations feel closer to the intended vision and tone.\n\nMeetings were also held with the new In-Game Branding team in Montreal to review the various in-game corporations and manufacturers to standardize their looks, themes, and colors. Since so much of our marketing exists as in-fiction content, this will establish a consistent tone and voice for the companies whether they\u2019re appearing in-game or out.\n\nThey also published another edition of Shubin\u2019s employee newsletters, Mining Rocks, a Portfolio on Nine Tails, an original Untold Tales about a shocking discovery in Sol, and another batch of Galactapedia entries.\n\nTech Animation\nThe Tech Animation team continued to invest time into the tools codebase. Years of development and quick fixes are being triaged, consolidated, and revamped to fully conform to their coding standards and modularize the codebase to be more accessible to the technical animators. This will expedite the creation of tools and the pipeline that rely on core processes.\n\nAlongside this, they\u2019re currently developing and integrating several new tool chains: CGA and SKIN loading in Maya, RBF solver development, and SSD & Alembic animation pipeline support. Their future development roadmap is also in planning.\n\nOnline services (Montreal)\nThe Online Services team worked on performance improvements to the entity graph service in July, unlocking substantial performance gains (in some cases double-digit percentages).\n\nBug fixing and character reset testing were done for the new login flow. They then moved on to phase two of the refactor, Ledger and Wallet, which will change how currency is handled in-game.\n\nThe team also completed the new Chrono service, which offers a programmatic API for distributed timers and alarms. For example, in the expiry of rental entitlements.\n\nLastly, the team completed the first refactor of the new inventory management system, which is needed for persistent streaming. This is currently in internal testing with the Actor Feature team and affects almost all inventories in the game (though is invisible to the player).\n\nLive Tools (Montreal)\nThe Live Tools team implemented a new way to log into Hex 3.0\u2019s Network Operation Center (NOC) and manage the different roles and permissions. Because usability of the tool is crucial, a survey is currently open among its frequent users. The team has analyzed the feedback collected so far and is working on different solutions to improve the NOC\u2019s design and usability.\n\nTurbulent (Web Platform)\nLast month, Turbulent\u2019s Web Platform team worked on cleanup of the MISC and Crusader skins in the CMS tool, making integration cleaner. They then designed a wire-framing page to better communicate patch status.\n\nIn the Pledge Store, the team worked on creating clearer disclaimers around Warbond SKUs, concept standalone ships, and buy-back rules relating to discounts.\n\nThe Community team continued to work on new features for the Community Hub, adding moderation and an honor system in July.\n\nFinally for Turbulent, the Backend Infrastructure team upgraded PHP, making the backend more efficient and organized in adhering to code standards.\n\nUI\nLast month, the UI team continued development of the new Starmap, improving labeling and concepting how to display space clouds in a way that looks great and performs well.\n\nBugs were also fixed for the Siege of Orison update, and adjustments were made to the loadout systems in support of persistent streaming.\n\nVFX\nJuly saw the VFX team collaborating with the Art and Lighting teams on modular sand cave locations. With these modules being used by Design to lay out the cave interiors, the VFX artists needed to be creative in how they placed their effects to cut down on repetition.\n\nFinally, VFX Concept kickstarted pre-production on the quantum travel experience and a general quantum-travel visual overhaul.","de_DE":"PU-Monatsbericht\nJuli 2022\nWillkommen zum PU-Monatsbericht f\u00fcr Juli! Nachdem die Alpha 3.17.2 Ende Juli auf die Live-Server aufgespielt wurde, haben sich die meisten Teams auf die Aufgaben f\u00fcr die n\u00e4chste Patch-Ver\u00f6ffentlichung und dar\u00fcber hinaus konzentriert.\n\nDiesen Monat erf\u00e4hrst du mehr \u00fcber die Fortschritte bei den verschiedenen Abh\u00e4ngigkeiten f\u00fcr persistentes Streaming, Pyro, die Wirtschaft und mehr. Lies weiter, um alle Details zu erfahren!\n\nKI (Inhalt)\nIm letzten Monat widmete sich AI Content der Fehlerbehebung bestehender Funktionen. Sie identifizierten die 20 wichtigsten Funktionen, mit denen die KI interagiert, und machten sich daran, in zwei Wochen so viele Probleme wie m\u00f6glich zu beheben. Die Probleme wurden sortiert und in drei Kategorien eingeteilt:\n\nBugs, die die KI-Designer l\u00f6sen konnten\n\nBugs, die die KI-Animatoren l\u00f6sen k\u00f6nnen\n\nCode-Probleme, die nicht von der KI gel\u00f6st werden k\u00f6nnen Inhalt\n\nAm Ende waren etwa 50 Probleme gel\u00f6st, bevor das Team zur Arbeit an den Features zur\u00fcckkehrte.\n\nIm Juli wurde unter anderem das Setup des Waffenh\u00e4ndlers durch die Erstellung von Animationen zum Aufnehmen und Ablegen von Waffen unterst\u00fctzt, die im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnte \u00dcberarbeitung der Fortbewegung vorangetrieben und die Overlay-Animationen f\u00fcr das weibliche Skelett neu ausgerichtet.\n\nDie KI-Designer setzten die Implementierung der dynamischen Gespr\u00e4chsfunktion fort und erweiterten sie auf das Essen-und-Trinken-Verhalten. Jetzt k\u00f6nnen NSCs zwischen zwei Bissen oder Getr\u00e4nken Gespr\u00e4che f\u00fchren.\n\n\"Wir sind mit dem Ergebnis sehr zufrieden, da sich die KI dadurch weniger individuell und mehr mit anderen NSCs verbunden f\u00fchlt.\" - KI-Inhaltsteam\n\nKI-Ingenieure suchen jetzt auch Kollegen an Wandtafeln und Arbeitsbereichen (z. B. gebrochene Rohre) auf, um Gespr\u00e4che zu beginnen. Derzeit arbeiten sie daran, auch in Stockbetten und Arcade-Automaten Chatter f\u00fcr die KI zu implementieren.\n\nKI (Features)\nIm Bereich der menschlichen K\u00e4mpfe haben die KI-Features weiter an der Taktikauswahl gearbeitet und unter anderem einen datenbasierten Ansatz f\u00fcr die Festlegung der Wertungsfaktoren in Data-Forge eingef\u00fchrt. So k\u00f6nnen die Designer die Werte schnell anpassen, um das bestm\u00f6gliche Kampfverhalten f\u00fcr die jeweilige Situation zu erreichen, auch bei mehreren K\u00e4mpfern mit unterschiedlichen Aufstellungen und Reichweiten. Diese L\u00f6sung erweitert die \"Funktionsauswahl\" in Subsumption, damit der Spielcode einen benutzerdefinierten Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechner registrieren kann, was nicht nur f\u00fcr das Kampfverhalten, sondern generell Vorteile bringt.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde damit begonnen, die bestehenden Wahrnehmungssysteme an ein neues Design anzupassen, bei dem die Wahrnehmungsanzeige in Abh\u00e4ngigkeit von verschiedenen Reizen (Schritte oder Sch\u00fcsse h\u00f6ren, ein Ziel sehen usw.) ansteigt und mit der Zeit abf\u00e4llt. Sobald verschiedene Schwellenwerte auf der Anzeige erreicht werden, l\u00f6sen sie verschiedene Wachsamkeitsstufen aus, die bestimmte Reaktionsanimationen und Verhaltensweisen bestimmen. Auf der niedrigsten Stufe reagiert die KI zum Beispiel, indem sie einfach ihren Kopf in Richtung des Reizes dreht. Auf der mittleren Stufe wird sie den Reiz untersuchen und auf der h\u00f6chsten Stufe wird sie in den Kampf eingreifen. Die Reize k\u00f6nnen sich auch unterschiedlich auf den Z\u00e4hler auswirken, je nachdem, ob das Ziel geduckt oder stehend ist und wie die Lichtverh\u00e4ltnisse vor Ort sind.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde mit der Arbeit am Erkundungsverhalten begonnen. Die Entwickler haben ein System implementiert, mit dem NSCs potenzielle feindliche Verstecke ausfindig machen, sie \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen und verfolgen k\u00f6nnen, welche sie gesehen haben. Als N\u00e4chstes werden die NSCs Informationen austauschen, damit sie gemeinsam ein Level abdecken k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem arbeiten sie daran, die Konsistenz der Deckungsauswahl mit Hilfe des automatischen Deckungsgenerierungssystems zu verbessern. Au\u00dferdem ist geplant, die Qualit\u00e4t der Deckung zu verbessern und der KI mehr Informationen zur Verf\u00fcgung zu stellen, damit zur Laufzeit weniger Entscheidungen getroffen werden m\u00fcssen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden die Animationen f\u00fcr das Manteln und Springen der KI geblockt, um den NSCs mehr Bewegungsm\u00f6glichkeiten zu geben, wenn sie sich in der Umgebung bewegen. Au\u00dferdem wurden Aufr\u00e4um- und Timing-Aufgaben f\u00fcr die Spec-Ops-Animationssets erledigt.\n\nKI (Tech)\nIm Juli konzentrierte sich die KI-Abteilung auf die Erweiterung der Funktionen, die f\u00fcr das \u00dcberqueren von Navigationsinseln mithilfe spezieller Aktionen erforderlich sind. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Implementierung neuer Adapter f\u00fcr Navigationsverbindungen, die das Mantelziehen, das Hinunterspringen und das Springen erm\u00f6glichen.\n\n\"Die Grundidee ist, dass wir mit dem bestehenden Markup den NSCs erm\u00f6glichen wollen, \u00e4hnliche Aktionen wie der Spieler in der Umgebung durchzuf\u00fchren. Wir haben zum Beispiel die Sims-Objekte so angepasst, dass sie Spezifikationen enthalten, die das Navmesh auswerten und mehrere Inseln korrekt miteinander verbinden.\" - AI Tech Team\n\nDas Team hat auch weiter an nahtlosen \u00dcberg\u00e4ngen in die Nutzbarkeit gearbeitet. Diesmal haben sie ein saubereres und zuverl\u00e4ssigeres System f\u00fcr scharfe Kurvenanimationen implementiert, das NSCs, die Pfaden um Ecken folgen, eine nat\u00fcrlichere Bewegung verleiht. Dadurch f\u00fchlen sich NSCs \"schwerer\" an und k\u00f6nnen ihr Gewicht besser ausbalancieren, wenn sie sich um scharfe Ecken bewegen.\n\nAuch bei der \u00dcberarbeitung der Fortbewegung wurden Fortschritte gemacht. Im letzten Monat hat das Team damit begonnen, die Art und Weise zu verbessern, wie KI-Akteure Bewegungen verarbeiten, damit sie die Bewegungsanfragen von dem entkoppeln k\u00f6nnen, was sie verarbeitet. Dies ist eine wichtige \u00c4nderung, um mehrere Wegverfolger in verschiedenen Kontexten besser zu unterst\u00fctzen. Zum Beispiel Schauspieler, Kreaturen oder NSCs, die ein Fahrzeug fahren oder einen Wagen schieben. Sie bereiten sich derzeit auf die Integration in den Squadron 42-Zweig vor und \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen, ob alles wie erwartet funktioniert.\n\nF\u00fcr den Subsumption-Editor im Sandbox-Tool hat AI Tech neue Funktionen implementiert und das Tool stabilisiert, damit es endlich von allen Designern genutzt werden kann.\n\nEine bessere KI-Debug-UI mit imGUI wird derzeit implementiert, damit die Entwickler\/innen das Verhalten der NSCs ausw\u00e4hlen und untersuchen k\u00f6nnen. Das Tool kann die NSCs in jeder Zone aufteilen, mehrere NSCs ausw\u00e4hlen und ihre Eigenschaften untersuchen.\n\nAuch bei der Schiffsverst\u00e4rkung f\u00fcr Alpha 3.17.2 wurden Fortschritte erzielt. Das Team hat das Feature robuster gemacht, indem es den Ausschiffungsprozess aus der Perspektive des Piloten besser \u00fcberwacht. Au\u00dferdem wurde eine Abbruchphase f\u00fcr das Absetzschiff hinzugef\u00fcgt, falls der Absetzort besetzt ist, und der Pilot kann jetzt die Anwesenheit eines Spielers im Frachtraum \u00fcberwachen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden mehrere Fehler in Bezug auf langsame Reaktionszeiten und Desyncs\/Teleports behoben. Diese Probleme werden meist durch eine niedrige Framerate des Servers verursacht, aber die Entwickler haben den Code optimiert und Optimierungen vorgenommen, damit der Code mit einigen dieser Situationen besser umgehen kann.\n\nKI (Fahrzeuge)\nIm Juli hat das KI-Fahrzeug-Team die KI in die Lage versetzt, verschiedene Schiffsmodi zu verwenden; die KI ist jetzt vollst\u00e4ndig integriert und kann den Modus wechseln, wenn es die Aufgabe erfordert, die sie ausf\u00fchren will. Au\u00dferdem werden die Designer\/innen bald in der Lage sein, der KI beim Entwerfen von Verhaltensweisen h\u00f6here SCM-Geschwindigkeiten zur Verf\u00fcgung zu stellen.\n\nIm Laufe des Monats wurden au\u00dferdem einige Fehler behoben, z. B. ein Problem mit dem \"FlyTo\", das keinen effizienten Pfad berechnete, und Tauchangriffe, die fahrerlose Raumschiffe nicht ignorierten.\n\nAnimation\nIm letzten Monat hat das Team f\u00fcr Gesichtsanimation die weiblichen Verk\u00e4uferinnen, die Ge\u00e4chteten, die Rettung und den Transport weiterentwickelt und die Emotes f\u00fcr das Abbrennen fortgesetzt.\n\nDas Motion-Capture-Team baut derzeit sein neues Studio auf, das Mitte August in Betrieb genommen werden soll.\n\nKunst (Charaktere)\nDas Character Art Team hat die Arbeit an den Frontier- und High-Fashion-Outfits f\u00fcr die kommenden Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen fortgesetzt. Au\u00dferdem wurde an Marketingartikeln f\u00fcr das Abonnentenprogramm und die kommenden Feiertage gearbeitet.\n\nKunst (Schiffe)\nIm Juli setzte das britische Schiffskunstteam den Greybox-Pass an der Argo SRV fort und beendete die Au\u00dfenarbeiten, bevor es an die Innenausstattung ging.\n\nDie Entwicklung eines unangek\u00fcndigten Schiffes wurde fortgesetzt, das derzeit von der Greybox zur endg\u00fcltigen Gestaltung \u00fcbergeht. Im Juli wurden das Cockpit, das Armaturenbrett, die Wohnr\u00e4ume und der Frachtraum fertiggestellt. Das Team hat auch die Au\u00dfenh\u00fclle zur endg\u00fcltigen Form gebracht.\n\nDer letzte Entwurfsdurchlauf f\u00fcr ein unangek\u00fcndigtes Bodenfahrzeug wurde fertiggestellt. Die K\u00fcnstler machten sich dann an die Gestaltung der MISC-H\u00fclle C.\n\nDer Whitebox-Durchlauf begann mit einer unangek\u00fcndigten Variante eines bestehenden Schiffes, wobei die \u00c4nderungen an der Au\u00dfenh\u00fclle kurz vor dem Abschluss standen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde mit dem Ressourcenmanagement-Pass an der Aegis Hammerhead begonnen. Dazu geh\u00f6ren das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von Relais und Modifikationen an den vorhandenen Komponentensch\u00e4chten, um sie alle funktionsf\u00e4hig zu machen, sowie einige \u00c4nderungen an ihrer Platzierung, um die Balance zu wahren.\n\nIn den USA ging Art zum letzten Durchgang an der Drake Corsair \u00fcber, w\u00e4hrend er das Systemdesign bei der Greybox unterst\u00fctzte und die Haupt-, Retro- und MAV-Triebwerke in die Endphase brachte. Die Backbord-Fl\u00fcgel wurden ebenfalls detailliert und sind fast fertig zur \u00dcbergabe. An der Au\u00dfenseite wurde die Nase weiter detailliert und die Textur der Aufkleber ge\u00e4ndert, um die offizielle Drake-Schriftart zu vereinheitlichen. Das Team hat auch den Frachtraum im Inneren des Modells fertiggestellt und einen ersten Beleuchtungsdurchgang im gesamten Innenraum durchgef\u00fchrt.\n\nCommunity\nIm Anschluss an die Inhalte des letzten Monats ver\u00f6ffentlichte das Team zwei weitere Beitr\u00e4ge zur Alpha 3.17.2 Patch Watch. Patch Watch #2 befasste sich mit den Verbesserungen der Lebensqualit\u00e4t in der Belagerung von Orison, w\u00e4hrend Patch Watch #3 die neue Rennstrecke Snake Pit vorstellte.\n\nDas Team unterst\u00fctzte auch das Foundation Festival, eine einmonatige Feier der Star Citizen Community, bei der es einen Free Fly und den Tales Of Camaraderie Wettbewerb gab.\n\nZusammen mit dem Eve Online-Community-Team veranstalteten sie den Battle of the Bricks-Stream, um Geld f\u00fcr die Wohlt\u00e4tigkeitsorganisation Extra Life zu sammeln.\n\n\"Wir hoffen, dass alle Zuschauer eine tolle Zeit hatten, als wir unsere gemeinsame Leidenschaft f\u00fcr Weltraumspiele feierten. Und vergesst nicht: Spenden f\u00fcr Extra Life sind noch bis Ende Dezember m\u00f6glich!\" - Community-Team\n\nDas Team hat auch Fortschritte beim neuen Community Hub gemacht und bereitet sich derzeit auf den Start von Ship Showdown im August vor.\n\nMotor\nIm Juli hat das Physik-Team mehrere Optimierungen am Code vorgenommen. \u00dcberschneidungspr\u00fcfungen von Rays und Boxen wurden in ISPC implementiert und werden jetzt auch in den Ray World Intersections (RWI) verwendet, um Entity-Teile schnell zu \u00fcberspringen, wenn es keine \u00dcberschneidung zwischen einem Ray und den lokalen Grenzen eines Entitys gibt. Weitere Optimierungen umfassen die Verwendung eines Box Pruners, um Fahrzeugr\u00e4der und alle ihre m\u00f6glichen Kollider (und deren Teile) schneller zu verarbeiten, sowie SSE- und AVX2-Optimierungen im Code, der Teile eines physischen Objekts sucht. Au\u00dferdem wurde die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr aufeinanderfolgende Seilrollen hinzugef\u00fcgt und die r\u00e4umliche Konfiguration der inneren Gittertypen wurde ge\u00e4ndert, um mehr Schichten von inneren Knoten zu verwenden, die kleiner dimensioniert sind. Das hat zum Beispiel in Port Olisar geholfen, wo viel Zeit mit der Pflege von Thunk-Listen verbracht wurde, was durch diese \u00c4nderung komplett wegf\u00e4llt.\n\nBeim Renderer wurde die Gen12-Umstellung fortgesetzt. So wurde zum Beispiel das Gen12-Skalenform-Rendering (UI) standardm\u00e4\u00dfig aktiviert, die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr MIP-Map-Generierungsp\u00e4sse wurde hinzugef\u00fcgt und Material-Overrides f\u00fcr Renderknoten werden jetzt unterst\u00fctzt, auch f\u00fcr Multi-Materialien. Die \u00dcbermittlung des Tiefen-Pre-Passes wird jetzt \u00fcbersprungen, wenn Bewegungsvektoren gerendert werden. Der Thread-Synchronisierungscode in der Pipeline State Object (PSO) Cache-Aktualisierung sowie im Shader-System wurde verbessert und unn\u00f6tige Stencil-Tests f\u00fcr die Shadow Map Stage wurden entfernt. Der Rendering-Ladethread wurde durch einen Video-Rendering-Thread ersetzt, der nur f\u00fcr das Rendering der Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che ben\u00f6tigt wird, w\u00e4hrend das Spiel geladen wird. Schlie\u00dflich wurde ein Fehler behoben, der den Grafiktreiber zum Absturz brachte, und der gesamte Rendercode wurde so ge\u00e4ndert, dass er erfolgreich \u00fcber Include-What-You-Use (IWYU) kompiliert wurde. Verschiedene Probleme in Form von Puffer\u00fcberl\u00e4ufen im Low-Level-VFX-Rendercode wurden ebenfalls behoben.\n\nDie Gen12-Portierung des Renderings von atmosph\u00e4rischen und volumetrischen Wolken wurde fortgesetzt, da die Generierung von Look-up-Tabellen f\u00fcr die Atmosph\u00e4re und die Vorverarbeitungsschritte f\u00fcr volumetrische Wolken erfolgreich auf die neuen APIs umgestellt wurden. Das Rendering der alten (sph\u00e4rischen) Wolken wurde ebenfalls auf Gen12 umgestellt und kann jetzt auch als Teil der Vorw\u00e4rtsphase der Deferred Pipeline gerendert werden (was bald aktiviert wird). Diese j\u00fcngsten Fortschritte f\u00fchrten auch zu verschiedenen Vorschl\u00e4gen (von denen einige bereits umgesetzt wurden), um die Gen12-APIs f\u00fcr spezielle F\u00e4lle zu verfeinern, damit sie einfach portiert werden k\u00f6nnen und sich besser integrieren lassen. Schlie\u00dflich wird im August mit der Portierung der verbleibenden \u00dcberg\u00e4nge f\u00fcr atmosph\u00e4rische und volumetrische Wolken begonnen.\n\nIn der Core-Engine wurde der Code f\u00fcr die Lebensdauer der Entit\u00e4ten an die neuen Anforderungen des Server-Meshings angepasst, um die Bedienung zu vereinfachen und ein besseres Gef\u00fchl f\u00fcr die Persistenz zu schaffen. Als Teil der \u00fcberarbeiteten Entity-Lifetime f\u00fcr das Server-Meshing wurde ein zeitlich abgestimmter Entity-Density-Manager implementiert. Der Manager f\u00fcr Hintergrundjobs wurde ge\u00e4ndert, um besser mit sehr lang laufenden Preempted-Hintergrundjobs umgehen zu k\u00f6nnen und so Laufzeitstillst\u00e4nde zu reduzieren. Dies betrifft zum Beispiel die Verz\u00f6gerungen bei der Shader-Kompilierung. Au\u00dferdem verwendet die Komponentenlebensdauer jetzt einen billigeren benutzerdefinierten Weak-Pointer-Ansatz, den der aktuelle std::shared_ptr nicht bieten kann. Au\u00dferdem wurde das StarHash Bind Culling von Sub-Zonen deutlich optimiert. Die M\u00f6glichkeit, Hardware-(Daten-)Haltepunkte vom Code aus zu setzen, wurde behoben und schlie\u00dflich wurde die Linux-Thread-Priorit\u00e4t ge\u00e4ndert, um Echtzeit-FIFO-Scheduling zu verwenden.\n\nDie restliche Zeit wurde damit verbracht, Alpha 3.18 zu unterst\u00fctzen und Fehler in 3.17.x zu beheben; insbesondere wurden die Auswirkungen von Servern mit 100 Spielern analysiert.\n\nFeatures (Arena Commander)\nIm letzten Monat hat das Arena Commander Feature Team Probleme in Arena Commander (AC) und Star Marine (SM) behoben, darunter einige mit der Karten- und Spielmodusauswahl, den Punktetafeln, der Levelgeometrie, dem Respawning und dem AI-Spawning.\n\n\"Unsere Community hat uns bei der Identifizierung solcher Probleme sehr geholfen, wof\u00fcr wir sehr dankbar sind! - Arena Commander Feature Team\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus wurden weitere Verbesserungen daran vorgenommen, wie schnell und einfach Spieler in Sitzungen einsteigen k\u00f6nnen. Au\u00dferdem wurde weiter daran gearbeitet, PU-basierte Orte als Umgebungen in AC und SM einzuf\u00fchren.\n\nSowohl f\u00fcr Fahrzeuge als auch f\u00fcr das FPS-Gameplay wurden einige \u00c4nderungen am Scanning\/Ping\/Radar-Design vorgenommen, damit die Spieler\/innen ihre Kontakte leichter finden und identifizieren k\u00f6nnen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich wurden Fehler behoben, um der Community ein m\u00f6glichst stabiles Spielerlebnis zu bieten.\n\nFeatures (Charaktere & Waffen)\nNachdem die neue Bewegungssynchronisierung f\u00fcr die PTU aktiviert wurde, konzentrierte sich das Team im Juli auf die Behebung von Problemen, insbesondere mit der Extrapolation (wenn ein lokaler Rechner versucht, vorherzusagen, was ein anderer Spieler tun wird). Die Extrapolation ist notwendig, wenn die Netzwerklatenz verhindert, dass die Daten regelm\u00e4\u00dfig ankommen. Eine falsche Vorhersage f\u00fchrt dazu, dass sich der Spieler zu teleportieren scheint, wenn aktuelle Daten vom Server eintreffen. Das Team wird den Algorithmus in den kommendas Verseionen weiter verfeinern und sich f\u00fcr den n\u00e4chsten Patch vor allem um die Verbesserung der Synchronisation von Look-Inputs k\u00fcmmern.\n\nIm Juli hat das Team auch damit begonnen, die Grundlagen f\u00fcr FPS-Ger\u00e4te zu schaffen. Es gibt bereits einige Beispiele daf\u00fcr im Spiel, z. B. Granaten und Mining Gadgets. Da die Liste der Ger\u00e4te aber immer l\u00e4nger wird, m\u00f6chte das Team einen systematischeren Ansatz verfolgen, um sicherzustellen, dass die Einrichtung und der Ablauf \u00fcberall einheitlich sind.\n\nAnfang des Jahres hat das Team \u00fcber die Arbeit an der \"Code Driven IK\" berichtet. Dieses System wurde nun mit der im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnten dynamischen Handplatzierung kombiniert. So k\u00f6nnen die Animatorinnen und Animatoren selbst bestimmen, wann sie die Handplatzierung verwenden wollen und einige Einstellungen direkt in den einzelnen Assets vornehmen. Dadurch konnte die Maya-seitige Schnittstelle dieses neuen IK-Systems weiter ausgereift werden, mit mehreren Verbesserungen der Lebensqualit\u00e4t.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nDas Features-Team entwickelte das Gameplay f\u00fcr die Lebenserhaltung und die Technik weiter. Dazu geh\u00f6rte auch die Arbeit an der MISC-H\u00fclle A, denn sie ist das erste Schiff mit interaktiven Relaispunkten, die die Ressourcenverteilung steuern. Das Kraftwerk und die Treibstofftanks versorgen das System jetzt mit der neuen Technologie, und die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che wurde erweitert, damit die Spieler\/innen die Temperatur pro Raum einstellen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDas Team konzentriert sich auf die Herstellung der Rohstoffkisten und der Reparaturmunition an der speziellen F\u00fcllstation im Reclaimer und im Vulture.\n\nGrafik, VFX-Programmierung & Planet Tech\nIm Juli wurde eine dynamische Bitset-Datenstruktur implementiert, die das TJointBitSet ersetzt, und es wurden Offline-Schadenskarten mit Persistenz untersucht und getestet. Das Team arbeitete auch an der Trennung von CPU- und GPU-Implementierung, um sicherzustellen, dass beide dieselbe Schadenskarte ergeben.\n\nDas Team hat die Portierung von Gas Clouds auf Gen12 abgeschlossen und mehrere Probleme behoben, darunter einen GPU-Absturz im Zusammenhang mit dieser Funktion. Die Arbeit an der Vulkan-Scaleform-Funktionalit\u00e4t und dem Rendering von Partikelmeshs in Gen12 wurde aufgenommen. Auch bei der Portierung von Brechung und Lichtstrahlen auf Gen12 wurden Fortschritte erzielt.\n\nDas Streaming von Canvas-Decal-Texturen wurde beschleunigt und das Testen von Bildern wartet nun auf seine Fertigstellung. Die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Silhouetten auf Editor-Entity-Objekten wurde zusammen mit Verbesserungen an der Sortierung von Render-Elementen hinzugef\u00fcgt, um sie bei verschiedenen Runs konsistent zu machen.\n\nDer Haar-Shader wurde in Bezug auf Haarfarbe und Spiegelung verbessert. Au\u00dferdem wurden Tesselation und Displacement f\u00fcr den organischen Shader aktualisiert. Bei den Sprungpunkten konzentrierte sich das Team auf die Verzweigung von Tunneln, wobei auch Situationen behoben wurden, in denen sich die Verbindungssegmente selbst \u00fcberschneiden.\n\nDas Planet Tech Team hat den Welten- und Biome-Builder verbessert, indem es die Mesh-Erstellung in den Hintergrund verlagert hat, was die Stotterer im Editor deutlich reduziert. Au\u00dferdem wurden Fehler bei nicht \u00fcbereinstimmenden Physikmeshes auf Servern behoben und prozedurale Entit\u00e4ten \u00fcberarbeitet, was die Ladezeit der Planeten verbesserte. Au\u00dferdem wurden Vier-Punkt-Bezier-Kurven bei der Flussgenerierung hinzugef\u00fcgt und allgemeine Verbesserungen am Flussplatzierungswerkzeug vorgenommen. RaStar wurde eine Kollisionserkennung hinzugef\u00fcgt, um zu verhindern, dass Module platziert werden, wenn sie sich mit anderen Geometrien \u00fcberschneiden.\n\nBeleuchtung\nIm letzten Monat bestand die Hauptaufgabe von Lighting darin, den R\u00fcckstand an technischen und Entwicklungsschulden aufzuholen. Dabei handelt es sich um eine Liste von Aufgaben oder Fehlern, die sich angesammelt haben und f\u00fcr die entweder keine Zeit blieb oder die nicht dringend genug waren, um sie sofort zu bearbeiten. Die meiste Arbeit bestand darin, Orison aufzupolieren und kleinere Fehler an anderen Standorten zu beheben.\n\nDann ging es an die Unterst\u00fctzung des neuen Archetyps Sandh\u00f6hle. Im Vergleich zu felsigen H\u00f6hlen haben Sandh\u00f6hlen ein nat\u00fcrlicheres, ged\u00e4mpftes Licht, das von der Oberfl\u00e4che einf\u00e4llt und eine ganz andere Stimmung und Atmosph\u00e4re erzeugt.\n\nAu\u00dferdem haben sie einen Beleuchtungspass f\u00fcr die kommenden Absturzstellen der Origin 600i und der Crusader Mercury fertiggestellt, um die nahe gelegenen Siedlungen in die Landschaft zu integrieren und die Beleuchtung der Schiffe zu entfernen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich arbeiteten sie an der Beleuchtung der Rennstrecke, die in der Kongresshalle von Orison entstehen wird.\n\nNarrative\nIm vergangenen Monat hat sich das Team Narrative mit Aufgaben besch\u00e4ftigt, die von Missionsinhalten bis hin zur \u00dcberlieferung reichen. Was die Missionen angeht, so hat das Team in Zusammenarbeit mit den Design-Teams in Montreal und Gro\u00dfbritannien Texte f\u00fcr die neuesten Reclaimer-Missionen und eine Reihe neuer Liefermissionen erstellt. Im Juli wurden weitere Gespr\u00e4che \u00fcber die Entwicklung neuer Missionstypen gef\u00fchrt, von denen einer eine einzigartige Mischung aus Erz\u00e4hlung und Design darstellt. Das Team begann zu \u00fcberlegen, wie viele Inhalte n\u00f6tig sind, um sie in das Spiel zu integrieren, und ob sie so skalierbar sind, dass sie genug Abwechslung bieten, um das Spiel interessant zu halten.\n\nDas Team traf sich mit den Teams f\u00fcr Umwelt und Design, um \u00fcber die L\u00e4den und die Wirtschaft in Pyro zu sprechen, damit sich das Spielerlebnis von dem in Stanton unterscheidet. Um dies zu unterst\u00fctzen, arbeitete das Team weiter an den MoCap-Daten f\u00fcr die Grenzh\u00e4ndler, die Ende Juni aufgenommen wurden, um sie in die Pipeline zu bringen.\n\nVor kurzem sind zwei neue Narrative Designer zum Team gesto\u00dfen, die zun\u00e4chst in anderen Teams eingesetzt wurden, um sich mit dem Setup und der Software vertraut zu machen. Sie werden das Team in den technischen Bereichen Design und Voice Packs unterst\u00fctzen, um die Charaktere und Schaupl\u00e4tze n\u00e4her an die geplante Vision und den Ton heranzuf\u00fchren.\n\nAu\u00dferdem fanden Treffen mit dem neuen In-Game-Branding-Team in Montreal statt, um die verschiedenen In-Game-Unternehmen und Hersteller zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen und ihr Aussehen, ihre Themen und Farben zu vereinheitlichen. Da ein Gro\u00dfteil unseres Marketings aus fiktiven Inhalten besteht, wird dies einen einheitlichen Ton und eine einheitliche Stimme f\u00fcr die Unternehmen schaffen, egal ob sie im Spiel oder au\u00dferhalb erscheinen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde eine weitere Ausgabe des Shubin-Mitarbeiter-Newsletters Mining Rocks, ein Portfolio \u00fcber Nine Tails, eine originelle Untold Tales \u00fcber eine schockierende Entdeckung in Sol und eine weitere Reihe von Galactapedia-Eintr\u00e4gen ver\u00f6ffentlicht.\n\nTechnische Animation\nDas Tech Animation Team hat weiterhin Zeit in die Codebasis der Tools investiert. Jahrelange Entwicklungsarbeit und schnelle Korrekturen werden \u00fcberpr\u00fcft, konsolidiert und \u00fcberarbeitet, um den Code-Standards zu entsprechen und die Code-Basis zu modularisieren, damit sie f\u00fcr die technischen Animatoren besser zug\u00e4nglich ist. Dies wird die Entwicklung von Tools und der Pipeline, die auf Kernprozessen basieren, beschleunigen.\n\nParallel dazu werden derzeit mehrere neue Toolketten entwickelt und integriert: CGA- und SKIN-Laden in Maya, Entwicklung von RBF-Solvern und Unterst\u00fctzung der SSD- und Alembic-Animationspipeline. Ihre zuk\u00fcnftige Entwicklungs-Roadmap ist ebenfalls in Planung.\n\nOnline-Dienste (Montreal)\nDas Team der Online-Dienste hat im Juli an Leistungsverbesserungen des Entity-Graph-Dienstes gearbeitet und dabei erhebliche Leistungssteigerungen (in einigen F\u00e4llen im zweistelligen Prozentbereich) erzielt.\n\nEs wurden Fehler behoben und der neue Anmeldevorgang getestet. Dann ging es weiter mit Phase zwei des Refactors, Ledger und Wallet, die den Umgang mit W\u00e4hrungen im Spiel ver\u00e4ndern werden.\n\nDas Team hat auch den neuen Chrono-Dienst fertiggestellt, der eine programmatische API f\u00fcr verteilte Timer und Alarme bietet. Zum Beispiel f\u00fcr das Auslaufen von Mietrechten.\n\nUnd schlie\u00dflich hat das Team die erste \u00dcberarbeitung des neuen Inventarverwaltungssystems abgeschlossen, das f\u00fcr das persistente Streaming ben\u00f6tigt wird. Es befindet sich derzeit in der internen Testphase mit dem Actor Feature Team und betrifft fast alle Vorr\u00e4te im Spiel (ist aber f\u00fcr den Spieler unsichtbar).\n\nLive Tools (Montreal)\nDas Live-Tools-Team hat eine neue Methode eingef\u00fchrt, um sich in das Network Operation Center (NOC) von Hex 3.0 einzuloggen und die verschiedenen Rollen und Berechtigungen zu verwalten. Da die Benutzerfreundlichkeit des Tools von entscheidender Bedeutung ist, l\u00e4uft derzeit eine Umfrage unter seinen h\u00e4ufigen Nutzern. Das Team hat das bisher gesammelte Feedback analysiert und arbeitet an verschiedenen L\u00f6sungen, um das Design und die Benutzerfreundlichkeit des NOC zu verbessern.\n\nTurbulent (Web-Plattform)\nIm letzten Monat hat das Team der Webplattform von Turbulent die Skins von MISC und Crusader im CMS-Tool bereinigt und die Integration sauberer gemacht. Dann entwarfen sie eine Wire-Framing-Seite, um den Patch-Status besser zu kommunizieren.\n\nIm Pledge Store hat das Team daran gearbeitet, klarere Haftungsausschl\u00fcsse f\u00fcr Warbond-SKUs, eigenst\u00e4ndige Schiffskonzepte und R\u00fcckkaufregeln f\u00fcr Rabatte zu erstellen.\n\nDas Community-Team arbeitete weiter an neuen Funktionen f\u00fcr den Community Hub und f\u00fcgte im Juli Moderation und ein Ehrensystem hinzu.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich hat das Backend-Infrastrukturteam von Turbulent ein PHP-Upgrade durchgef\u00fchrt, um das Backend effizienter zu gestalten und die Einhaltung von Code-Standards zu gew\u00e4hrleisten.\n\nUI\nIm letzten Monat hat das UI-Team die Entwicklung der neuen Starmap fortgesetzt, die Beschriftung verbessert und ein Konzept entwickelt, wie die Weltraumwolken so dargestellt werden k\u00f6nnen, dass sie gut aussehen und gut funktionieren.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden Bugs f\u00fcr das Update \"Belagerung von Orison\" behoben und Anpassungen an den Ausr\u00fcstungssystemen zur Unterst\u00fctzung von persistentem Streaming vorgenommen.\n\nVFX\nIm Juli arbeitete das VFX-Team zusammen mit den Teams f\u00fcr Kunst und Beleuchtung an modularen Sandh\u00f6hlen. Da diese Module vom Designteam f\u00fcr die Gestaltung der H\u00f6hlen verwendet wurden, mussten die VFX-K\u00fcnstler bei der Platzierung ihrer Effekte kreativ sein, um Wiederholungen zu vermeiden.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich startete das VFX-Konzept die Vorproduktion f\u00fcr das Quantenreise-Erlebnis und eine allgemeine visuelle \u00dcberarbeitung der Quantenreise.","zh_CN":"PU Monthly Report\nJuly 2022\nWelcome to July\u2019s PU Monthly Report! With Alpha 3.17.2 making it to the live servers at the end of July, most teams shifted focus to tasks for the next patch release and beyond.\n\nSo, this month, you\u2019ll see progress on various dependencies for persistent streaming, Pyro, the economy, and more. Read on for all the details!\n\nAI (Content)\nLast month, AI Content dedicated time to bug-fixing existing features. They identified the top 20 usables that the AI interact with and set out to fix as many issues as possible in two weeks. The issues were triaged and arranged into three categories:\n\nBugs that the AI designers could solve\n\nBugs that AI animators could solve\n\nCode issues not solvable by AI Content\n\nBy the end, approximately 50 issues had been solved before the team returned to feature work.\n\nJuly\u2019s feature work included supporting the weapons vendor setup by creating weapon pickup and place animations, progressing with the locomotion polish mentioned last month, and retargeting overlay animations to the female skeleton.\n\nThe AI designers continued implementing the dynamic conversations feature, expanding it to the eat-and-drink behavior. Now, NPCs can have conversations between bites or drinks.\n\n\u201cWe are pleased with the result, as it makes the AI feel less individual and more connected with other NPCs.\u201d - AI Content Team\n\nAI engineers will now also seek out colleagues at wall panels and work zones (e.g. broken pipes) to start conversations. They\u2019re currently working on implementing chatter for AI in bunk beds and arcade machines too.\n\nAI (Features)\nFor human combat, AI Features continued to work on tactic selection, including implementing a more data-driven approach to setting up the scoring factors in Data-Forge. This will allow the designers to quickly tweak values to produce the best possible range of combat behaviors for the situation, including with multiple combatants with different setups and ranges. This solution extends the \u2018function selection\u2019 in Subsumption to allow the game code to register a custom probability calculator, which will provide benefits in general, not just for combat behaviors.\n\nThey also began aligning the existing perception systems to a new design where the perception meter rises depending on different stimuli (hearing footsteps or gunfire, seeing a target, etc.) and falls over time. Once different threshold levels on the meter are hit, they trigger different alertness levels that determine specific reaction animations and behaviors. For example, at the lowest level, the AI will react by simply turning their head toward the stimulus. At the middle level, they will investigate the stimulus and, at the highest, they will enter combat. Stimuli can also impact the meter in different ways based on the conditions of the target, including whether they\u2019re crouched or standing and the location\u2019s lighting.\n\nWork also started on the investigation behavior, with the devs implementing a system to allow NPCs to determine potential enemy hiding spots, check them, and keep track of which ones they\u2019ve seen. The next stage is for NPCs to share information so they can cover a level together.\n\nThey\u2019re also working to improve the consistency of cover selection using the automatic cover generation system. They\u2019re also planning to improve the quality of cover and provide more information to the AI so that less decision making has to be made at runtime.\n\nThey also blocked out animations for human-AI mantling and vaulting to give NPCs more locomotion options when moving around the environment. Clean-up and timing tasks were also completed for the spec-ops animation sets.\n\nAI (Tech)\nDuring July, AI Tech focused on extending the functionalities required to traverse navigation islands using special actions. This included implementing new adapters for navigation links to include mantling, jumping down, and vaulting.\n\n\u201cThe basic idea is that, using all the existing markup, we want to allow NPCs to perform similar actions to the player in the environment. For example, we adjusted the ledge objects to include specifications that evaluate the navmesh and link multiple islands correctly.\u201d - AI Tech Team\n\nThey also continued R&D on seamless transitions into usables. This time, they implemented a cleaner and more reliable system for sharp-turn animations, giving more natural movement to NPCs following paths around corners. This allows helps NPCs feel \u2018heavier\u2019 and show weight balancing when moving over sharp corners.\n\nProgress was also made on the locomotion refactor. Last month, the team began improving how AI actors process movement, which will allow them to decouple movement requests from what processes it. This is an important change to better support multiple path-followers used in different contexts. For example, actors, creatures, or NPCs driving a vehicle or pushing a trolley. They\u2019re currently preparing to integrate into the Squadron 42 branch and verify that everything works as expected.\n\nFor the Subsumption editor within the sandbox tool, AI Tech implemented new functionality and stabilized the tool to finally open up the usage to all the designers.\n\nA better AI-debug UI using imGUI is currently being implemented to allow the devs to select and inspect NPC behaviors. The tool can split the NPCs present in each zone, select multiple NPCs, and inspect their properties.\n\nProgress was also made on ship reinforcements for Alpha 3.17.2. The team made the feature more robust by adding better monitoring of the disembarking process from the pilot\u2019s perspective. They also added an abort phase for the dropship in case the drop location is occupied, and the pilot can now monitor the presence of a player inside the cargo area.\n\nThey also fixed several bugs relating to slow reaction time and desyncs\/teleports. These issues are mostly caused by a low server framerate but the devs optimized the code and implemented tweaks to allow the code to better handle some of those situations.\n\nAI (Vehicles)\nIn July, the AI Vehicle Team finished enabling AI to use different ship modes; AI is now fully integrated with the ability to swap modes when required by the task they want to perform. The designers will also soon be able to give AI access to higher SCM speeds when designing behaviors.\n\nBug fixes were also made throughout the month, including an issue with the \u2018FlyTo\u2019 not computing an efficient path and dive attacks not ignoring driverless space ships.\n\nAnimation\nLast month, the Facial Animation team further developed female vendors, outlaws, rescue and transport, and continued burning down emotes.\n\nThe Motion Capture team is currently building their new studio, which should be live by mid-August.\n\nArt (Characters)\nThe Character Art team continued work on the frontier and high-fashion outfits for upcoming releases. They also progressed with marketing items for both the Subscriber program and upcoming holiday events.\n\nArt (Ships)\nThroughout July, the UK Ship Art team continued the greybox pass on the Argo SRV, finishing the exterior work before moving on to the interior.\n\nDevelopment of an unannounced ship continued, which is currently moving from greybox to final art. July saw the greybox pass complete on the cockpit, dashboard, habitation, and cargo hold. The team also progressed the exterior hull to final art.\n\nThe final art pass on an unannounced ground vehicle was finalized. The artists then moved on to a pass of the MISC Hull C.\n\nThe whitebox pass began on an unannounced variant of an existing ship, with modifications to the exterior nearing completion.\n\nA resource-management pass on the Aegis Hammerhead also began. This includes adding relays and modifications to the existing component bays to make them all functional, with some tweaks to their placement for balance.\n\nIn the US, Art transitioned to their final pass on the Drake Corsair while supporting System Design on the greybox, taking the main, retro, and MAV thrusters to the final stage. The port wings were also detailed and are almost ready to hand off. On the exterior, the nose was further detailed and modifications were made to the decal texture to standardize the official Drake font. The team also took the interior cargo hold through to final art, with an initial lighting pass being completed throughout the interior.\n\nCommunity\nExpanding on last month\u2019s content, the team released two more Alpha 3.17.2 Patch Watch posts. Patch Watch #2 dealt with the quality-of-life improvements coming with Siege of Orison, while Patch Watch #3 detailed the new racing track, the Snake Pit.\n\nThe team also supported the Foundation Festival, a month-long celebration of the Star Citizen community that featured a Free Fly and the Tales Of Camaraderie contest.\n\nAlongside the Eve Online community team, they held the Battle of the Bricks stream, raising money for the Extra Life charity.\n\n\u201cWe hope that everyone watching had a great time as we celebrated our shared passion for space games. And don't forget that Donations for Extra Life are still open until late December!\u201d - Community Team\n\nThe team also progressed with the new Community Hub and are currently preparing for the launch of Ship Showdown in August.\n\nEngine\nIn July, the Physics team made several optimizations to the code. Ray\/box overlap checks were implemented in ISPC and are now also used in ray world intersections (RWI) to quickly skip entity parts if there's no overlap of a ray and an entity's local bounds. Further optimizations include using a box pruner to process vehicle wheels and all of their possible colliders (and their parts) more quickly, as well as SSE and AVX2 optimizations in the code that searches parts of a physical entity. Additionally, support for successive pulley attachments to rope entities was added, and the spatial configuration of interior grid types was changed to use more layers of internal nodes that are smaller in dimension. This, for instance, helped in Port Olisar, where a lot of time was spent maintaining thunk lists, which is completely removed by this change.\n\nOn the renderer, the Gen12 transition continued. For example, Gen12 Scaleform (UI) rendering was enabled by default, support for MIP map generation passes was added, and material overrides for render nodes are now supported, including for multi materials. The depth pre-pass submission is now skipped if motion vectors are rendered. Thread synchronization code in pipeline state object (PSO) cache refreshing as well as in the shader system was improved, and unnecessary stencil tests for the shadow map stage were removed. The render loading thread was replaced by a video rendering thread, which is needed for the sole purpose of rendering UI while the game is loading. Lastly, a bug that was crashing the video driver was fixed and the entire render code was changed to successfully compile via Include-What-You-Use (IWYU). Various issues in the form of buffer overruns in low-level VFX render code were also fixed.\n\nThe Gen12 ports of atmospheric and volumetric cloud rendering continued as look-up table generation for atmosphere, as well as volumetric cloud preprocessing steps, were successfully moved over to execute through the new APIs. The rendering of legacy (spherical) clouds was moved to Gen12 too and can now also render as part of the deferred pipeline\u2019s forward stage (which will be enabled soon). This recent progress also resulted in various suggestions (some of which have already been implemented) to refine the Gen12 APIs for special cases so they can be ported straightforwardly and integrate better. Lastly, work on porting the remaining passes for atmospheric and volumetric clouds will commence in August.\n\nOn the core engine, entity lifetime code was adjusted for the new needs of server meshing with the goal of it being easier to use as well as creating a more refined feeling of persistence. A time-sliced entity density manager was implemented as a part of the reworked entity lifetime for server meshing. The background job manager was changed to better cope with very long-running preempted background jobs to reduce runtime stalls. For example, stalls during shader compilation. Furthermore, component lifetime now uses a cheaper custom weak pointer approach that the current std::shared_ptr cannot provide. Moreover, StarHash bind culling of sub-zones was significantly optimized. The ability to set hardware (data) breakpoints from code was fixed and, lastly, Linux thread priority changed to use real-time FIFO scheduling.\n\nThe remainder of the time was spent supporting Alpha 3.18 and bug fixing 3.17.x; especially analyzing the impact of 100-player servers.\n\nFeatures (Arena Commander)\nLast month, the Arena Commander Feature team fixed issues in both Arena Commander (AC) and Star Marine (SM), including some with map- and game-mode selection, scoreboards, level geometry, respawning, and AI spawning.\n\n\u201cOur community has been very helpful in identifying such issues as they appear, which we greatly appreciate!\u201d - Arena Commander Feature Team\n\nAdditionally, ongoing improvements were made to how quickly and easily players get into sessions. Investigation into getting PU-based locations as environments in AC and SM also continued.\n\nSome changes to scanning\/ping\/radar design were implemented for both vehicles and FPS gameplay to allow players to find and identify contacts with greater ease.\n\nFinally, bugs were fixed to give the community as stable an experience as possible.\n\nFeatures (Characters & Weapons)\nWith the new actor movement synchronization enabled for the PTU, July saw the team focus on fixing issues, specifically with extrapolation (when a local machine tries to predict what another player will be doing). Extrapolation is necessary when network latency prevents data from arriving regularly. Incorrect prediction results in the player appearing to teleport, or rubber band, when up-to-date data arrives from the server. The team will continue to refine the algorithm over the coming releases and are specifically looking at improving the handling of look-input synchronization for the next patch.\n\nIn July, the team also started laying the groundwork for FPS devices. There are already some examples of these in the game, such as grenades and mining gadgets. But, as the list of devices expands, the team wants to take a more systemic approach to ensure the setup and flow are consistent across the board.\n\nEarlier in the year, the team reported work on \u2018Code Driven IK.\u2019 This system has now been combined with the dynamic hand placement feature mentioned last month. Together, this ensures that animators have control over when to use hand placement or not, as well as tweaking some of its settings directly in individual assets. This has allowed the Maya-side interface of this new IK-system to mature further, with several quality-of-life improvements.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe Features team continued to develop life-support and engineering gameplay. This included work on the MISC Hull A, as it\u2019s the first ship with interactable relay points that control resource distribution. The power plant and fuel tanks now power the system using the new tech, and UI work was extended to allow players to control the temperature per room.\n\nHull scraping is progressing well, with the team focusing on creating the commodity boxes and repair ammunition at the dedicated filler station in the Reclaimer and Vulture.\n\nGraphics, VFX Programming & Planet Tech\nJuly saw the implementation of a dynamic bitset data structure, which replaces the TJointBitSet, as well as the investigation and testing of offline damage maps with persistence. The team also worked on separating CPU & GPU implementation, ensuring they result in the same damage map.\n\nThe team finished porting Gas Clouds to Gen12 and fixed several issues, including a GPU crash related to this feature. Work began on Vulkan scaleform functionality and particle mesh rendering in Gen12. Progress was also made on porting refraction and light beams to Gen12.\n\nCanvas decal texture streaming was sped up and image testing now waits for it to complete. Support for silhouettes on editor entity objects was added alongside improvements to render-item sorting to make it consistent at different runs.\n\nHair color and specular improvements were finished for the hair shader. There were also updates to tessellation and displacement on the organic shader. For jump points, the team focused on branching tunnels, which included fixing situations where the connecting segments self-intersect.\n\nThe Planet Tech team made improvements to the world and biome builder by moving mesh building to background jobs, substantially reducing stutters in-editor. There were also fixes for mismatching physics meshes on servers as well as a refactor of procedural entities, which improved planet loading time. Four-point Bezier curves were also added to river generation alongside general improvements to the river placement tool. Collision detection was added to RaStar to prevent modules from being placed when they overlap with geometry too.\n\nLighting\nLast month, Lighting\u2019s primary task was making headway into their backlog of tech and dev debt. This is a list of tasks or bugs that have built up that they either didn\u2019t have time to work on or weren\u2019t high enough priority to tackle immediately. For the most part, this work entailed minor polish notes for Orison and fixing minor bugs across other locations.\n\nThey then moved on to supporting the new sand cave location archetype. Compared to rocky caves, sand caves feature more natural dappled light filtering in from the surface above to create a very different mood and atmosphere.\n\nThey also completed a lighting pass on the upcoming Origin 600i and Crusader Mercury derelict crash sites, integrating the nearby settlements into the landscape and stripping out the lighting from the ships.\n\nLastly, they worked on a full lighting pass of the upcoming racing circuit being added to the Orison convention hall.\n\nNarrative\nOver the past month, Narrative tackled tasks ranging from mission content to lore. On the mission front, the team generated text for the latest Reclaimer missions as well as a variety of new delivery missions while working with the Design teams in Montreal and the UK. July continued several other ongoing conversations into the development of new mission types, one of which presents a unique fusion of narrative and design. So, the team began figuring out how much content would be necessary to incorporate it into the game and whether it will be scalable to provide enough variety to keep it interesting.\n\nThe team met with the Environment and Design teams to talk over Pyro\u2019s shops and overall economy to help differentiate the player experience from Stanton. To help support this, the team continued to work through the mo-cap data for the frontier vendors captured at the end of June to get it into the pipeline.\n\nTwo new narrative designers recently joined the team, who have initially been tasked to other teams to learn the setup and software. These roles will ultimately provide narrative support in the technical areas of design setup and voice packs to make the characters and locations feel closer to the intended vision and tone.\n\nMeetings were also held with the new In-Game Branding team in Montreal to review the various in-game corporations and manufacturers to standardize their looks, themes, and colors. Since so much of our marketing exists as in-fiction content, this will establish a consistent tone and voice for the companies whether they\u2019re appearing in-game or out.\n\nThey also published another edition of Shubin\u2019s employee newsletters, Mining Rocks, a Portfolio on Nine Tails, an original Untold Tales about a shocking discovery in Sol, and another batch of Galactapedia entries.\n\nTech Animation\nThe Tech Animation team continued to invest time into the tools codebase. Years of development and quick fixes are being triaged, consolidated, and revamped to fully conform to their coding standards and modularize the codebase to be more accessible to the technical animators. This will expedite the creation of tools and the pipeline that rely on core processes.\n\nAlongside this, they\u2019re currently developing and integrating several new tool chains: CGA and SKIN loading in Maya, RBF solver development, and SSD & Alembic animation pipeline support. Their future development roadmap is also in planning.\n\nOnline services (Montreal)\nThe Online Services team worked on performance improvements to the entity graph service in July, unlocking substantial performance gains (in some cases double-digit percentages).\n\nBug fixing and character reset testing were done for the new login flow. They then moved on to phase two of the refactor, Ledger and Wallet, which will change how currency is handled in-game.\n\nThe team also completed the new Chrono service, which offers a programmatic API for distributed timers and alarms. For example, in the expiry of rental entitlements.\n\nLastly, the team completed the first refactor of the new inventory management system, which is needed for persistent streaming. This is currently in internal testing with the Actor Feature team and affects almost all inventories in the game (though is invisible to the player).\n\nLive Tools (Montreal)\nThe Live Tools team implemented a new way to log into Hex 3.0\u2019s Network Operation Center (NOC) and manage the different roles and permissions. Because usability of the tool is crucial, a survey is currently open among its frequent users. The team has analyzed the feedback collected so far and is working on different solutions to improve the NOC\u2019s design and usability.\n\nTurbulent (Web Platform)\nLast month, Turbulent\u2019s Web Platform team worked on cleanup of the MISC and Crusader skins in the CMS tool, making integration cleaner. They then designed a wire-framing page to better communicate patch status.\n\nIn the Pledge Store, the team worked on creating clearer disclaimers around Warbond SKUs, concept standalone ships, and buy-back rules relating to discounts.\n\nThe Community team continued to work on new features for the Community Hub, adding moderation and an honor system in July.\n\nFinally for Turbulent, the Backend Infrastructure team upgraded PHP, making the backend more efficient and organized in adhering to code standards.\n\nUI\nLast month, the UI team continued development of the new Starmap, improving labeling and concepting how to display space clouds in a way that looks great and performs well.\n\nBugs were also fixed for the Siege of Orison update, and adjustments were made to the loadout systems in support of persistent streaming.\n\nVFX\nJuly saw the VFX team collaborating with the Art and Lighting teams on modular sand cave locations. With these modules being used by Design to lay out the cave interiors, the VFX artists needed to be creative in how they placed their effects to cut down on repetition.\n\nFinally, VFX Concept kickstarted pre-production on the quantum travel experience and a general quantum-travel visual overhaul."},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2022-08-04T02:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"3 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 19:23:34","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":18810,"next_id":18813}}