{"data":{"id":18820,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: July 2022","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/18820-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-July-2022","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/18820","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/18820","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\nJuly 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 08:03:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits.\n\nWelcome to July\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including updates to Vanduul movement, level design, and character art.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\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\nFor the Vanduul, the team blocked out several animations, including piloting, and some location-specific animations used to get the Vanduul from their spawn positions (often off the navigation mesh) into the level.\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 reinforcement for Alpha 3.17.1. 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 master modes; AI is now fully integrated with the ability to swap master modes when required by the operator mode they want to use. The designers will also soon be able to cycle modes 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 Animation team further developed zero-g movement and navigation, adjusting the feel to give a better overall experience. They also worked on a new SMG, additional weapons for the master-at-arms, ladder interactions, female console use, and locomotion (sharp turns and jukes).\n\nNew mobiGlas interactions were developed to give a more realistic feel to characters, and progress was made on the Vanduul, this time searching vents and climbing.\n\nOn the facial side, improvements to the facial animations of the named cast members continued.\n\nArt (Characters)\nThe Character team spent June focusing on the remaining Navy faction outfits and progressed with the Screaming Galsons armors. They\u2019re currently preparing to create the Shubin mining outfits and work with Tech Animation on head scans for various characters.\n\nArt (Weapons)\nWeapon Art started the month bug fixing, closing out around half of their backlog of bugs alongside clean-up work. Progress was then made on the Volt shotgun, pistol, assault rifle, and sniper rifle.\n\nAnimation work progressed for the Volt weapons too, and first pass animations and reviews of the new melee weapon metrics were completed.\n\nWork also began on some SQ42-faction-specific weapons, beginning with an SMG and shotgun. The military Multi-Tool had its whitebox updated with new screen positions to ensure the UI will work for the intended gameplay too.\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\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nGameplay Features focused on support and bug fixing throughout July, specifically looking into performance and polishing recently-worked-on features. New functionality was also added to player choice; this feature now utilizes the same setup used for conversations and allows Design to change whether the text is camera facing along with its size and offset.\n\nFeatures (Vehicle)\nVehicle Features started designing the new multi-function displays alongside the core engineering technology work in the background. The design side is mostly complete, with the focus now on prototypes.\n\nThe team also spent time integrating the new resource network that will deliver more interesting and varied engineering gameplay. This will also increase performance as items are used much more efficiently.\n\nQuantum boost was fully integrated into SQ42 and handed over to the designers to enable them to feedback on further level-design requirements. Finally on the tech side, the team continued to support persistent streaming with a transit refactor alongside bug fixing.\n\nMissiles received a complete flight retune after some bug-fixing highlighted problems with the way the missiles were set up. Now, focus is on the intercept portion of flight and controlling accelerations rather than allowing them to be controlled as dynamically as they were before.\n\nThe team also began balancing what speeds and tunings are required for the new Master Modes feature, ensuring they get the combat speeds right under normal thrust and boost so combat starts to move in the intended direction.\n\nTo help with future ship balance and the introduction of the resource network, the team created a master tuning document that will not only act as a reference point for future ship designs but allow them to set out the requirements of the recourse network balance once it\u2019s handed to Design.\n\nGameplay Story\nGameplay Story received a fresh delivery of motion capture early in July, which allowed them to make great strides in several different areas, including creating a whole new scene in chapter 1 and updating the start of another.\n\nThey also make a significant update to scenes in chapter 4G, overhauled a scene in chapter 4, and further polished scenes in chapter 4. Maintenance was also performed across various scenes in several different chapters.\n\nThe team also looked at the later chapters and began prototyping two new scenes in chapter 10 and made some minor updates to chapter 12.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\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\nNarrative\nDuring July, Narrative focused on completing first-pass scripting and recording scratch dialogue for a large section of one of SQ42\u2019s middle chapters. Design refined the gameplay in this section so Narrative frequently played through these updated enemy encounters, puzzles, stealth, and navigation challenges.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s very important to make sure the player always understands what their current goals are and what their next steps should be so, to that end, the writers have been working to balance dialogue hints to ensure that players who need a bit more guidance will be able to get it without spoiling the fun or challenge of a given area.\u201d Narrative Team\n\nAdditionally, as gameplay mechanics were iterated on and polished, the Narrative team adjusted the script to ensure that lines referencing those mechanics matched how the gameplay worked. For example, recent improvements to the radar and scanning system allowed them to streamline some of the terminology used by characters in-game.\n\nThe team also looked to expand the use of the dynamic conversation system to enhance the background and enemy NPCs that players will come across. While important key conversations are specifically planned for the player to encounter, there are some areas where the player\u2019s freedom to explore has highlighted the need for additional content to bring it to life. Rather than relying on additional bespoke lines, the team is investigating using dynamic conversations to allow for a much broader range of content to fill the space.\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\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\nThe artists then worked with the game designers to create concepts for several interactive UI screens found around the game.\n\nThe team also worked on new doors and airlocks specifically for SQ42, building them to look right in various UI styles and setting them up to support a variety of gameplay scenarios.\n\nVFX\nThroughout July, the VFX team continued to work closely with Art and Design, supporting all visual-effect requirements for their Q3 milestones.\n\nThey also spent time cleaning up and documenting one of their most crucial pipelines: Rigid Body Destruction. The majority of SQ42\u2019s destruction sequences are created in Houdini, then exported into the engine. The visual requirements of the sequence determine the way it\u2019s exported, with two file formats available: CGA, for animated geometry transforms (e.g. building pieces breaking apart) and Alembic, for animated geometry deformation (e.g. bending metal). So, it\u2019s important that the pipeline is robust enough to handle the varying complexity of the destruction sequences without slowing the artists down.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION","de_DE":"Geschwader 42 Monatsbericht\nJuli 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 08:03:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO-Geschwader 42 Rekruten.\n\nWillkommen zum Entwicklungsbericht f\u00fcr Squadron 42 im Juli. Anbei findest du Details zu den neuesten Fortschritten in der Kampagne, einschlie\u00dflich Updates zur Bewegung der Vanduul, zum Leveldesign und zur Charakterzeichnung.\n\nWir danken euch f\u00fcr eure anhaltende Unterst\u00fctzung von Squadron 42.\n\nMit freundlichen Gr\u00fc\u00dfen,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Inhalt)\nLetzten Monat widmete sich AI Content der Fehlerbehebung bei bestehenden 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 KI-Features wurde die Arbeit an der Taktikauswahl f\u00fcr menschliche K\u00e4mpfe fortgesetzt, einschlie\u00dflich der Einf\u00fchrung eines datengesteuerten Ansatzes f\u00fcr die Einstellung der Wertungsfaktoren in Data-Forge. 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\nF\u00fcr die Vanduul blockte das Team mehrere Animationen aus, darunter die Steuerung und einige ortsspezifische Animationen, mit denen die Vanduul von ihren Spawn-Positionen (oft au\u00dferhalb des Navigationsmeshs) in den Level gelangen.\n\nKI (Tech)\nIm Juli konzentrierte sich die KI-Abteilung darauf, die Funktionen zu erweitern, die f\u00fcr das \u00dcberqueren von Navigationsinseln mit Hilfe spezieller Aktionen erforderlich sind. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Implementierung neuer Adapter f\u00fcr Navigationsverbindungen, die das Mantelziehen, Abspringen und 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 Kurven 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. 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 3.17.1 wurden Fortschritte gemacht. Das Team hat die Funktion robuster gemacht, indem es eine bessere \u00dcberwachung des Ausschiffungsprozesses aus der Perspektive des Piloten hinzugef\u00fcgt hat. Au\u00dferdem wurde eine Abbruchphase f\u00fcr das Absetzschiff hinzugef\u00fcgt, falls der Absetzort besetzt ist, und der Pilot kann nun 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-Fahrzeugteam die Verwendung von Master-Modi f\u00fcr die KI fertiggestellt; die KI ist jetzt vollst\u00e4ndig integriert und kann den Master-Modus wechseln, wenn der gew\u00fcnschte Operator-Modus dies erfordert. Die Designer\/innen werden auch bald in der Lage sein, die Modi zu wechseln, um der KI Zugang zu h\u00f6heren SCM-Geschwindigkeiten beim Entwerfen von Verhaltensweisen zu geben.\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 Animationsteam die Null-G-Bewegung und die Navigation weiterentwickelt und das Spielgef\u00fchl verbessert, um ein besseres Gesamterlebnis zu schaffen. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie an einer neuen SMG, zus\u00e4tzlichen Waffen f\u00fcr den Waffenmeister, Interaktionen mit Leitern, der Benutzung der weiblichen Konsole und der Fortbewegung (scharfe Kurven und Ausweichman\u00f6ver).\n\nNeue MobiGlas-Interaktionen wurden entwickelt, um den Charakteren ein realistischeres Gef\u00fchl zu geben, und es wurden Fortschritte bei den Vanduul gemacht, diesmal beim Suchen von Sch\u00e4chten und beim Klettern.\n\nAuf der Gesichtsseite wurden Verbesserungen an den Gesichtsanimationen der genannten Darsteller\/innen vorgenommen.\n\nKunst (Charaktere)\nDas Charakterteam hat sich im Juni auf die verbleibenden Outfits der Navy-Fraktion konzentriert und Fortschritte bei den R\u00fcstungen der Screaming Galsons gemacht. Zurzeit bereiten sie sich auf die Erstellung der Shubin-Minen-Outfits vor und arbeiten mit Tech Animation an den Kopfscans f\u00fcr verschiedene Charaktere.\n\nKunst (Waffen)\nDie Waffenkunst begann den Monat mit der Behebung von Fehlern und schloss etwa die H\u00e4lfte ihres R\u00fcckstandes an Fehlern ab. Dann wurden Fortschritte bei der Volt-Schrotflinte, der Pistole, dem Sturmgewehr und dem Scharfsch\u00fctzengewehr gemacht.\n\nDie Animationsarbeit f\u00fcr die Volt-Waffen wurde ebenfalls vorangetrieben und die ersten Animationen und \u00dcberpr\u00fcfungen der neuen Nahkampfwaffen-Metriken wurden abgeschlossen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde mit der Arbeit an einigen SQ42-fraktionsspezifischen Waffen begonnen, angefangen mit einer SMG und einer Schrotflinte. Die Whitebox des milit\u00e4rischen Multi-Tools wurde mit neuen Bildschirmpositionen aktualisiert, um sicherzustellen, dass die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che auch f\u00fcr das geplante Gameplay funktioniert.\n\nEngine\nIm Juli hat das Physikteam 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 Entities 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 P\u00e4sse 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 mit sehr lang laufenden Preempted-Hintergrundjobs besser zurechtzukommen und 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\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nDie Gameplay-Features konzentrierten sich im Juli auf Support und Fehlerbehebung, insbesondere auf die Leistung und den Feinschliff an k\u00fcrzlich \u00fcberarbeiteten Features. Au\u00dferdem wurde eine neue Funktion f\u00fcr die Spielerauswahl hinzugef\u00fcgt. Diese Funktion nutzt nun dasselbe Setup wie die Konversation und erm\u00f6glicht es dem Design, die Ausrichtung des Textes auf die Kamera sowie seine Gr\u00f6\u00dfe und seinen Versatz zu \u00e4ndern.\n\nFeatures (Fahrzeug)\nIn der Abteilung Fahrzeugeigenschaften wurde mit dem Design der neuen Multifunktionsdisplays begonnen, w\u00e4hrend im Hintergrund an der Kerntechnologie gearbeitet wird. Das Design ist gr\u00f6\u00dftenteils abgeschlossen und der Schwerpunkt liegt jetzt auf den Prototypen.\n\nDas Team hat auch Zeit damit verbracht, das neue Ressourcennetzwerk zu integrieren, das f\u00fcr ein interessanteres und abwechslungsreicheres Ingenieursspiel sorgen wird. Dadurch wird auch die Leistung gesteigert, da die Gegenst\u00e4nde viel effizienter genutzt werden.\n\nDer Quantenboost wurde vollst\u00e4ndig in SQ42 integriert und den Designern \u00fcbergeben, damit sie Feedback zu weiteren Anforderungen an das Leveldesign geben k\u00f6nnen. Auf der technischen Seite unterst\u00fctzte das Team weiterhin das persistente Streaming mit einem Transit-Refactor und der Behebung von Fehlern.\n\nDie Raketen wurden komplett \u00fcberarbeitet, nachdem einige Fehlerbehebungen Probleme mit der Art und Weise, wie die Raketen eingestellt waren, aufgedeckt hatten. Jetzt liegt der Fokus auf dem Abfangteil des Fluges und der Steuerung der Beschleunigung, anstatt sie so dynamisch wie zuvor zu steuern.\n\nDas Team hat au\u00dferdem damit begonnen, die Geschwindigkeiten und Einstellungen f\u00fcr das neue Feature \"Master Modes\" auszugleichen, um sicherzustellen, dass die Kampfgeschwindigkeiten bei normalem Schub und Boost richtig eingestellt sind, damit sich der Kampf in die gew\u00fcnschte Richtung bewegt.\n\nUm die zuk\u00fcnftige Schiffsbalance und die Einf\u00fchrung des Ressourcennetzwerks zu unterst\u00fctzen, hat das Team ein Master-Tuning-Dokument erstellt, das nicht nur als Referenzpunkt f\u00fcr zuk\u00fcnftige Schiffsdesigns dient, sondern auch die Anforderungen an die Balance des Ressourcennetzwerks festlegt, sobald es dem Design \u00fcbergeben wird.\n\nGameplay Story\nGameplay Story erhielt Anfang Juli eine neue Lieferung von Motion Capture, die es dem Team erm\u00f6glichte, in verschiedenen Bereichen gro\u00dfe Fortschritte zu machen, z. B. bei der Erstellung einer v\u00f6llig neuen Szene in Kapitel 1 und der Aktualisierung des Beginns einer anderen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden Szenen in Kapitel 4G aktualisiert, eine Szene in Kapitel 4 \u00fcberarbeitet und weitere Szenen in Kapitel 4 aufpoliert. Au\u00dferdem wurden verschiedene Szenen in mehreren Kapiteln \u00fcberarbeitet.\n\nDas Team sah sich auch die sp\u00e4teren Kapitel an und begann mit dem Prototyping von zwei neuen Szenen in Kapitel 10 und nahm einige kleinere Aktualisierungen in Kapitel 12 vor.\n\nGrafik- und VFX-Programmierung\nIm Juli wurde eine dynamische Bitset-Datenstruktur implementiert, die das TJointBitSet ersetzt, und es wurden Offline-Schadenskarten mit Persistenz untersucht und getestet. Das Team hat auch an der Trennung von CPU- und GPU-Implementierung gearbeitet, 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 Geometrie \u00fcberschneiden.\n\nNarrative\nIm Juli konzentrierte sich Narrative auf die Fertigstellung des First-Pass-Skripts und die Aufnahme von Scratch-Dialogen f\u00fcr einen gro\u00dfen Teil des mittleren Kapitels von SQ42. Das Design hat das Gameplay in diesem Abschnitt verfeinert, so dass Narrative diese aktualisierten Feindbegegnungen, R\u00e4tsel, Stealth- und Navigationsherausforderungen h\u00e4ufig durchgespielt hat.\n\n\"Es ist sehr wichtig, dass der Spieler immer wei\u00df, was sein aktuelles Ziel ist und was er als N\u00e4chstes tun sollte. Deshalb haben die Autoren daran gearbeitet, die Dialoghinweise so auszubalancieren, dass Spieler, die etwas mehr Anleitung brauchen, diese auch bekommen k\u00f6nnen, ohne dass der Spa\u00df oder die Herausforderung eines bestimmten Bereichs darunter leiden.\" Narrative Team\n\nAu\u00dferdem hat das Narrative Team das Skript angepasst, um sicherzustellen, dass die Texte, die sich auf die Spielmechanik beziehen, mit dem Gameplay \u00fcbereinstimmen, wenn die Spielmechanik verbessert wurde. Durch die j\u00fcngsten Verbesserungen am Radar- und Scansystem konnten sie zum Beispiel einige der von den Charakteren im Spiel verwendeten Begriffe vereinfachen.\n\nDas Team hat auch versucht, das dynamische Konversationssystem zu erweitern, um den Hintergrund und die gegnerischen NSCs, denen die Spieler\/innen begegnen, zu verbessern. W\u00e4hrend wichtige Schl\u00fcsselgespr\u00e4che f\u00fcr den Spieler speziell geplant sind, gibt es einige Bereiche, in denen die Freiheit des Spielers, sie zu erkunden, den Bedarf an zus\u00e4tzlichen Inhalten deutlich gemacht hat, um sie mit Leben zu f\u00fcllen. Anstatt sich auf zus\u00e4tzliche ma\u00dfgeschneiderte Zeilen zu verlassen, untersucht das Team den Einsatz von dynamischen Gespr\u00e4chen, um den Raum mit einer viel breiteren Palette von Inhalten zu f\u00fcllen.\n\nTechnische Animation\nDas Team von Tech Animation hat weiterhin Zeit in die Codebasis der Tools investiert. Die jahrelange Entwicklung und die Schnellkorrekturen werden \u00fcberpr\u00fcft, konsolidiert und \u00fcberarbeitet, um den Code-Standards vollst\u00e4ndig zu entsprechen und die Code-Basis zu modularisieren, damit sie f\u00fcr die technischen Animatoren leichter 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\nUI\nIm letzten Monat hat das UI-Team die Entwicklung der neuen Starmap fortgesetzt, die Beschriftung verbessert und ein Konzept entwickelt, wie man Weltraumwolken so darstellen kann, dass sie gut aussehen und gut funktionieren.\n\nDie K\u00fcnstler arbeiteten dann mit den Spieldesignern zusammen, um Konzepte f\u00fcr verschiedene interaktive UI-Bildschirme zu erstellen, die im Spiel zu finden sind.\n\nDas Team arbeitete auch an neuen T\u00fcren und Luftschleusen speziell f\u00fcr SQ42. Sie wurden so gestaltet, dass sie in verschiedenen UI-Stilen gut aussehen und eine Vielzahl von Spielszenarien unterst\u00fctzen.\n\nVFX\nIm Juli arbeitete das VFX-Team weiterhin eng mit Art und Design zusammen und unterst\u00fctzte alle Anforderungen an die visuellen Effekte f\u00fcr die Q3-Meilensteine.\n\nSie verbrachten auch Zeit damit, eine ihrer wichtigsten Pipelines aufzur\u00e4umen und zu dokumentieren: Rigid Body Destruction. Der Gro\u00dfteil der Zerst\u00f6rungssequenzen von SQ42 wird in Houdini erstellt und dann in die Engine exportiert. Die visuellen Anforderungen der Sequenz bestimmen die Art des Exports, wobei zwei Dateiformate zur Verf\u00fcgung stehen: CGA f\u00fcr animierte Geometrietransformationen (z. B. das Auseinanderbrechen von Geb\u00e4udeteilen) und Alembic f\u00fcr animierte Geometrieverformungen (z. B. das Verbiegen von Metall). Es ist also wichtig, dass die Pipeline robust genug ist, um die unterschiedliche Komplexit\u00e4t der Zerst\u00f6rungssequenzen zu bew\u00e4ltigen, ohne die K\u00fcnstler\/innen zu verlangsamen.\n\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...\n\/\/ ENDE DER \u00dcBERTRAGUNG","zh_CN":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report\nJuly 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 08:03:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits.\n\nWelcome to July\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including updates to Vanduul movement, level design, and character art.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\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\nFor the Vanduul, the team blocked out several animations, including piloting, and some location-specific animations used to get the Vanduul from their spawn positions (often off the navigation mesh) into the level.\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 reinforcement for Alpha 3.17.1. 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 master modes; AI is now fully integrated with the ability to swap master modes when required by the operator mode they want to use. The designers will also soon be able to cycle modes 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 Animation team further developed zero-g movement and navigation, adjusting the feel to give a better overall experience. They also worked on a new SMG, additional weapons for the master-at-arms, ladder interactions, female console use, and locomotion (sharp turns and jukes).\n\nNew mobiGlas interactions were developed to give a more realistic feel to characters, and progress was made on the Vanduul, this time searching vents and climbing.\n\nOn the facial side, improvements to the facial animations of the named cast members continued.\n\nArt (Characters)\nThe Character team spent June focusing on the remaining Navy faction outfits and progressed with the Screaming Galsons armors. They\u2019re currently preparing to create the Shubin mining outfits and work with Tech Animation on head scans for various characters.\n\nArt (Weapons)\nWeapon Art started the month bug fixing, closing out around half of their backlog of bugs alongside clean-up work. Progress was then made on the Volt shotgun, pistol, assault rifle, and sniper rifle.\n\nAnimation work progressed for the Volt weapons too, and first pass animations and reviews of the new melee weapon metrics were completed.\n\nWork also began on some SQ42-faction-specific weapons, beginning with an SMG and shotgun. The military Multi-Tool had its whitebox updated with new screen positions to ensure the UI will work for the intended gameplay too.\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\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nGameplay Features focused on support and bug fixing throughout July, specifically looking into performance and polishing recently-worked-on features. New functionality was also added to player choice; this feature now utilizes the same setup used for conversations and allows Design to change whether the text is camera facing along with its size and offset.\n\nFeatures (Vehicle)\nVehicle Features started designing the new multi-function displays alongside the core engineering technology work in the background. The design side is mostly complete, with the focus now on prototypes.\n\nThe team also spent time integrating the new resource network that will deliver more interesting and varied engineering gameplay. This will also increase performance as items are used much more efficiently.\n\nQuantum boost was fully integrated into SQ42 and handed over to the designers to enable them to feedback on further level-design requirements. Finally on the tech side, the team continued to support persistent streaming with a transit refactor alongside bug fixing.\n\nMissiles received a complete flight retune after some bug-fixing highlighted problems with the way the missiles were set up. Now, focus is on the intercept portion of flight and controlling accelerations rather than allowing them to be controlled as dynamically as they were before.\n\nThe team also began balancing what speeds and tunings are required for the new Master Modes feature, ensuring they get the combat speeds right under normal thrust and boost so combat starts to move in the intended direction.\n\nTo help with future ship balance and the introduction of the resource network, the team created a master tuning document that will not only act as a reference point for future ship designs but allow them to set out the requirements of the recourse network balance once it\u2019s handed to Design.\n\nGameplay Story\nGameplay Story received a fresh delivery of motion capture early in July, which allowed them to make great strides in several different areas, including creating a whole new scene in chapter 1 and updating the start of another.\n\nThey also make a significant update to scenes in chapter 4G, overhauled a scene in chapter 4, and further polished scenes in chapter 4. Maintenance was also performed across various scenes in several different chapters.\n\nThe team also looked at the later chapters and began prototyping two new scenes in chapter 10 and made some minor updates to chapter 12.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\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\nNarrative\nDuring July, Narrative focused on completing first-pass scripting and recording scratch dialogue for a large section of one of SQ42\u2019s middle chapters. Design refined the gameplay in this section so Narrative frequently played through these updated enemy encounters, puzzles, stealth, and navigation challenges.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s very important to make sure the player always understands what their current goals are and what their next steps should be so, to that end, the writers have been working to balance dialogue hints to ensure that players who need a bit more guidance will be able to get it without spoiling the fun or challenge of a given area.\u201d Narrative Team\n\nAdditionally, as gameplay mechanics were iterated on and polished, the Narrative team adjusted the script to ensure that lines referencing those mechanics matched how the gameplay worked. For example, recent improvements to the radar and scanning system allowed them to streamline some of the terminology used by characters in-game.\n\nThe team also looked to expand the use of the dynamic conversation system to enhance the background and enemy NPCs that players will come across. While important key conversations are specifically planned for the player to encounter, there are some areas where the player\u2019s freedom to explore has highlighted the need for additional content to bring it to life. Rather than relying on additional bespoke lines, the team is investigating using dynamic conversations to allow for a much broader range of content to fill the space.\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\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\nThe artists then worked with the game designers to create concepts for several interactive UI screens found around the game.\n\nThe team also worked on new doors and airlocks specifically for SQ42, building them to look right in various UI styles and setting them up to support a variety of gameplay scenarios.\n\nVFX\nThroughout July, the VFX team continued to work closely with Art and Design, supporting all visual-effect requirements for their Q3 milestones.\n\nThey also spent time cleaning up and documenting one of their most crucial pipelines: Rigid Body Destruction. The majority of SQ42\u2019s destruction sequences are created in Houdini, then exported into the engine. The visual requirements of the sequence determine the way it\u2019s exported, with two file formats available: CGA, for animated geometry transforms (e.g. building pieces breaking apart) and Alembic, for animated geometry deformation (e.g. bending metal). So, it\u2019s important that the pipeline is robust enough to handle the varying complexity of the destruction sequences without slowing the artists down.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2022-08-11T12:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"3 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 19:07:02","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":18819,"next_id":18821}}