{"data":{"id":18982,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: October 2022","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/18982-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-October-2022","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/18982","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/18982","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\nOctober 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 11:02:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits.\n\nWelcome to October\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including updates to alien executions, saving and loading, and outlaw interactions.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Content)\nThroughout October, the AI Content team progressed with the vendor and patron behaviors, realizing the full flow of NPCs ordering, carrying, and consuming food and drink. This gives them a sense of life and purpose, as they\u2019re always busy doing something.\n\nProgress continued on the utility behavior, with AI characters opening crates, taking items out, and putting items in. This was a surprisingly complex task but the various elements are now working well together.\n\nOther tasks involved polishing the quartermaster behavior, making animation pose updates, setting up wildlines, overhauling documentation, and prototyping food eating.\n\nThey also began working in chapter 15, which is a run-down location with a different feel from other areas.\n\nAI (Features)\nLast month, the AI animators continued to refine Vanduul execution animations to ensure they\u2019re perceived as strong and impactful from the first-person perspective, are better suited to be played \u201con the spot\u201d if the attack occurs in a cramped space, are more believable to be deflectable by the player, and allow players to escape or attack once deflected.\n\nOn the perception system side, the AI team implemented functionality to allow them to rate and respond to \u2018disruptions,\u2019 which are unexpected scenarios that can be resolved. For example, the lights of a room turning off or an engine being disabled. Players can use this mechanic to try to disrupt NPC behaviors when they haven\u2019t been detected, giving them the opportunity to better infiltrate the level by avoiding patrols and sentries.\n\nPlayers can also use \u2018distractions\u2019 \u00ad(actions that trigger audio stimuli, such as throwing an object) to cause NPCs to leave their positions to investigate.\n\n\u201cWe had to ensure that these events are propagated out to all of the agents within the appropriate area, that they are handled by the perception system, rated against the current threat level, and that the correct behaviors are implemented to resolve the disruptions. The resolution may involve agents going to investigate the source of the disruption, or alternatively, if too many disruptions have occurred, to increase their alertness level. This means that they may take out their weapons, say specific alertness-level wildlines, or respond quicker to subsequent events. We also had to take into consideration that the immediate source of the disruption may not be what the NPC wants to investigate. For example, the agent may perceive that a light goes out, but they would want to investigate the light switch that controls the light, and ultimately, if they don\u2019t encounter the player, turn the light back on again.\u201d AI Features Team\n\nOctober also saw AI implement rocket launcher and railgun handling. For rocket launchers, NPCs have to consider if the shot will cause explosive splash damage to friendly agents. This check can be disabled using the friendly-fire trait to enable more reckless enemies. For the railgun, they changed how the behavior works in cover. Now, NPCs will start charging the weapon while in cover before emerging to fire. For both of these weapons, the team disabled the standard check to see if the weapon can hit the target, so enemies will continue to fire at the target even when in cover. This allows the player to see that these weapons are being fired nearby and respond accordingly rather than being immediately hit upon leaving cover. As part of this work, they also reviewed the existing shouldered weapon animations.\n\nContinuing with weapon usage, AI Features implemented how NPCs pick up weapons and ammunition during combat. Enemies are under the same ammunition constraints as the player, requiring them to conserve it and use other weapons when they run out. NPCs will evaluate the best course of action in this situation, including switching to their secondary weapon, picking up ammunition, or finding a new weapon altogether. When looking for ammunition, they could take it from boxes, out of loose weapons, or from stowed weapons on dead or incapacitated characters. When looking for weapons, they could get them from racks, find them around the area, or take them from other characters. To implement this, weapons were set up as usables, which allows the AI to search for the best usable that can provide ammo or a weapon. The team had to modify the usable system slightly, including adding support for usables that supply themselves (loose weapons or ammo) and ensuring that usable alignment positions are correctly aligned with gravity when the weapon or ammo falls.\n\nFor non-combat AI, the team worked on functionality to support NPCs moving cargo from one location to another, including picking up crates, stacking them on a trolley, moving the trolley to a destination (such as a cargo hold), and then taking them off the trolley and re-stacking them. An existing prototype was also adapted with new tech to provide behaviors that can be used in varying locations to bring them to life.\n\nThey also refined their tools to generate better quality cover. This included making cover generation more robust to edge cases and supporting recognition of cover over a certain distance from identified \u2018cover edges.\u2019 This allows cover to be generated in a greater range of areas.\n\nFinally, AI Features took the first steps towards implementing \u2018buddy AI\u2019 that will support gameplay where the player is accompanied by one or more characters. To begin with, they made a rapid prototype featuring some of the functionality that might be required to generate conversations about what the final form of this would be and how it will fit into gameplay.\n\nAI (Tech)\nLast month, the AI Tech team made several usability improvements to the Apollo Subsumption tool. This included updating the multigraph with feature folders and functions to allow organization from the outline view. For example, the designers are now able to delete and move graphs to different folders directly from the outline view panel. They can also drag a node connection into an empty section of the graph to open the drop-down menu that allows them to create a new task.\n\nMinor usability improvements were made too, including allowing all the entries in the outline view to collapse and the addition of a new filter field in the variable tree view.\n\nThey also extended the graph view with a new custom view style. This is currently used to allow Apollo to open, visualize, and edit the Mastegraph files that were previously managed by hand.\n\nFor perception, the team worked on supporting audio noise level and audio masking: Audio noise level ensures that audio stimuli that don\u2019t surpass the basic background noise won\u2019t be heard by listeners. New tools were implemented to allow the designers to configure the audio noise level in an area and the type of sounds that should be considered \u201cnormal\u201d in that area.\n\nAudio masking makes sure that particular audio stimuli are not perceived as anomalous. For example, explosions in a field where fireworks are tested. This allows the player to use the environment as audio cover when performing actions. For example, firing weapons near a shooting range as to not alert NPCs.\n\nThe team implemented light extensions to action areas. These enable the designers to link light groups to an area and automatically calculate whether the state of the environment should be light or dark. This impacts the time NPCs require to perceive a target, making it easier to stay hidden in darker areas.\n\nAI Tech also extended the system that allows the visibility of large objects, such as vehicles.\n\n\u201cLarge vehicles can be seen at further distances but we need to avoid approaches that cost too much on the CPU, such as doing raycasts for very long distances. To prevent this, we can now describe the visibility of a large object depending on the degree of visual angle - basically at which distance it has a specific size from the observer\u2019s perspective.\u201d AI Tech Team\n\nThis also allows the team to defer the discovery phase of which objects are within range of large objects. This utilizes one query, which then allows each individual to correctly verify the occlusion of the object.\n\nThe parameters of the visual field-of-view were also extended to be overridable based on the AI state. For example, allowing pilots to see at a greater distance and visually target on-foot characters.\n\nThe team continued extending navigation links to support two main functionalities: Firstly, they enabled usable routing to function with entity links to allow door panels (that are linked to a door) to be correctly used by NPCs. This will allow them to understand which panel they should use to trigger the right interaction.\nSecondly, they exposed a way to define the costs of nav-links based on specific conditions, such as increasing the cost for vaulting when a character isn\u2019t alerted or walking. Those costs allow the system to describe how preferable actions are from the NPC\u2019s perspective. For example, a character wouldn\u2019t vault, which is a physically demanding action, if not needed.\n\nWork began to properly allow NPCs to drive ground vehicles. The team are currently verifying the setup of a selection of vehicles to use as reference. They also set up the code to switch to the right nav-mesh when driving a vehicle and select the right path-follower.\n\nFinally for AI Tech, the team worked on the locomotion refactor, which involved integrating current work into different streams to begin stabilizing bugs. They also experimented with foot locking during MoveNet and are currently verifying how to use this functionality on various aspects of locomotion, such as during sharp turns. They also implemented a first frame adjustment for the seamless transition code to improve the entering of usables. This will also play a specific animation at a specific location with a specific pose.\n\nAI (Vehicles)\nLast month, AI Vehicles worked with Flight Design to deliver a turret battle that occurs early in the campaign. This involved reworking wave 0 that will be used as the standard for the rest of the waves during the whole chapter. This includes a new behavior that consists of Vanduul ships attacking the Javelin turret by picking stunt splines placed by the designers.\n\nIn addition, they completed various support tasks for the designers working in different flight-based chapters.\n\nAnimation\nIn October, the Animation team continued to improve zero-g gameplay and animate new weapons, including a coil grenade and coil rifle.\n\nThey then moved to blocking out restraint animations and created female spec-op and guard animations for the AI team. Blockouts were also done for bin rummaging and the beggar.\n\nFor the Vanduul, further work was done on executions, pilot posing, and sharp turns to improve locomotion. Bespoke locomotion was created for the story characters too.\n\nWork was also done on animations for the firing range, and the rig for quadruped predators was tested.\n\nFinally, a three-day mocap shoot was done on the new Manchester stage focusing on stealth takedowns and mastery levels, non-spec-op level combatants, and various social AI improvements to better tie them into their environment.\n\nArt (Characters)\nCharacter Art continued modeling major navy clothing assets and the Screaming Galsons\u2019 armor. They also began skinning assets for Shubin.\n\nTech Animation continued to support Character Art, processing the remaining scan data for character heads and creating whitebox rigging for two key models.\n\nEngine\nIn October, the Physics team worked on various improvements, including brush physicalization, which was put into queues of 32 entries each and forced to be processed in parallel. Spawn batch finalization was reworked to wait for all brush archetypes and their material clones to be fully physicalized before finalizing the spawned entities, and the root spawn batch can now be queried from outside of the entity system. A physics event was added for cluster breakage along with an entity event that detaches the corresponding compounded entity. Additionally, various optimizations were made to improve low-level data access and reduce contention. Also, the physics environment is no longer woken during the bulk destruction of brushes unless they have a collider. Lastly, severe stalls during entity deletion as well as the network aspects of breakability were fixed.\n\nOn the renderer, more progress was made on the Gen12 transition. A lot of work was done on particles. Among other things, the light atlas stage was rewritten to make use of the material permutation cache, and a lot of code in the GPU particle system was refactored and cleaned up. The particle submission code and its PSO management were rewritten as well. Furthermore, light lists are now managed per scene pass, which will eventually help simplify the tiled shading stage. Additionally, opaque sun shadows for gas clouds, image ghosting, various game post-effects (water droplets, flash bang, ocular migraine, blood vision), the projectile manager, RTT support functionality, and render target debug viz were ported to Gen12. Support for transient scene render passes was completed, and collision checks for resource sets were added. Offline cube maps now use their own pipeline to allow for different feature sets. Lastly, lots of optimizations and cleanups were made all around.\n\nRegarding atmosphere and volumetric clouds, improvements were made to the Gen12 code by adopting the transient passes made available in September. Furthermore, a preview mode was implemented to help lighting artists setting up planet atmospheres.\n\nOn the core engine, the team made additional improvements to entity lifetime management. This involved adding code to group objects for lifetime management and how entity deletion is handled on stream out. All legacy entity lifetime code was removed. The entity allocator was changed to be page based. In-engine file mapping support was completed (i.e., faster p4k file access). Initial steps were done to run all game code through Include-What-You-Use to remove unnecessary header dependencies, which should ultimately lead to faster incremental compile times. Lastly, in case of failed memory allocations, it's now possible to identify relevant code owners and list them in bug reports automatically to speed up bug processing.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nFollowing on from Persistent Entity Streaming (PES), the SQ42 Feature team began implementing the save\/load system. Because PES stores the state of all entities in the universe, the team can utilize it to save progress. They\u2019re currently in the first stages of testing saving and reloading, ensuring everything restores correctly.\n\nThe Mission Manager app is currently being implemented into the player\u2019s mobiGlas, allowing them to access the mission briefing, current and completed objectives, and a report on how well they did once the mission is complete.\n\nAdditional polish work was given to the new character customizer based on feedback from Design. Work continued on the crane mechanic, adding additional modes for varying types of cranes and their functionality. This will allow the operator to attach, drop, and stack crates.\n\nNew security-token functionality was also worked on to control access to various aspects of a level.\n\nGameplay Story\nLast month, Gameplay Story continued using motion-capture data to update scenes. The main scene worked on was in chapter 11, which, due to the environment layout changing, needed a full implementation pass to get it fully functioning. Several scenes were also updated to make them work with the AI characters, who now enter and leave smoothly.\n\nStart and end poses were updated for scenes in chapters four, six, and eight. Some of these had an extra polish pass to make them function better with the player.\n\nLastly, two new scenes were created to allow characters to work on top of the Gladius. These are still work in progress and will require new mo-cap at a later date.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nLast month, the Graphics & VFX Programming team focused on damage maps. This involved fixing crashes and various issues including missing initial damage on debris, incorrect damage map sizes, and inconsistencies between ship sizes. Time was also spent investigating networking and persistence for debris.\n\nFurther progress was made on porting gas clouds and CPU particles to Gen12. The Gen12 GPU marker refactor was also completed, and some issues were fixed relating to the hair and hologram shaders.\n\nFor the ongoing data-pipeline refactor, the team continued work on SKIN files, allowing compacted, non-split files to be compiled or loaded. They also implemented process groups in support of multiple input formats.\n\nDevelopment of screen space shadows began, which involved adjusting raytracing to account for thin objects. Work was also done on anti-aliased lines for aux geometry (editor debug) and UI (for use on the StarMap). They also added new features for the UIMesh shader (multi-scale texturing, bi\/tri-planar projection, smoothing) alongside enabling wetness effects to work with blood, sweat, and tears.\n\nThe team closed out RaStar v1 and fixed the remaining bugs and crashes raised by the content teams. There were also various fixes submitted for rivers, and R&D began on water sim and water rendering improvements.\n\nLevel Design\nOctober saw the FPS team focusing on one of the larger locations in the game that spans multiple chapters. They\u2019re closing in on finalizing the last few blockouts in this environment and gameplay implementation is well underway.\n\nWith combat AI taking shape, FPS began placing greater emphasis on dialing in enemy confrontations.\n\nThe Flight team continued to collaborate with the other design teams to push the first half of the game to a more polished state. Part of the game\u2019s dialogue was written before certain mechanics were in a final state, so some of the tutorials were tweaked to accommodate the final designs. They also worked closely with Narrative to flesh out some of the quieter gameplay sections.\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative team continued with detailed reviews of gameplay chapters. In addition to alterations to several existing scenes to improve clarity, a handful of new scenes had dialogue written and scratch audio recorded. This included a scene with two outlaws debating the best way to breach a locked door.\n\n\u201cA small scene like this serves to provide some flavor and life to the AI combatants but also helps direct the player towards what their next objective is and how to potentially bypass a puzzle. The next steps will be to test the dialogue additions during future playthroughs and make any additional adjustments as needed.\u201d Narrative Team\n\nDevelopment of the dynamic dialogue system continued, which is used by background characters as they go about their lives. This latest pass led to a more concise line set that will allow for greater flexibility with how lines are used to accommodate a variety of scenarios. These background characters are not meant to distract players from scripted character content but provide a general sense of activity and immersion.\n\nThe team added names and description strings for a variety of naval uniforms, bespoke weapons, and military gadgets. They also reviewed updates to the military mobiGlas with regards to how mission information will be displayed and began the validation process to ensure subtitles match the dialogue as recorded.\n\n\u201cSometimes during an actor\u2019s performance, they can adjust a line slightly from how it was written and it\u2019s important to us that subtitles are as accurate as possible.\u201d\n\nQA\nQA continued to support Cinematics by reproducing issues found during development and chasing up outstanding bugs. Last month, focus was also on bug validation and reporting alongside recording scenes for review.\n\nIn addition, QA pushed general editor testing forward to ensure the tools used by the team are working as intended and the development workflow remains stable. A new embedded role was assigned to allow for more in-depth testing and more concise feedback.\n\nUI\nLast month, the UI team continued to work closely with the Vehicle team on the heads-up displays (HUD) and multi-function displays (MFD). This involved adjusting the HUD to incorporate new elements along with reworking the UI style of one manufacturer to give it more character and make it feel more unique.\n\nNow that the Vehicle team has some of the new MFD screens working in-game, a pass was done to improve their appearance and help with the Building Blocks UI setup to create a solid template to work from going forward.\n\nUI also concepted several more interactive screens for gameplay puzzles and made visual and control improvements to the StarMap.\n\nVFX\nIn October, the VFX team continued overhauling the particle library, making the most of several improvements to the particle system to allow for greater flexibility. This includes being able to override various settings per effect in a level, letting the artists focus on a higher quality of effect without having to maintain each instanced version.\n\nFurther improvements were made to the new quantum travel effects, with new refractive particles spawning around a ship\u2019s signed distance field.\n\nFinally, the VFX team implemented a \u2018task pool,\u2019 which allows the artists to tackle various miscellaneous tasks that have accumulated in the backlog.\n\n\u201cThis typically consists of minor bugs and quality-of-life improvements, so it has been great to be able to focus on these things while continuing to support major content and features.\u201d VFX Team\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION","de_DE":"Geschwader 42 Monatsbericht\nOktober 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 11:02:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO-Geschwader 42 Rekruten.\n\nWillkommen zum Entwicklungsbericht f\u00fcr das Geschwader 42 im Oktober. Anbei findest du Details zu den neuesten Fortschritten in der Kampagne, einschlie\u00dflich Updates zu den Exekutionen von Aliens, dem Speichern und Laden und den Interaktionen mit Ge\u00e4chteten.\n\nVielen Dank f\u00fcr eure anhaltende Unterst\u00fctzung von Squadron 42.\n\nMit freundlichen Gr\u00fc\u00dfen,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nKI (Inhalt)\nIm Oktober hat das KI-Inhaltsteam das Verhalten von H\u00e4ndlern und G\u00e4sten weiterentwickelt und den kompletten Fluss der NSCs beim Bestellen, Tragen und Konsumieren von Essen und Getr\u00e4nken realisiert. Das gibt ihnen ein Gef\u00fchl von Leben und Sinn, da sie immer etwas zu tun haben.\n\nDie KI-Charaktere \u00f6ffnen Kisten, nehmen Gegenst\u00e4nde heraus und legen sie hinein. Das war eine \u00fcberraschend komplexe Aufgabe, aber die verschiedenen Elemente arbeiten jetzt gut zusammen.\n\nWeitere Aufgaben waren die Verbesserung des Verhaltens des Quartiermeisters, die Aktualisierung der Animationen, die Einrichtung von Wildlinien, die \u00dcberarbeitung der Dokumentation und der Prototyp des Essens.\n\nSie begannen auch mit der Arbeit in Kapitel 15, einem heruntergekommenen Ort, der sich von den anderen Gebieten unterscheidet.\n\nKI (Features)\nIm letzten Monat haben die KI-Animatoren weiter an der Verfeinerung der Vanduul-Ausf\u00fchrungsanimationen gearbeitet, um sicherzustellen, dass sie aus der Ego-Perspektive als stark und wirkungsvoll wahrgenommen werden, dass sie besser geeignet sind, um \"auf der Stelle\" gespielt zu werden, wenn der Angriff auf engem Raum stattfindet, dass sie glaubw\u00fcrdiger sind, damit sie vom Spieler abgewehrt werden k\u00f6nnen, und dass sie es den Spielern erm\u00f6glichen, zu fliehen oder anzugreifen, wenn sie abgewehrt wurden.\n\nAuf der Seite des Wahrnehmungssystems hat das KI-Team Funktionen implementiert, mit denen sie \"St\u00f6rungen\", also unerwartete Szenarien, die gel\u00f6st werden k\u00f6nnen, bewerten und darauf reagieren k\u00f6nnen. Das sind unerwartete Szenarien, die gel\u00f6st werden k\u00f6nnen, z. B. wenn das Licht in einem Raum ausgeht oder ein Motor ausgeschaltet wird. Die Spieler\/innen k\u00f6nnen diese Mechanik nutzen, um das Verhalten der NSCs zu st\u00f6ren, wenn sie nicht entdeckt wurden, und haben so die M\u00f6glichkeit, das Level besser zu infiltrieren, indem sie Patrouillen und Wachen umgehen.\n\nDie Spieler\/innen k\u00f6nnen auch \"Ablenkungen\" (Aktionen, die akustische Reize ausl\u00f6sen, wie z. B. das Werfen eines Gegenstands) nutzen, um NSCs dazu zu bringen, ihre Positionen zu verlassen, um zu ermitteln.\n\n\"Wir mussten sicherstellen, dass diese Ereignisse an alle Agenten im entsprechenden Gebiet weitergeleitet werden, dass sie vom Wahrnehmungssystem verarbeitet und anhand der aktuellen Bedrohungsstufe bewertet werden und dass die richtigen Verhaltensweisen zur Behebung der St\u00f6rungen umgesetzt werden. Die L\u00f6sung kann darin bestehen, dass die Agenten die Quelle der St\u00f6rung untersuchen oder alternativ, wenn zu viele St\u00f6rungen aufgetreten sind, ihre Wachsamkeit erh\u00f6hen. Das bedeutet, dass sie ihre Waffen z\u00fccken, bestimmte Alarmstufen aussprechen oder schneller auf nachfolgende Ereignisse reagieren k\u00f6nnen. Wir mussten auch ber\u00fccksichtigen, dass die unmittelbare Quelle der St\u00f6rung vielleicht nicht das ist, was der NSC untersuchen will. Der Agent kann zum Beispiel wahrnehmen, dass ein Licht ausgeht, aber er w\u00fcrde den Lichtschalter untersuchen wollen, der das Licht steuert, und schlie\u00dflich, wenn er den Spieler nicht antrifft, das Licht wieder einschalten.\" AI Features Team\n\nIm Oktober hat die KI auch die Handhabung von Raketenwerfern und Railguns implementiert. Bei Raketenwerfern m\u00fcssen die NSCs pr\u00fcfen, ob der Schuss explosiven Spritzschaden bei befreundeten Agenten verursacht. Diese Pr\u00fcfung kann mit der Eigenschaft \"Friendly-Fire\" deaktiviert werden, um r\u00fccksichtslosere Feinde zu erm\u00f6glichen. Bei der Railgun wurde das Verhalten in der Deckung ge\u00e4ndert. Jetzt laden NSCs die Waffe auf, wenn sie in Deckung sind, bevor sie zum Feuern auftauchen. Bei beiden Waffen hat das Team die Standard\u00fcberpr\u00fcfung, ob die Waffe das Ziel treffen kann, deaktiviert, so dass die Feinde auch aus der Deckung heraus weiter auf das Ziel schie\u00dfen. So kann der Spieler sehen, dass diese Waffen in der N\u00e4he abgefeuert werden und entsprechend reagieren, anstatt sofort getroffen zu werden, wenn er die Deckung verl\u00e4sst. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden auch die bestehenden Animationen f\u00fcr geschulterte Waffen \u00fcberarbeitet.\n\nIn Bezug auf die Waffennutzung haben die KI-Funktionen implementiert, wie NSCs w\u00e4hrend des Kampfes Waffen und Munition aufsammeln. Feinde unterliegen denselben Munitionsbeschr\u00e4nkungen wie der Spieler, so dass sie ihre Munition aufsparen und andere Waffen benutzen m\u00fcssen, wenn sie zur Neige gehen. Die NSCs \u00fcberlegen, was in dieser Situation am besten zu tun ist, z. B. zu ihrer Zweitwaffe zu wechseln, Munition aufzusammeln oder eine neue Waffe zu finden. Wenn sie nach Munition suchen, k\u00f6nnen sie diese aus Kisten, aus losen Waffen oder aus verstauten Waffen von toten oder kampfunf\u00e4higen Charakteren nehmen. Wenn sie nach Waffen suchen, k\u00f6nnen sie diese aus Regalen holen, in der Gegend finden oder von anderen Charakteren nehmen. Um dies umzusetzen, wurden Waffen als benutzbare Gegenst\u00e4nde eingerichtet, die es der KI erm\u00f6glichen, nach dem besten benutzbaren Gegenstand zu suchen, der Munition oder eine Waffe liefern kann. Das Team musste das Brauchbarkeits-System ein wenig anpassen, indem es Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Brauchbarkeiten hinzuf\u00fcgte, die sich selbst versorgen (lose Waffen oder Munition) und sicherstellte, dass die Ausrichtungspositionen der Brauchbarkeiten korrekt an der Schwerkraft ausgerichtet sind, wenn die Waffe oder Munition f\u00e4llt.\n\nF\u00fcr die Nicht-Kampf-KI arbeitete das Team an einer Funktion, die NSCs dabei unterst\u00fctzt, Fracht von einem Ort zu einem anderen zu transportieren, z. B. indem sie Kisten aufheben, sie auf einen Wagen stapeln, den Wagen zu einem Zielort (z. B. einem Frachtraum) fahren und sie dann vom Wagen nehmen und neu stapeln. Ein bestehender Prototyp wurde au\u00dferdem mit neuer Technik angepasst, um Verhaltensweisen zu erm\u00f6glichen, die an verschiedenen Orten eingesetzt werden k\u00f6nnen, um sie zum Leben zu erwecken.\n\nSie haben auch ihre Werkzeuge verfeinert, um eine bessere Qualit\u00e4t der Deckung zu erzeugen. Dazu geh\u00f6rte, dass die Deckungsgenerierung robuster gegen\u00fcber Randf\u00e4llen wurde und die Erkennung von Deckung \u00fcber eine bestimmte Entfernung von identifizierten \"Deckungskanten\" hinaus unterst\u00fctzt. Dadurch k\u00f6nnen Deckungen in einer gr\u00f6\u00dferen Anzahl von Gebieten erzeugt werden.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich haben die KI-Funktionen die ersten Schritte zur Implementierung einer \"Buddy-KI\" unternommen, die das Gameplay unterst\u00fctzt, bei dem der Spieler von einem oder mehreren Charakteren begleitet wird. Zun\u00e4chst wurde ein schneller Prototyp mit einigen der Funktionen erstellt, die erforderlich sein k\u00f6nnten, um Gespr\u00e4che dar\u00fcber zu f\u00fchren, wie die endg\u00fcltige Form dieser Funktion aussehen und wie sie sich in das Spielgeschehen einf\u00fcgen wird.\n\nKI (Tech)\nIm letzten Monat hat das KI-Tech-Team mehrere Verbesserungen an der Benutzerfreundlichkeit des Apollo Subsumption Tools vorgenommen. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Aktualisierung des Multigraphen mit Feature-Ordnern und Funktionen, die eine Organisation von der Gliederungsansicht aus erm\u00f6glichen. So k\u00f6nnen die Designer\/innen jetzt zum Beispiel Graphen direkt aus der Gliederungsansicht l\u00f6schen und in andere Ordner verschieben. Au\u00dferdem k\u00f6nnen sie eine Knotenverbindung in einen leeren Abschnitt des Diagramms ziehen, um das Dropdown-Men\u00fc zu \u00f6ffnen, mit dem sie eine neue Aufgabe erstellen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden kleinere Verbesserungen an der Benutzerfreundlichkeit vorgenommen, wie z. B. das Zusammenklappen aller Eintr\u00e4ge in der Gliederungsansicht und das Hinzuf\u00fcgen eines neuen Filterfelds in der Variablenbaumansicht.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde die Diagrammansicht um einen neuen benutzerdefinierten Ansichtsstil erweitert. Dieser wird derzeit verwendet, um Apollo das \u00d6ffnen, Visualisieren und Bearbeiten von Mastegraph-Dateien zu erm\u00f6glichen, die zuvor von Hand verwaltet wurden.\n\nIm Bereich der Wahrnehmung arbeitete das Team an der Unterst\u00fctzung des Audio-Rauschpegels und der Audio-Maskierung: Der Audio-Rauschpegel sorgt daf\u00fcr, dass Audio-Stimuli, die das Grundrauschen nicht \u00fcbersteigen, von den Zuh\u00f6rern nicht geh\u00f6rt werden. Es wurden neue Werkzeuge implementiert, mit denen die Designer\/innen den Ger\u00e4uschpegel in einem Bereich und die Art der Ger\u00e4usche, die in diesem Bereich als \"normal\" gelten sollen, konfigurieren k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDie Audiomaskierung sorgt daf\u00fcr, dass bestimmte Audiostimuli nicht als anomal wahrgenommen werden. Zum Beispiel Explosionen auf einem Feld, auf dem Feuerwerk getestet wird. So kann der Spieler die Umgebung als akustische Tarnung nutzen, wenn er Aktionen durchf\u00fchrt. Zum Beispiel das Abfeuern von Waffen in der N\u00e4he eines Schie\u00dfstandes, um NSCs nicht zu alarmieren.\n\nDas Team implementierte Lichterweiterungen f\u00fcr Aktionsbereiche. Diese erm\u00f6glichen es den Designern, Lichtgruppen mit einem Gebiet zu verkn\u00fcpfen und automatisch zu berechnen, ob der Zustand der Umgebung hell oder dunkel sein sollte. Das wirkt sich auf die Zeit aus, die NSCs brauchen, um ein Ziel wahrzunehmen, und macht es einfacher, sich in dunkleren Bereichen zu verstecken.\n\nAI Tech hat auch das System erweitert, das die Sichtbarkeit von gro\u00dfen Objekten, wie z. B. Fahrzeugen, erm\u00f6glicht.\n\n\"Gro\u00dfe Fahrzeuge k\u00f6nnen auf weitere Entfernungen gesehen werden, aber wir m\u00fcssen Ans\u00e4tze vermeiden, die die CPU zu sehr belasten, wie z. B. die Durchf\u00fchrung von Raycasts f\u00fcr sehr gro\u00dfe Entfernungen. Um das zu verhindern, k\u00f6nnen wir jetzt die Sichtbarkeit eines gro\u00dfen Objekts in Abh\u00e4ngigkeit vom Grad des Sichtwinkels beschreiben - also in welcher Entfernung es aus der Perspektive des Beobachters eine bestimmte Gr\u00f6\u00dfe hat.\" AI Tech Team\n\nDadurch kann das Team auch die Entdeckungsphase verschieben, in der festgestellt wird, welche Objekte sich in Reichweite von gro\u00dfen Objekten befinden. So wird eine einzige Abfrage verwendet, die es jedem Einzelnen erm\u00f6glicht, die Verdeckung des Objekts korrekt zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen.\n\nDie Parameter des visuellen Sichtfeldes wurden au\u00dferdem so erweitert, dass sie je nach Zustand der KI \u00fcberschrieben werden k\u00f6nnen. So k\u00f6nnen Piloten z. B. aus gr\u00f6\u00dferer Entfernung sehen und zu Fu\u00df gehende Personen visuell anvisieren.\n\nDas Team baute die Navigationslinks weiter aus, um zwei Hauptfunktionen zu unterst\u00fctzen: Erstens erm\u00f6glichten sie es, dass nutzbares Routing mit Entity-Links funktioniert, damit T\u00fcrpaneele (die mit einer T\u00fcr verbunden sind) von NSCs korrekt genutzt werden k\u00f6nnen. So k\u00f6nnen sie erkennen, welches Panel sie benutzen m\u00fcssen, um die richtige Interaktion auszul\u00f6sen.\nZweitens wurde eine M\u00f6glichkeit geschaffen, die Kosten f\u00fcr Navigationslinks in Abh\u00e4ngigkeit von bestimmten Bedingungen festzulegen, z. B. die Erh\u00f6hung der Kosten f\u00fcr das Springen, wenn ein Charakter nicht alarmiert ist oder l\u00e4uft. Anhand dieser Kosten kann das System beschreiben, welche Aktionen aus Sicht des NSCs vorzuziehen sind. Eine Figur w\u00fcrde zum Beispiel nicht springen, was eine k\u00f6rperlich anstrengende Aktion ist, wenn sie nicht gebraucht wird.\n\nEs wurde damit begonnen, NSCs das Fahren von Bodenfahrzeugen zu erm\u00f6glichen. Das Team pr\u00fcft derzeit die Einstellungen einer Auswahl von Fahrzeugen, die als Referenz dienen sollen. Au\u00dferdem haben sie den Code eingerichtet, um beim Fahren eines Fahrzeugs zum richtigen Nav-Mesh zu wechseln und den richtigen Pfadfolger auszuw\u00e4hlen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich arbeitete das Team f\u00fcr AI Tech an der \u00dcberarbeitung der Fortbewegung, bei der die aktuelle Arbeit in verschiedene Streams integriert wurde, um Bugs zu stabilisieren. Au\u00dferdem experimentierten sie mit der Fu\u00dfsperre bei MoveNet und pr\u00fcfen derzeit, wie diese Funktion bei verschiedenen Aspekten der Fortbewegung, z. B. bei scharfen Kurven, eingesetzt werden kann. Au\u00dferdem haben sie eine Anpassung des ersten Frames f\u00fcr den Code des nahtlosen \u00dcbergangs implementiert, um das Eintreten von Usables zu verbessern. Damit wird auch eine bestimmte Animation an einer bestimmten Stelle mit einer bestimmten Pose abgespielt.\n\nKI (Fahrzeuge)\nLetzten Monat hat KI-Fahrzeuge mit Flight Design zusammengearbeitet, um einen Kampf mit Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrmen zu liefern, der fr\u00fch in der Kampagne stattfindet. Dabei wurde Welle 0 \u00fcberarbeitet, die als Standard f\u00fcr die restlichen Wellen des gesamten Kapitels verwendet wird. Dazu geh\u00f6rt ein neues Verhalten, das darin besteht, dass Vanduul-Schiffe den Javelin-Turm angreifen, indem sie die von den Designern platzierten Stunt-Splines ausw\u00e4hlen.\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus haben sie verschiedene Unterst\u00fctzungsaufgaben f\u00fcr die Designer erledigt, die an verschiedenen flugbasierten Kapiteln arbeiten.\n\nAnimation\nIm Oktober hat das Animationsteam das Zero-G-Gameplay weiter verbessert und neue Waffen animiert, darunter eine Coil-Granate und ein Coil-Gewehr.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden die Animationen f\u00fcr die Fesseln ausgeblendet und Animationen f\u00fcr weibliche Spec-Ops und Wachen f\u00fcr das KI-Team erstellt. Au\u00dferdem wurden die Animationen f\u00fcr das Durchst\u00f6bern von M\u00fclltonnen und den Bettler ausgeblendet.\n\nF\u00fcr die Vanduul wurde weiter an Exekutionen, dem Posing des Piloten und scharfen Kurven gearbeitet, um die Fortbewegung zu verbessern. Auch f\u00fcr die Story-Charaktere wurden ma\u00dfgeschneiderte Bewegungsabl\u00e4ufe erstellt.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde an den Animationen f\u00fcr den Schie\u00dfstand gearbeitet und das Rig f\u00fcr die vierbeinigen Raubtiere getestet.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich wurde ein dreit\u00e4giges Mocap-Shooting f\u00fcr die neue Manchester-Stufe durchgef\u00fchrt, bei dem der Schwerpunkt auf Stealth-Takedowns und Mastery-Levels, K\u00e4mpfern ohne Spezialf\u00e4higkeiten und verschiedenen Verbesserungen der sozialen KI lag, um sie besser in ihre Umgebung einzubinden.\n\nKunst (Charaktere)\nCharacter Art modellierte weiterhin die wichtigsten Kleidungsst\u00fccke der Marine und die R\u00fcstung der Screaming Galsons. Au\u00dferdem wurde mit dem Skinning f\u00fcr Shubin begonnen.\n\nTech Animation unterst\u00fctzte Character Art weiterhin, indem sie die verbleibenden Scandaten f\u00fcr die Charakterk\u00f6pfe bearbeitete und das Whitebox-Rigging f\u00fcr zwei wichtige Modelle erstellte.\n\nEngine\nIm Oktober arbeitete das Physics-Team an verschiedenen Verbesserungen, u. a. an der Pinselphysikalisierung, die in Warteschlangen mit jeweils 32 Eintr\u00e4gen eingereiht und parallel abgearbeitet werden musste. Die Fertigstellung des Spawn-Batches wurde \u00fcberarbeitet, um zu warten, bis alle Pinselarchetypen und ihre Materialklone vollst\u00e4ndig physisiert sind, bevor die gespawnten Entit\u00e4ten fertiggestellt werden. Es wurde ein Physik-Ereignis f\u00fcr den Bruch von Clustern hinzugef\u00fcgt, zusammen mit einem Entity-Ereignis, das das entsprechende zusammengesetzte Entity abl\u00f6st. Au\u00dferdem wurden verschiedene Optimierungen vorgenommen, um den Low-Level-Datenzugriff zu verbessern und Konflikte zu reduzieren. Au\u00dferdem wird die Physikumgebung bei der Massenzerst\u00f6rung von Pinseln nicht mehr aufgeweckt, es sei denn, sie haben einen Collider. Und schlie\u00dflich wurden schwerwiegende Stalls beim L\u00f6schen von Entit\u00e4ten sowie die Netzwerkaspekte der Breakability behoben.\n\nBeim Renderer wurden weitere Fortschritte bei der Umstellung auf Gen12 gemacht. Es wurde viel an den Partikeln gearbeitet. Unter anderem wurde die Lichtatlas-Stufe umgeschrieben, um den Material-Permutations-Cache zu nutzen, und ein gro\u00dfer Teil des Codes im GPU-Partikel-System wurde \u00fcberarbeitet und aufger\u00e4umt. Der Code f\u00fcr die Partikeleinreichung und die PSO-Verwaltung wurden ebenfalls neu geschrieben. Au\u00dferdem werden die Lichtlisten jetzt pro Szenendurchlauf verwaltet, was die Kachelschattierungsphase vereinfachen wird. Dar\u00fcber hinaus wurden undurchsichtige Sonnenschatten f\u00fcr Gaswolken, Bildgeister, verschiedene Post-Effekte (Wassertropfen, Blitzknall, Augenmigr\u00e4ne, Blutvision), der Projektilmanager, die RTT-Unterst\u00fctzungsfunktion und die Renderziel-Debug-Vis auf Gen12 portiert. Die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr transiente Rendering-Durchg\u00e4nge wurde vervollst\u00e4ndigt und Kollisionspr\u00fcfungen f\u00fcr Ressourcensets wurden hinzugef\u00fcgt. Offline-W\u00fcrfelkarten verwenden jetzt ihre eigene Pipeline, um verschiedene Feature-Sets zu erm\u00f6glichen. Und schlie\u00dflich wurden viele Optimierungen und Bereinigungen vorgenommen.\n\nBei der Atmosph\u00e4re und den volumetrischen Wolken wurden Verbesserungen am Gen12-Code vorgenommen, indem die im September zur Verf\u00fcgung gestellten transienten P\u00e4sse \u00fcbernommen wurden. Au\u00dferdem wurde ein Vorschaumodus implementiert, der Beleuchter\/innen beim Einrichten von Planetenatmosph\u00e4ren unterst\u00fctzt.\n\nIn der Kern-Engine hat das Team zus\u00e4tzliche Verbesserungen am Lebenszeitmanagement von Objekten vorgenommen. Dazu geh\u00f6rte das Hinzuf\u00fcgen von Code zur Gruppierung von Objekten f\u00fcr das Lebenszeitmanagement und die Art und Weise, wie das L\u00f6schen von Entit\u00e4ten beim Stream-Out gehandhabt wird. Der gesamte alte Code f\u00fcr die Lebensdauer von Entit\u00e4ten wurde entfernt. Der Entity Allocator wurde auf Seitenbasis umgestellt. Die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr das In-Engine-Dateimapping wurde vervollst\u00e4ndigt (d.h. schnellerer Zugriff auf p4k-Dateien). Erste Schritte wurden unternommen, um den gesamten Spielcode durch Include-What-You-Use laufen zu lassen, um unn\u00f6tige Header-Abh\u00e4ngigkeiten zu entfernen, was letztendlich zu schnelleren Kompilierzeiten f\u00fchren sollte. Schlie\u00dflich ist es jetzt m\u00f6glich, bei fehlgeschlagenen Speicherzuweisungen die entsprechenden Codebesitzer zu identifizieren und sie automatisch in Fehlerberichten aufzuf\u00fchren, um die Fehlerbearbeitung zu beschleunigen.\n\nFunktionen (Gameplay)\nNach dem Persistent Entity Streaming (PES) hat das SQ42-Feature-Team mit der Implementierung des Save\/Load-Systems begonnen. Da PES den Status aller Entit\u00e4ten im Universum speichert, kann das Team es nutzen, um Fortschritte zu speichern. Derzeit werden die ersten Tests zum Speichern und Laden durchgef\u00fchrt, um sicherzustellen, dass alles korrekt wiederhergestellt wird.\n\nDie Missionsmanager-App wird derzeit in das mobiGlas der Spieler\/innen implementiert. Damit k\u00f6nnen sie auf das Missionsbriefing, die aktuellen und erledigten Ziele und einen Bericht \u00fcber ihre Leistungen zugreifen, sobald die Mission abgeschlossen ist.\n\nAuf der Grundlage des Feedbacks von Design wurde der neue Charakteranpassungsmodus weiter verfeinert. Die Arbeit an der Kranmechanik wurde fortgesetzt, indem zus\u00e4tzliche Modi f\u00fcr verschiedene Krantypen und deren Funktionen hinzugef\u00fcgt wurden. So kann der Bediener Kisten anbringen, fallen lassen und stapeln.\n\nEs wurde auch an einer neuen Sicherheits-Token-Funktion gearbeitet, mit der der Zugang zu verschiedenen Aspekten eines Levels kontrolliert werden kann.\n\nGameplay Story\nIm letzten Monat wurden bei Gameplay Story die Motion-Capture-Daten zur Aktualisierung der Szenen verwendet. Die wichtigste Szene, an der gearbeitet wurde, war die in Kapitel 11, die aufgrund der ver\u00e4nderten Umgebungsgestaltung einen kompletten Implementierungsdurchlauf ben\u00f6tigte, damit sie vollst\u00e4ndig funktioniert. Au\u00dferdem wurden mehrere Szenen aktualisiert, damit sie mit den KI-Charakteren funktionieren, die jetzt reibungslos ein- und ausgehen.\n\nDie Start- und Endposen der Szenen in den Kapiteln vier, sechs und acht wurden aktualisiert. Einige dieser Szenen erhielten einen zus\u00e4tzlichen Feinschliff, damit sie besser mit dem Spieler funktionieren.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich wurden zwei neue Szenen erstellt, in denen die Charaktere auf dem Gladius arbeiten k\u00f6nnen. Diese sind noch in Arbeit und werden zu einem sp\u00e4teren Zeitpunkt ein neues Mo-Cap erfordern.\n\nGrafik & VFX-Programmierung\nIm letzten Monat hat sich das Grafik- und VFX-Programmierteam auf die Schadenskarten konzentriert. Dabei wurden Abst\u00fcrze und verschiedene Probleme behoben, z. B. fehlender Anfangsschaden bei Tr\u00fcmmern, falsche Gr\u00f6\u00dfen der Schadenskarten und Unstimmigkeiten zwischen den Schiffsgr\u00f6\u00dfen. Au\u00dferdem wurde Zeit darauf verwendet, die Vernetzung und die Persistenz von Tr\u00fcmmern zu untersuchen.\n\nWeitere Fortschritte wurden bei der Portierung von Gaswolken und CPU-Partikeln auf Gen12 erzielt. Die \u00dcberarbeitung der GPU-Marker in Gen12 wurde ebenfalls abgeschlossen und einige Probleme im Zusammenhang mit den Haar- und Hologramm-Shadern wurden behoben.\n\nF\u00fcr das laufende Refactoring der Datenpipeline setzte das Team die Arbeit an SKIN-Dateien fort, die es erm\u00f6glichen, kompakte, nicht geteilte Dateien zu kompilieren oder zu laden. Au\u00dferdem wurden Prozessgruppen eingef\u00fchrt, die mehrere Eingabeformate unterst\u00fctzen.\n\nEs wurde mit der Entwicklung von Bildschirmschatten begonnen und das Raytracing angepasst, um d\u00fcnne Objekte zu ber\u00fccksichtigen. Au\u00dferdem wurde an Anti-Aliasing-Linien f\u00fcr die Aux-Geometrie (Editor-Debug) und die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che (f\u00fcr die Verwendung in der StarMap) gearbeitet. Au\u00dferdem wurden neue Funktionen f\u00fcr den UIMesh-Shader hinzugef\u00fcgt (Multi-Scale-Texturierung, bi-\/tri-planare Projektion, Gl\u00e4ttung) und N\u00e4sseeffekte mit Blut, Schwei\u00df und Tr\u00e4nen erm\u00f6glicht.\n\nDas Team hat RaStar v1 abgeschlossen und die verbleibenden Bugs und Abst\u00fcrze behoben, die von den Content-Teams gemeldet wurden. Au\u00dferdem wurden verschiedene Fehlerbehebungen f\u00fcr Fl\u00fcsse eingereicht, und es wurde mit der Entwicklung von Verbesserungen der Wassersimulation und des Wasserrenderings begonnen.\n\nLeveldesign\nIm Oktober konzentrierte sich das FPS-Team auf einen der gr\u00f6\u00dferen Orte im Spiel, der sich \u00fcber mehrere Kapitel erstreckt. Sie stehen kurz vor der Fertigstellung der letzten Blockouts in dieser Umgebung und die Implementierung des Gameplays ist in vollem Gange.\n\nW\u00e4hrend die Kampf-KI immer mehr Gestalt annimmt, konzentriert sich das FPS-Team verst\u00e4rkt auf die Feindkonfrontation.\n\nDas Flight-Team hat weiter mit den anderen Design-Teams zusammengearbeitet, um die erste H\u00e4lfte des Spiels zu einem besseren Zustand zu bringen. Ein Teil der Dialoge des Spiels wurde geschrieben, bevor bestimmte Mechanismen endg\u00fcltig feststanden, so dass einige der Tutorials an das endg\u00fcltige Design angepasst wurden. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie eng mit Narrative zusammen, um einige der ruhigeren Spielabschnitte auszufeilen.\n\nNarrative\nDas Narrative-Team fuhr mit der detaillierten \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung der Spielkapitel fort. Zus\u00e4tzlich zu den \u00c4nderungen an mehreren bestehenden Szenen zur Verbesserung der Verst\u00e4ndlichkeit wurden f\u00fcr eine Handvoll neuer Szenen Dialoge verfasst und der Ton neu aufgenommen. Dazu geh\u00f6rte eine Szene, in der zwei Gesetzlose dar\u00fcber diskutieren, wie sie am besten eine verschlossene T\u00fcr aufbrechen k\u00f6nnen.\n\n\"Eine kleine Szene wie diese dient dazu, den KI-K\u00e4mpfern etwas W\u00fcrze und Leben einzuhauchen, aber auch dazu, dem Spieler zu zeigen, was sein n\u00e4chstes Ziel ist und wie er m\u00f6glicherweise ein R\u00e4tsel umgeht. Als N\u00e4chstes werden wir die zus\u00e4tzlichen Dialoge in zuk\u00fcnftigen Durchl\u00e4ufen testen und bei Bedarf weitere Anpassungen vornehmen.\" Narrative Team\n\nDie Entwicklung des dynamischen Dialogsystems wurde fortgesetzt, das von den Hintergrundcharakteren verwendet wird, w\u00e4hrend sie ihrem Leben nachgehen. Dieser letzte Durchgang f\u00fchrte zu einem pr\u00e4gnanteren Satz, der eine gr\u00f6\u00dfere Flexibilit\u00e4t bei der Verwendung der S\u00e4tze erm\u00f6glicht, um eine Vielzahl von Szenarien zu ber\u00fccksichtigen. Diese Hintergrundfiguren sollen die Spieler\/innen nicht von den geskripteten Inhalten der Charaktere ablenken, sondern f\u00fcr ein allgemeines Gef\u00fchl der Aktivit\u00e4t und Immersion sorgen.\n\nDas Team f\u00fcgte Namen und Beschreibungsstrings f\u00fcr eine Vielzahl von Marineuniformen, ma\u00dfgeschneiderten Waffen und milit\u00e4rischen Gadgets hinzu. Au\u00dferdem \u00fcberpr\u00fcften sie die Aktualisierungen des milit\u00e4rischen mobiGlas hinsichtlich der Anzeige von Missionsinformationen und begannen mit dem Validierungsprozess, um sicherzustellen, dass die Untertitel mit den aufgenommenen Dialogen \u00fcbereinstimmen.\n\n\"Manchmal kann ein Schauspieler w\u00e4hrend seiner Darbietung eine Zeile leicht ver\u00e4ndern, und es ist uns wichtig, dass die Untertitel so genau wie m\u00f6glich sind.\"\n\nQA\nDie Qualit\u00e4tssicherung hat Cinematics weiterhin unterst\u00fctzt, indem sie Probleme, die w\u00e4hrend der Entwicklung aufgetreten sind, reproduziert und noch nicht behobene Bugs aufgesp\u00fcrt hat. Im letzten Monat lag der Schwerpunkt neben der Aufzeichnung von Szenen zur \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung auch auf der Fehlervalidierung und -berichterstattung.\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus hat die QA die allgemeinen Editorentests vorangetrieben, um sicherzustellen, dass die vom Team verwendeten Tools wie vorgesehen funktionieren und der Entwicklungsworkflow stabil bleibt. Es wurde eine neue eingebettete Rolle zugewiesen, um eingehendere Tests und pr\u00e4ziseres Feedback zu erm\u00f6glichen.\n\nUI\nIm letzten Monat arbeitete das UI-Team weiterhin eng mit dem Fahrzeugteam an den Head-up-Displays (HUD) und Multifunktionsdisplays (MFD) zusammen. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Anpassung des HUDs, um neue Elemente einzubauen, sowie die \u00dcberarbeitung des UI-Stils eines Herstellers, um ihm mehr Charakter zu verleihen und es einzigartiger zu machen.\n\nJetzt, wo das Fahrzeugteam einige der neuen MFD-Bildschirme im Spiel hat, wurde ein Durchgang gemacht, um ihr Aussehen zu verbessern und mit dem UI-Setup der Building Blocks zu helfen, um eine solide Vorlage f\u00fcr die weitere Arbeit zu schaffen.\n\nDas UI-Team hat au\u00dferdem mehrere interaktive Bildschirme f\u00fcr Gameplay-R\u00e4tsel entworfen und die StarMap optisch und steuertechnisch verbessert.\n\nVFX\nIm Oktober hat das VFX-Team die \u00dcberarbeitung der Partikelbibliothek fortgesetzt und mehrere Verbesserungen am Partikelsystem vorgenommen, um eine gr\u00f6\u00dfere Flexibilit\u00e4t zu erreichen. Dazu geh\u00f6rt die M\u00f6glichkeit, verschiedene Einstellungen pro Effekt in einem Level zu \u00fcberschreiben, damit sich die K\u00fcnstler auf eine h\u00f6here Qualit\u00e4t der Effekte konzentrieren k\u00f6nnen, ohne jede einzelne Version pflegen zu m\u00fcssen.\n\nWeitere Verbesserungen wurden an den neuen Quantenreise-Effekten vorgenommen, mit neuen brechenden Partikeln, die um das signierte Distanzfeld eines Schiffes spawnen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich f\u00fchrte das VFX-Team einen \"Aufgabenpool\" ein, der es den K\u00fcnstlern erm\u00f6glicht, verschiedene Aufgaben zu erledigen, die sich in der Warteschlange angesammelt haben.\n\n\"Das sind in der Regel kleinere Bugs und Qualit\u00e4tsverbesserungen. Es ist toll, dass wir uns auf diese Dinge konzentrieren k\u00f6nnen, w\u00e4hrend wir weiterhin wichtige Inhalte und Funktionen unterst\u00fctzen.\" VFX-Team\n\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...\n\/\/ ENDE DER \u00dcBERTRAGUNG","zh_CN":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report\nOctober 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 11:02:2022\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits.\n\nWelcome to October\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including updates to alien executions, saving and loading, and outlaw interactions.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Content)\nThroughout October, the AI Content team progressed with the vendor and patron behaviors, realizing the full flow of NPCs ordering, carrying, and consuming food and drink. This gives them a sense of life and purpose, as they\u2019re always busy doing something.\n\nProgress continued on the utility behavior, with AI characters opening crates, taking items out, and putting items in. This was a surprisingly complex task but the various elements are now working well together.\n\nOther tasks involved polishing the quartermaster behavior, making animation pose updates, setting up wildlines, overhauling documentation, and prototyping food eating.\n\nThey also began working in chapter 15, which is a run-down location with a different feel from other areas.\n\nAI (Features)\nLast month, the AI animators continued to refine Vanduul execution animations to ensure they\u2019re perceived as strong and impactful from the first-person perspective, are better suited to be played \u201con the spot\u201d if the attack occurs in a cramped space, are more believable to be deflectable by the player, and allow players to escape or attack once deflected.\n\nOn the perception system side, the AI team implemented functionality to allow them to rate and respond to \u2018disruptions,\u2019 which are unexpected scenarios that can be resolved. For example, the lights of a room turning off or an engine being disabled. Players can use this mechanic to try to disrupt NPC behaviors when they haven\u2019t been detected, giving them the opportunity to better infiltrate the level by avoiding patrols and sentries.\n\nPlayers can also use \u2018distractions\u2019 \u00ad(actions that trigger audio stimuli, such as throwing an object) to cause NPCs to leave their positions to investigate.\n\n\u201cWe had to ensure that these events are propagated out to all of the agents within the appropriate area, that they are handled by the perception system, rated against the current threat level, and that the correct behaviors are implemented to resolve the disruptions. The resolution may involve agents going to investigate the source of the disruption, or alternatively, if too many disruptions have occurred, to increase their alertness level. This means that they may take out their weapons, say specific alertness-level wildlines, or respond quicker to subsequent events. We also had to take into consideration that the immediate source of the disruption may not be what the NPC wants to investigate. For example, the agent may perceive that a light goes out, but they would want to investigate the light switch that controls the light, and ultimately, if they don\u2019t encounter the player, turn the light back on again.\u201d AI Features Team\n\nOctober also saw AI implement rocket launcher and railgun handling. For rocket launchers, NPCs have to consider if the shot will cause explosive splash damage to friendly agents. This check can be disabled using the friendly-fire trait to enable more reckless enemies. For the railgun, they changed how the behavior works in cover. Now, NPCs will start charging the weapon while in cover before emerging to fire. For both of these weapons, the team disabled the standard check to see if the weapon can hit the target, so enemies will continue to fire at the target even when in cover. This allows the player to see that these weapons are being fired nearby and respond accordingly rather than being immediately hit upon leaving cover. As part of this work, they also reviewed the existing shouldered weapon animations.\n\nContinuing with weapon usage, AI Features implemented how NPCs pick up weapons and ammunition during combat. Enemies are under the same ammunition constraints as the player, requiring them to conserve it and use other weapons when they run out. NPCs will evaluate the best course of action in this situation, including switching to their secondary weapon, picking up ammunition, or finding a new weapon altogether. When looking for ammunition, they could take it from boxes, out of loose weapons, or from stowed weapons on dead or incapacitated characters. When looking for weapons, they could get them from racks, find them around the area, or take them from other characters. To implement this, weapons were set up as usables, which allows the AI to search for the best usable that can provide ammo or a weapon. The team had to modify the usable system slightly, including adding support for usables that supply themselves (loose weapons or ammo) and ensuring that usable alignment positions are correctly aligned with gravity when the weapon or ammo falls.\n\nFor non-combat AI, the team worked on functionality to support NPCs moving cargo from one location to another, including picking up crates, stacking them on a trolley, moving the trolley to a destination (such as a cargo hold), and then taking them off the trolley and re-stacking them. An existing prototype was also adapted with new tech to provide behaviors that can be used in varying locations to bring them to life.\n\nThey also refined their tools to generate better quality cover. This included making cover generation more robust to edge cases and supporting recognition of cover over a certain distance from identified \u2018cover edges.\u2019 This allows cover to be generated in a greater range of areas.\n\nFinally, AI Features took the first steps towards implementing \u2018buddy AI\u2019 that will support gameplay where the player is accompanied by one or more characters. To begin with, they made a rapid prototype featuring some of the functionality that might be required to generate conversations about what the final form of this would be and how it will fit into gameplay.\n\nAI (Tech)\nLast month, the AI Tech team made several usability improvements to the Apollo Subsumption tool. This included updating the multigraph with feature folders and functions to allow organization from the outline view. For example, the designers are now able to delete and move graphs to different folders directly from the outline view panel. They can also drag a node connection into an empty section of the graph to open the drop-down menu that allows them to create a new task.\n\nMinor usability improvements were made too, including allowing all the entries in the outline view to collapse and the addition of a new filter field in the variable tree view.\n\nThey also extended the graph view with a new custom view style. This is currently used to allow Apollo to open, visualize, and edit the Mastegraph files that were previously managed by hand.\n\nFor perception, the team worked on supporting audio noise level and audio masking: Audio noise level ensures that audio stimuli that don\u2019t surpass the basic background noise won\u2019t be heard by listeners. New tools were implemented to allow the designers to configure the audio noise level in an area and the type of sounds that should be considered \u201cnormal\u201d in that area.\n\nAudio masking makes sure that particular audio stimuli are not perceived as anomalous. For example, explosions in a field where fireworks are tested. This allows the player to use the environment as audio cover when performing actions. For example, firing weapons near a shooting range as to not alert NPCs.\n\nThe team implemented light extensions to action areas. These enable the designers to link light groups to an area and automatically calculate whether the state of the environment should be light or dark. This impacts the time NPCs require to perceive a target, making it easier to stay hidden in darker areas.\n\nAI Tech also extended the system that allows the visibility of large objects, such as vehicles.\n\n\u201cLarge vehicles can be seen at further distances but we need to avoid approaches that cost too much on the CPU, such as doing raycasts for very long distances. To prevent this, we can now describe the visibility of a large object depending on the degree of visual angle - basically at which distance it has a specific size from the observer\u2019s perspective.\u201d AI Tech Team\n\nThis also allows the team to defer the discovery phase of which objects are within range of large objects. This utilizes one query, which then allows each individual to correctly verify the occlusion of the object.\n\nThe parameters of the visual field-of-view were also extended to be overridable based on the AI state. For example, allowing pilots to see at a greater distance and visually target on-foot characters.\n\nThe team continued extending navigation links to support two main functionalities: Firstly, they enabled usable routing to function with entity links to allow door panels (that are linked to a door) to be correctly used by NPCs. This will allow them to understand which panel they should use to trigger the right interaction.\nSecondly, they exposed a way to define the costs of nav-links based on specific conditions, such as increasing the cost for vaulting when a character isn\u2019t alerted or walking. Those costs allow the system to describe how preferable actions are from the NPC\u2019s perspective. For example, a character wouldn\u2019t vault, which is a physically demanding action, if not needed.\n\nWork began to properly allow NPCs to drive ground vehicles. The team are currently verifying the setup of a selection of vehicles to use as reference. They also set up the code to switch to the right nav-mesh when driving a vehicle and select the right path-follower.\n\nFinally for AI Tech, the team worked on the locomotion refactor, which involved integrating current work into different streams to begin stabilizing bugs. They also experimented with foot locking during MoveNet and are currently verifying how to use this functionality on various aspects of locomotion, such as during sharp turns. They also implemented a first frame adjustment for the seamless transition code to improve the entering of usables. This will also play a specific animation at a specific location with a specific pose.\n\nAI (Vehicles)\nLast month, AI Vehicles worked with Flight Design to deliver a turret battle that occurs early in the campaign. This involved reworking wave 0 that will be used as the standard for the rest of the waves during the whole chapter. This includes a new behavior that consists of Vanduul ships attacking the Javelin turret by picking stunt splines placed by the designers.\n\nIn addition, they completed various support tasks for the designers working in different flight-based chapters.\n\nAnimation\nIn October, the Animation team continued to improve zero-g gameplay and animate new weapons, including a coil grenade and coil rifle.\n\nThey then moved to blocking out restraint animations and created female spec-op and guard animations for the AI team. Blockouts were also done for bin rummaging and the beggar.\n\nFor the Vanduul, further work was done on executions, pilot posing, and sharp turns to improve locomotion. Bespoke locomotion was created for the story characters too.\n\nWork was also done on animations for the firing range, and the rig for quadruped predators was tested.\n\nFinally, a three-day mocap shoot was done on the new Manchester stage focusing on stealth takedowns and mastery levels, non-spec-op level combatants, and various social AI improvements to better tie them into their environment.\n\nArt (Characters)\nCharacter Art continued modeling major navy clothing assets and the Screaming Galsons\u2019 armor. They also began skinning assets for Shubin.\n\nTech Animation continued to support Character Art, processing the remaining scan data for character heads and creating whitebox rigging for two key models.\n\nEngine\nIn October, the Physics team worked on various improvements, including brush physicalization, which was put into queues of 32 entries each and forced to be processed in parallel. Spawn batch finalization was reworked to wait for all brush archetypes and their material clones to be fully physicalized before finalizing the spawned entities, and the root spawn batch can now be queried from outside of the entity system. A physics event was added for cluster breakage along with an entity event that detaches the corresponding compounded entity. Additionally, various optimizations were made to improve low-level data access and reduce contention. Also, the physics environment is no longer woken during the bulk destruction of brushes unless they have a collider. Lastly, severe stalls during entity deletion as well as the network aspects of breakability were fixed.\n\nOn the renderer, more progress was made on the Gen12 transition. A lot of work was done on particles. Among other things, the light atlas stage was rewritten to make use of the material permutation cache, and a lot of code in the GPU particle system was refactored and cleaned up. The particle submission code and its PSO management were rewritten as well. Furthermore, light lists are now managed per scene pass, which will eventually help simplify the tiled shading stage. Additionally, opaque sun shadows for gas clouds, image ghosting, various game post-effects (water droplets, flash bang, ocular migraine, blood vision), the projectile manager, RTT support functionality, and render target debug viz were ported to Gen12. Support for transient scene render passes was completed, and collision checks for resource sets were added. Offline cube maps now use their own pipeline to allow for different feature sets. Lastly, lots of optimizations and cleanups were made all around.\n\nRegarding atmosphere and volumetric clouds, improvements were made to the Gen12 code by adopting the transient passes made available in September. Furthermore, a preview mode was implemented to help lighting artists setting up planet atmospheres.\n\nOn the core engine, the team made additional improvements to entity lifetime management. This involved adding code to group objects for lifetime management and how entity deletion is handled on stream out. All legacy entity lifetime code was removed. The entity allocator was changed to be page based. In-engine file mapping support was completed (i.e., faster p4k file access). Initial steps were done to run all game code through Include-What-You-Use to remove unnecessary header dependencies, which should ultimately lead to faster incremental compile times. Lastly, in case of failed memory allocations, it's now possible to identify relevant code owners and list them in bug reports automatically to speed up bug processing.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nFollowing on from Persistent Entity Streaming (PES), the SQ42 Feature team began implementing the save\/load system. Because PES stores the state of all entities in the universe, the team can utilize it to save progress. They\u2019re currently in the first stages of testing saving and reloading, ensuring everything restores correctly.\n\nThe Mission Manager app is currently being implemented into the player\u2019s mobiGlas, allowing them to access the mission briefing, current and completed objectives, and a report on how well they did once the mission is complete.\n\nAdditional polish work was given to the new character customizer based on feedback from Design. Work continued on the crane mechanic, adding additional modes for varying types of cranes and their functionality. This will allow the operator to attach, drop, and stack crates.\n\nNew security-token functionality was also worked on to control access to various aspects of a level.\n\nGameplay Story\nLast month, Gameplay Story continued using motion-capture data to update scenes. The main scene worked on was in chapter 11, which, due to the environment layout changing, needed a full implementation pass to get it fully functioning. Several scenes were also updated to make them work with the AI characters, who now enter and leave smoothly.\n\nStart and end poses were updated for scenes in chapters four, six, and eight. Some of these had an extra polish pass to make them function better with the player.\n\nLastly, two new scenes were created to allow characters to work on top of the Gladius. These are still work in progress and will require new mo-cap at a later date.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nLast month, the Graphics & VFX Programming team focused on damage maps. This involved fixing crashes and various issues including missing initial damage on debris, incorrect damage map sizes, and inconsistencies between ship sizes. Time was also spent investigating networking and persistence for debris.\n\nFurther progress was made on porting gas clouds and CPU particles to Gen12. The Gen12 GPU marker refactor was also completed, and some issues were fixed relating to the hair and hologram shaders.\n\nFor the ongoing data-pipeline refactor, the team continued work on SKIN files, allowing compacted, non-split files to be compiled or loaded. They also implemented process groups in support of multiple input formats.\n\nDevelopment of screen space shadows began, which involved adjusting raytracing to account for thin objects. Work was also done on anti-aliased lines for aux geometry (editor debug) and UI (for use on the StarMap). They also added new features for the UIMesh shader (multi-scale texturing, bi\/tri-planar projection, smoothing) alongside enabling wetness effects to work with blood, sweat, and tears.\n\nThe team closed out RaStar v1 and fixed the remaining bugs and crashes raised by the content teams. There were also various fixes submitted for rivers, and R&D began on water sim and water rendering improvements.\n\nLevel Design\nOctober saw the FPS team focusing on one of the larger locations in the game that spans multiple chapters. They\u2019re closing in on finalizing the last few blockouts in this environment and gameplay implementation is well underway.\n\nWith combat AI taking shape, FPS began placing greater emphasis on dialing in enemy confrontations.\n\nThe Flight team continued to collaborate with the other design teams to push the first half of the game to a more polished state. Part of the game\u2019s dialogue was written before certain mechanics were in a final state, so some of the tutorials were tweaked to accommodate the final designs. They also worked closely with Narrative to flesh out some of the quieter gameplay sections.\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative team continued with detailed reviews of gameplay chapters. In addition to alterations to several existing scenes to improve clarity, a handful of new scenes had dialogue written and scratch audio recorded. This included a scene with two outlaws debating the best way to breach a locked door.\n\n\u201cA small scene like this serves to provide some flavor and life to the AI combatants but also helps direct the player towards what their next objective is and how to potentially bypass a puzzle. The next steps will be to test the dialogue additions during future playthroughs and make any additional adjustments as needed.\u201d Narrative Team\n\nDevelopment of the dynamic dialogue system continued, which is used by background characters as they go about their lives. This latest pass led to a more concise line set that will allow for greater flexibility with how lines are used to accommodate a variety of scenarios. These background characters are not meant to distract players from scripted character content but provide a general sense of activity and immersion.\n\nThe team added names and description strings for a variety of naval uniforms, bespoke weapons, and military gadgets. They also reviewed updates to the military mobiGlas with regards to how mission information will be displayed and began the validation process to ensure subtitles match the dialogue as recorded.\n\n\u201cSometimes during an actor\u2019s performance, they can adjust a line slightly from how it was written and it\u2019s important to us that subtitles are as accurate as possible.\u201d\n\nQA\nQA continued to support Cinematics by reproducing issues found during development and chasing up outstanding bugs. Last month, focus was also on bug validation and reporting alongside recording scenes for review.\n\nIn addition, QA pushed general editor testing forward to ensure the tools used by the team are working as intended and the development workflow remains stable. A new embedded role was assigned to allow for more in-depth testing and more concise feedback.\n\nUI\nLast month, the UI team continued to work closely with the Vehicle team on the heads-up displays (HUD) and multi-function displays (MFD). This involved adjusting the HUD to incorporate new elements along with reworking the UI style of one manufacturer to give it more character and make it feel more unique.\n\nNow that the Vehicle team has some of the new MFD screens working in-game, a pass was done to improve their appearance and help with the Building Blocks UI setup to create a solid template to work from going forward.\n\nUI also concepted several more interactive screens for gameplay puzzles and made visual and control improvements to the StarMap.\n\nVFX\nIn October, the VFX team continued overhauling the particle library, making the most of several improvements to the particle system to allow for greater flexibility. This includes being able to override various settings per effect in a level, letting the artists focus on a higher quality of effect without having to maintain each instanced version.\n\nFurther improvements were made to the new quantum travel effects, with new refractive particles spawning around a ship\u2019s signed distance field.\n\nFinally, the VFX team implemented a \u2018task pool,\u2019 which allows the artists to tackle various miscellaneous tasks that have accumulated in the backlog.\n\n\u201cThis typically consists of minor bugs and quality-of-life improvements, so it has been great to be able to focus on these things while continuing to support major content and features.\u201d VFX Team\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2022-11-09T20:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"3 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 19:18:17","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":18981,"next_id":18986}}