{"data":{"id":19103,"title":"Star Citizen Monthly Report: January 2023","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/SCW\/19103-API","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/19103","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/19103","channel":"Undefined","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"},{"id":30233,"name":"luminalia-card.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/5238fd4b617545a6e0374aec22caabee4980071d\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjReseczcw5FBrctUui28UjVrYKWjKUK1HSQri\/luminalia-card.png","alt":"g-illustration","size":384610,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-04-28T10:26:30+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30233","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30233\/similar"},{"id":30235,"name":"arena-commander-1.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/7b029cf43a9fce53b9840cbd63462c604e94d12c\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjResjYR93YWvqPNPefK62yVG1zz9DM7cu9bD8\/arena-commander-1.png","alt":"g-illustration","size":1337536,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-04-28T10:26:30+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30235","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30235\/similar"},{"id":30238,"name":"arena-commander-2.webp","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/1a0d0e784088a1cd90359f6aa61935cb3ef0bc09\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjReseGo8YeR7MUnQWTYYeGm4KpvfwiMa4X1G2\/arena-commander-2.webp","alt":"g-illustration","size":208184,"mime_type":"image\/webp","last_modified":"2023-04-28T10:26:30+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30238","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30238\/similar"},{"id":30239,"name":"screenshot03.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/44a41fe334ec38bd658935e3b670312e8dda1ff9\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjReskkVYQq32Effmgcrk3kK57YLetT3cCWNg6\/screenshot03.png","alt":"g-illustration","size":3753280,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-04-28T10:26:31+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30239","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30239\/similar"},{"id":30241,"name":"screenshot04.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/i\/dfd888d94466ecb7670f5b6fbba0da2a57d4a5f1\/ADdPNihJzmPbNuTnFsH1DqUeqBRpXdSXVVtgJTyDDgscGKrzJuoFjResjjA8FFyfBTY4kB6LxFTmimauf5AUBhtra\/screenshot04.png","alt":"g-illustration","size":4217050,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2023-04-28T10:26:31+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30241","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/30241\/similar"}],"images_count":11,"translations":{"en_EN":"PU Monthly Report\nJanuary 2023\nWelcome to January\u2019s PU Monthly Report. Although the upcoming patch is still being tested and tweaked in the Persistent Test Universe (PTU), most teams began the year moving on from their work on Alpha 3.18. From extensive AI updates to new vehicles, locations, and features, read on for everything done in pursuit of 2023\u2019s extensive content schedule.\n\nAI (Features)\nThe AI Features team started the year enabling AI characters to throw grenades. This involved work in multiple areas, including new logic for when to throw grenades to ensure a challenge without overwhelming the player, parabola collision checking to ensure the grenade lands correctly, and animation so that the AI looks correct when throwing.\n\nJanuary also saw the implementation of \u2018attack\u2019 and \u2018defend\u2019 areas, which can be assigned to AI characters to direct and control fighting in specific ways. On the most basic level, the defend area limits where NPCs are positioned when fighting, whereas the attack area limits where they target. When assigned either area, NPCs will prepare to fight by equipping their weapons and taking ready stances before moving to the area on high alert (so perception happens quickly and perception reactions are skipped). When defending, AI will move to a cover point inside the area and defensively peek out. When attacking, they will use the existing investigate behavior to search for hostile forces.\n\n\u201cThe attack area is great for building pressure on the player, whereas the defend area can provide the player with a tough challenge as AI are hunkered down and ready to fight. The implementation of this feature involved reusing existing systems in new ways - changing the tactical queries (positional and target selection) to take into consideration the attack or defend area that the AI may have.\u201d AI Team\n\nAI (Tech)\nLate last year, AI Tech completed the first iteration of NPCs driving ground vehicles. Last month, they fixed several related bugs as more designers began using the feature.\n\nThey also progressed with the feature that enables NPCs to use transit systems (like elevators) and move between platforms. This time, they focused on NPCs using trains to move between locations. This required exposing new functionality on the transit manager and more complex behaviors before and during transit. New functionality includes providing more information about the gateways at specific destinations and information about carriages, such as time spent at a destination and time until arrival.\n\nOn the locomotion side, the team added further support for \u2018soft stops\u2019 and separated them from \u2018harsh stops.\u2019 A soft stop means that an NPC will choose the best animation for stopping even if it will overshoot its destination, while a harsh stop will attempt to stop immediately. Locomotion support was also given for bug fixing and alien-creature movement.\n\nFor the Subsumption Apollo tool, the team progressed with implementing feedback and bug fixing. They also added new functionality to the Subsumption mastergraph, making it possible to have functions on top of transitions to determine whether a state transition can be done.\n\nThe Usable Coordinator was also completed, which allows the designers to specify a selection of usables for NPCs in specific areas and prioritize the order of selection.\n\nThe feature that allows NPCs to perceive threats through audio and visual stimuli and react to hostile vehicles was completed. In a related area, further updates were made to the behavior that enables NPCs reacting to stimuli to enter combat.\n\nAI Tech started work on two new features: One allows overrides for navigation mesh generation so that the team can create navigation meshes for specific agents in narrow areas. For example, this will enable NPCs to traverse areas where only a crouched state is possible, such as vents and underfloor areas.\n\nThe second feature enables the team to mark areas with increased navigation cost, which will influence the path chosen by NPCs. This will be used to create areas that NPCs should avoid, like areas with fire, or to encourage them to travel on specific areas, like a sidewalk.\n\nThey also supported Alpha 3.18 and allocated time to tech debt to update some of the AI system\u2019s functionalities.\n\nAI (Vehicles Features)\nThe Vehicle Feature team focused on space combat AI improvements in January. The intent is to have combat AI behave in a more dynamic way that encourages players to move and explore the various ship mechanics. This involved breaking the AI into different well-defined trees, which will help players to identify what kind of enemies they\u2019re up against. These improvements also allow the easier integration of more maneuvers to further increase the skill level and interest of higher-level ships.\n\nSimilarly, AI Vehicle Features worked on a new behavior logic to deliver improved atmospheric flight combat. This is intended to work with the \u2018control surface\u2019 feature being developed by the Vehicle Feature team and will lead to AI ships tailing and chasing players to get behind them, flying more like a plane when appropriate.\n\nAnimation\nAlongside embedded work for the various feature teams, facial animations were developed for emotes and background characters, such as the female vendor.\n\nArt (Characters)\nIn January, the Character Art team began production of the \u2018frontier environmental wear\u2019 costumes and polished the frontier undersuit.\n\nCharacter Concept progressed with concept exploration for the Rough and Ready gang, fauna, and the Dusters faction.\n\nArt (Ships)\nIn the UK, the Art team continued work on the \u2018small ship\u2019 mentioned in last month\u2019s report, with certain elements reaching LOD0-complete. They also began exploring ideas for a variant.\n\nThe Argo SRV progressed through final art. Final polish is currently underway on the exterior before the LOD and damage passes begin. The interior continued through final art and received a LOD pass.\n\nDevelopment of the Crusader Spirit continued, which passed its whitebox review, with the A1 variant moving into the greybox phase.\n\n\u201cThe exterior is shaping up nicely with the key forms all established and all major elements, like landing gear and VTOLs, resolved. The interior is coming along and we\u2019re very pleased with the space so far, though there are a few visual changes we\u2019d like to make to the doorways to emphasize Crusader\u2019s visual language.\u201d Ship Team\n\nA previously unannounced ground vehicle passed its greybox sanity review before the artwork progressed to LOD0. The exterior is almost finalized, only requiring additional detail, while the interior is progressing well.\n\nThe US team completed art whitebox for another in-production vehicle, which was then passed to the Systems Design team.\n\nGreybox began on another ship. Half the team focused on the main fuselage geometry, while the other prototyped a new way to enter and exit the ship.\n\nFinally for Ships, an all-new vehicle entered greybox, and a new set of alien paints was created for a future release.\n\nCommunity\nThe Community team kicked off the new year by announcing the winners of the Luminalia Holiday Card and Luminalia Screenshot contests.\n\nThey then supported the Red Festival 2953 celebrations, including the Moons of Fortune contest. In addition to the now-persistent red envelopes of 2953, long-time players received the Red Festival envelopes from the previous three celebrations as in-game collector\u2019s items. Furthermore, players could claim three wooden roosters.\n\nCommunity also supported the return of the Siege of Orison Dynamic Event with an in-depth guide.\n\nThoughout January, Community continued to work on the \"Events Feature\" which is a new section coming to the Community Hub next week. They also worked closely with Turbulent on other exciting additions such as text posts, bug fixes, etc.\n\nThey are planning out new Community Events as well, coming to a bar near you.\n\nAlso in January, Community welcomed a new bilingual Community Manager to the LA office, and we're excited to introduce them soon.\n\nEngine\nIn January, the Physics team's schedule was dominated by Alpha 3.18 bug fixing and support. Aside from this, triangle vertex and normal transforms for physics triangle meshes were rewritten to use SSE\/AVX, which saves 30% of the cost. Furthermore, the physicalization method for ropes can now be chosen per rope entity.\n\nOn the renderer, various optimizations were implemented into Gen12 (partly based on telemetry gathered during Alpha 3.18 PTU). Among other things, this included performance improvements for transient lists recording draw requests, a special submission for scene rendering with reduced thread synchronization, and a reduction of calls into the OS for general multi-threading purposes. Additionally, renderer initialization was refactored to prepare for Vulkan. Last month's Gen12 support for particle refraction now also works as intended.\n\nOn the core engine, further improvements were made to the remote shader compiler. Last month's work on adding support for huge pages was rolled out internally. Huge pages are now also used within the low-level memory allocator (JeMalloc). To further reduce the executable size of the Linux DGS, the \u2018gold linker\u2019 is now utilized to fold identical functions and various compiler-generated data inside binaries. Page heap is now also supported for entities, which use a special allocator, to make debugging memory corruptions easier. Lastly, more work was done to support v2 of the pk4 files introduced at the end of last year in the internal development tools.\n\nFeatures (Arena Commander)\nThroughout January, the team focused on polishing the new Arena Commander frontend and racing tracks, including placing the New Horizon Speedway tracks above a new planet, Green III of the Ellis System. Some adjustments were also made to the racetracks themselves to suit the new earth-like atmosphere. The team also experimented with new loadout selection previews on the frontend alongside polishing its style and flow.\n\nWork continued on the Classic Race refactor, with the first version of the new Race Manager and checkpoint setups being tested and feedback addressed. Optimizations and additions, such as splits, qualifying, and new analytic data, were made alongside improvements to time accuracy. The refactors of both the Rounds and Spawning modules continued across Arena Commander and Star Marine. This refactor sees the code drastically improved and brought up to current standards while providing more modularity for new features. It also tackles some of the problem areas that prevented expansion of the old systems, such as separating unintended connections to PU characters, validating loadouts, and adding the ability to change the ship selection while in-game.\n\nFeatures (Characters & Weapons)\nLast month, the Features team continued to support the upcoming patch release with critical bug fixes, specifically issues relating to the cargo system, tractor beam, and inventory. They fixed several client and server crashes too.\n\nThey also worked on the player skills feature. This tracks certain player activities and actions with minimal hooks into the gameplay feature logic and with an emphasis on performance. From the data and events gathered, players can improve certain aspects of their performance. For example, a player with a higher level of fitness may have more stamina or consume stamina at a slower rate.\n\nThe team has been working on better support for the player playing animations triggered by environmental interactions, such as a character physically opening a locker door or pressing buttons on a vehicle dashboard. These are either quick or decorative action sequences with a large focus on reusability to scale with the amount of planned content. There\u2019s a lot of balancing to ensure it increases immersion with minimal impact on responsiveness.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe EU team continued work on the tractor beam, this time focusing on \u2018escaping\u2019 mechanics, such as how shields affect the required strength of a tractor beam to secure a ship. A prototype was built to test the potential and help decide whether average shield strength or per-shield-face determines the required strength. Additionally, the team began work on detaching and attaching items with the tractor beam, which is an expansion of the attaching-to-cargo-grid feature.\n\nA clearer direction for the expected ship engineer gameplay was also defined. This involved determining the gameplay beats and planning the possible malfunctions and dangers players will face while maintaining their ships.\n\nAdditionally, the ongoing mining balance update progressed well, with small changes that have bigger impacts being added to the system. For Salvage, Gameplay Features helped Missions prepare to use the mechanic in new content.\n\nIn the US, Gameplay Features continued with the overall design for loading and unloading physicalized cargo, and designs for missions that leverage the new cargo systems kicked off. These missions will also utilize the boarding actions now available with soft death alongside the retrieval of containers or other objects of interest.\n\nInvestigation and preliminary design work started on changes to ship insurance and how it works in conjunction with ship destruction. These changes are necessary to make towing and repairing either at stations or in space a better choice.\n\nTasks were started for a change to commodities, including the locations they can be bought and sold from. For example, changes to mining locations will impact the location and prices for mined and refined ores at commodity brokers.\n\nFeatures (Mission)\nThe majority of the Mission Feature team\u2019s month was spent addressing bugs and balancing for Alpha 3.18. Progress was also made on the design and prototyping of various new missions, including salvage.\n\n\u201cThe order we are tackling these missions is based on when we receive the necessary support, so the first missions produced will be the more simplistic salvage ones. These include a lawful contract in which players must pay for the location of salvage, an unlawful timed mission in which players must strip a ship quickly or deal with inbound hostiles, a lawless mission in which multiple players pay for the location of the same large salvage opportunity, and one in which players must restore a ship using nearby wrecks for materials.\u201d Mission Features\n\nA mining mission was also prototyped in which players purchase the location of a valuable prospect. There are currently three variants: lawful, which takes place in a monitored zone and has friendly defenses to protect against hostiles; unlawful, where players seize legally owned mining claims; and lawless, which takes place in unmonitored zones and can be accepted by multiple players.\n\nThe team are also developing larger missions set on the Orison platforms. These task players with either preventing the Nine Tails gang from stealing Crusader Industries prototype parts or stealing them for another criminal organization.\n\nA few other missions progressed through the design and work on Bounty Hunting v2 and the Mission Manager update continued.\n\nFinally for Mission Features, designs for defending player ships from intruders and ship-based hostility were worked on. These features are intended to replace the simplistic hostility currently in-game where ships remember the hostility of their last pilot or turn hostile the moment a hostile player steps aboard.\n\nIn-Game Branding (Montreal)\nLast month, the In-Game Branding team progressed with their work on the Lorville skyline. They then transitioned to Invictus Launch Week, including a refresh of the DefenseCon branding, which will become the main focus for the upcoming weeks. Progress continued on the brand catalog too.\n\nLighting\nLighting began the year making progress in several key areas, including tidying and bug-fixing Area18 to restore its intended appearance.\n\nWork on Pyro continued, with the team lighting the interiors and exteriors of the colonial outposts and Ruin Station.\n\nThey also supported the ongoing rework of Lorville\u2019s skyline, touching up and improving several areas around the city.\n\nLive Tools (Montreal)\nIn January, the Live Tools team worked on several improvements to the local development environment tool. They\u2019re currently finalizing the last step of implementing the Entity Graph tool into the Network Operation Center. The roadmap for 2023 projects was also refined, with the addition of new projects that will support Server Meshing.\n\nLocations (EU)\nJanuary saw the Locations team continuing work on Pyro\u2019s Ruin Station.\n\n\u201cThis is a behemoth task that the team have been diligently working on and it's looking better day on day.\u201d EU Locations 1\n\nEU Locations 2 progressed with the local law office mentioned in last month\u2019s report and created new content alongside Mission Features.\n\nThe Sandbox teams further developed the colonial outposts and continued exploration and development of the underground facilities.\n\n\u201cProduction is starting to ramp up and the team are feeling good about the work being done.\u201d Sandbox team\n\nThe Organics team spent the month reworking areas already in the game and progressed with the art benchmark for rocky caves.\n\nNarrative\nNarrative began the new year with a continued push to support the latest patch and progressed with tasks started before the holidays. This included working with the Design teams to start scripting upcoming mining and salvage mission content. They also continued developing stories for the first batch of \u2018Investigation\u2019 missions and discussed potential upcoming content.\n\nThe Environment and Design teams provided updates on new locations that will start appearing in the game to support Bounty Hunting. Narrative worked closely with them to ensure these areas align with existing lore and gameplay expectations.\n\nPlanning was also undertaken for the year ahead. Part of this included building a comprehensive resource listing all the various organizations and NPCs and what mission content they offer. This provides a single source for team members to reference when coming up with new missions. Narrative are also seeking to leverage their dedicated narrative designers to look at the current mission-giver setup as well as prototype simple story-based missions that could be placed around the various landing zones to provide additional content.\n\nThe team also published their new schedule and approach to lore dispatches.\n\n\u201cIn short, we have scaled back on original fictional content for the website in order to focus on in-game content. The ultimate hope is that we will be able to resurrect these stories and news updates in the game.\u201d Narrative Team\n\nOnline Services (Montreal)\nIn Montreal, Online Services planned the year ahead, discussing Server Meshing with the Networking team. The goal was to achieve technical design consensus and division of responsibilities between the teams in order to deliver the feature. The following week, Online Services further defined the tasks needed to achieve Server Meshing tier 0.\n\nThe remainder of the month was spent putting the final touches on Alpha 3.18\u2019s features, including character repair, long-term persistence, insurance, and bug fixing.\n\nShip Tech Art \/ Animation\nShip Tech Art and Animation progressed with the Hull C. January saw them working on the animation and state setup for the ship\u2019s expanded cargo mode.\n\nTech animation and damage support was provided for several ships in the pipleline, and all ships were reviewed alongside QA to ensure that relevant component attachments can take damage.\n\nThey also enabled shader damage scraping on various ship attachments and fixed several hull-scraping issues on ship bodies.\n\nUI\nThe UI Tech team continued to support Alpha 3.18, ironing out any remaining issues with the way the vehicle and character loadout systems interact with Persistent Streaming.\n\nThe team also helped with the Squadron 42 Starmap, which will eventually make its way into PU. The current focus is on adding navigation aids, such as grids and coordinates, improving the sizing of planets and markers, and adding visual polish.\n\nVFX\nLast month, VFX carried out several CPU-to-GPU particle library conversions, starting with vehicles.\n\n\u201cThe sheer number of existing libraries, combined with new content being added all the time, means it can sometimes be tricky for the team to revisit and update the older libraries. We are getting there, though!\u201d VFX Team\n\nElsewhere, pre-production began on some new locations, including a huge underground facility and rock caves.\n\nThe team also continued with the snag list mentioned last month. While some of this was done in the Alpha 3.18 workspace, it was continued in staging-content when Alpha 3.18 was locked down in the build-up to release.","de_DE":"PU-Monatsbericht\nJanuar 2023\nWillkommen zum PU-Monatsbericht f\u00fcr den Januar. Obwohl der kommende Patch im Persistent Test Universe (PTU) noch getestet und optimiert wird, haben die meisten Teams das Jahr mit der Arbeit an Alpha 3.18 begonnen. Von umfangreichen KI-Updates bis hin zu neuen Fahrzeugen, Orten und Funktionen: Lies weiter, um zu erfahren, was alles im Hinblick auf die umfangreichen Inhalte von 2023 getan wurde.\n\nKI (Features)\nDas Team f\u00fcr KI-Features hat das Jahr damit begonnen, KI-Charaktere in die Lage zu versetzen, Granaten zu werfen. Dazu geh\u00f6rte eine neue Logik f\u00fcr den Zeitpunkt des Granatenwurfs, um eine Herausforderung zu gew\u00e4hrleisten, ohne den Spieler zu \u00fcberfordern, eine Parabelkollisionspr\u00fcfung, um sicherzustellen, dass die Granate richtig landet, und eine Animation, damit die KI beim Werfen richtig aussieht.\n\nIm Januar wurden au\u00dferdem die Bereiche \"Angriff\" und \"Verteidigung\" eingef\u00fchrt, die den KI-Charakteren zugewiesen werden k\u00f6nnen, um den Kampf auf bestimmte Weise zu steuern. Der Verteidigungsbereich legt fest, wo die NSCs im Kampf stehen, w\u00e4hrend der Angriffsbereich festlegt, wohin sie zielen. Wenn sie einem der beiden Bereiche zugewiesen werden, bereiten sich die NSCs auf den Kampf vor, indem sie ihre Waffen ausr\u00fcsten und sich bereithalten, bevor sie sich in den Bereich mit hoher Alarmbereitschaft begeben (damit die Wahrnehmung schnell erfolgt und Wahrnehmungsreaktionen \u00fcbersprungen werden). Bei der Verteidigung bewegt sich die KI zu einem Deckungspunkt innerhalb des Gebiets und sp\u00e4ht defensiv aus. Wenn sie angreifen, nutzen sie das bestehende Erkundungsverhalten, um nach feindlichen Kr\u00e4ften zu suchen.\n\n\"Der Angriffsbereich eignet sich hervorragend, um den Spieler unter Druck zu setzen, w\u00e4hrend der Verteidigungsbereich f\u00fcr den Spieler eine gro\u00dfe Herausforderung darstellt, da die KI in Deckung geht und zum Kampf bereit ist. Bei der Umsetzung dieser Funktion wurden bestehende Systeme auf neue Art und Weise wiederverwendet, indem die taktischen Abfragen (Positions- und Zielauswahl) so ge\u00e4ndert wurden, dass sie den Angriffs- oder Verteidigungsbereich der KI ber\u00fccksichtigen.\" KI-Team\n\nAI (Tech)\nEnde letzten Jahres stellte AI Tech die erste Iteration von NPCs fertig, die Bodenfahrzeuge steuern. Letzten Monat wurden einige Fehler behoben, da immer mehr Designer\/innen diese Funktion nutzen.\n\nAuch die Funktion, mit der NSCs Verkehrssysteme (wie Aufz\u00fcge) benutzen und sich zwischen Bahnsteigen bewegen k\u00f6nnen, wurde weiterentwickelt. Dieses Mal konzentrierten sie sich auf NSCs, die Z\u00fcge benutzen, um sich zwischen Orten zu bewegen. Dazu mussten neue Funktionen f\u00fcr den Transitmanager und komplexere Verhaltensweisen vor und w\u00e4hrend der Fahrt entwickelt werden. Zu den neuen Funktionen geh\u00f6rt die Bereitstellung von mehr Informationen \u00fcber die Gateways an bestimmten Zielorten und Informationen \u00fcber die Waggons, wie z. B. die Zeit, die an einem Zielort verbracht wird und die Zeit bis zur Ankunft.\n\nIm Bereich der Fortbewegung hat das Team die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr \"weiche Stopps\" erweitert und sie von \"harten Stopps\" getrennt. Ein weicher Halt bedeutet, dass ein NSC die beste Animation zum Anhalten w\u00e4hlt, auch wenn er sein Ziel \u00fcberf\u00e4hrt, w\u00e4hrend ein harter Halt versucht, sofort anzuhalten. Auch die Fortbewegung wurde unterst\u00fctzt, um Fehler zu beheben und die Bewegung von Alien-Kreaturen zu verbessern.\n\nF\u00fcr das Subsumption Apollo-Tool hat das Team die Umsetzung von Feedback und Fehlerbehebung vorangetrieben. Au\u00dferdem wurde der Subsumption-Mastergraph um eine neue Funktion erweitert, die es erm\u00f6glicht, Funktionen \u00fcber die \u00dcberg\u00e4nge zu legen, um festzustellen, ob ein Zustands\u00fcbergang durchgef\u00fchrt werden kann.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde der Usable Coordinator fertiggestellt, mit dem die Designer eine Auswahl an Usables f\u00fcr NSCs in bestimmten Bereichen festlegen und die Reihenfolge der Auswahl priorisieren k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDie Funktion, die es NSCs erm\u00f6glicht, Bedrohungen durch akustische und visuelle Reize wahrzunehmen und auf feindliche Fahrzeuge zu reagieren, wurde fertiggestellt. In einem verwandten Bereich wurden weitere Aktualisierungen an dem Verhalten vorgenommen, das es NSCs, die auf Reize reagieren, erm\u00f6glicht, in den Kampf zu ziehen.\n\nAI Tech begann mit der Arbeit an zwei neuen Funktionen: Die eine erm\u00f6glicht \u00dcberschreibungen f\u00fcr die Generierung von Navigationsnetzen, so dass das Team Navigationsnetze f\u00fcr bestimmte Agenten in engen Bereichen erstellen kann. Dadurch k\u00f6nnen NSCs zum Beispiel Bereiche durchqueren, in denen nur ein geduckter Zustand m\u00f6glich ist, wie z. B. L\u00fcftungssch\u00e4chte und Unterflurbereiche.\n\nDie zweite Funktion erm\u00f6glicht es dem Team, Bereiche mit erh\u00f6hten Navigationskosten zu markieren, die den von den NSCs gew\u00e4hlten Weg beeinflussen. Auf diese Weise k\u00f6nnen Bereiche geschaffen werden, die NSCs meiden sollten, wie z. B. Bereiche mit Feuer, oder sie dazu ermutigen, sich auf bestimmten Fl\u00e4chen zu bewegen, wie z. B. einem B\u00fcrgersteig.\n\nAu\u00dferdem haben sie Alpha 3.18 unterst\u00fctzt und Zeit f\u00fcr Tech Debt aufgewendet, um einige Funktionen des KI-Systems zu aktualisieren.\n\nKI (Fahrzeugeigenschaften)\nDas Vehicle Feature Team hat sich im Januar auf die Verbesserung der KI im Raumkampf konzentriert. Die KI soll sich dynamischer verhalten und die Spieler\/innen dazu ermutigen, sich zu bewegen und die verschiedenen Schiffsmechaniken zu erkunden. Dazu wurde die KI in verschiedene, klar definierte B\u00e4ume unterteilt, die den Spielern helfen, zu erkennen, mit welcher Art von Feinden sie es zu tun haben. Diese Verbesserungen erm\u00f6glichen auch die einfachere Integration von mehr Man\u00f6vern, um die F\u00e4higkeiten und das Interesse an h\u00f6herstufigen Schiffen weiter zu steigern.\n\nAuch bei den KI-Fahrzeugfunktionen wurde an einer neuen Verhaltenslogik gearbeitet, um den Flugkampf in der Atmosph\u00e4re zu verbessern. Dies soll mit dem \"Steuerfl\u00e4chen\"-Feature zusammenarbeiten, das vom Vehicle Feature Team entwickelt wird, und wird dazu f\u00fchren, dass die KI-Schiffe den Spielern hinterherfliegen und sie verfolgen, um hinter sie zu kommen, und dabei gegebenenfalls mehr wie ein Flugzeug fliegen.\n\nAnimation\nNeben der eingebetteten Arbeit f\u00fcr die verschiedenen Feature-Teams wurden auch Gesichtsanimationen f\u00fcr Emotes und Hintergrundcharaktere entwickelt, wie z. B. f\u00fcr die Verk\u00e4uferin.\n\nKunst (Charaktere)\nIm Januar begann das Character Art Team mit der Produktion der \"Frontier Environmental Wear\"-Kost\u00fcme und polierte den Frontier-Unteranzug.\n\nDas Charakterkonzept machte Fortschritte bei der Erforschung der Konzepte f\u00fcr die Rough and Ready Gang, die Fauna und die Dusters-Fraktion.\n\nKunst (Schiffe)\nIm Vereinigten K\u00f6nigreich hat das Art-Team die Arbeit an dem im letzten Bericht erw\u00e4hnten \"kleinen Schiff\" fortgesetzt und einige Elemente in LOD0 fertiggestellt. Au\u00dferdem haben sie begonnen, Ideen f\u00fcr eine Variante zu entwickeln.\n\nDie Argo SRV hat den letzten Feinschliff erhalten. Zurzeit wird das \u00c4u\u00dfere poliert, bevor die LOD- und Schadens\u00fcberg\u00e4nge beginnen. Der Innenraum wurde fertiggestellt und erhielt einen LOD-Pass.\n\nDie Entwicklung der Crusader Spirit wurde fortgesetzt und hat die Whitebox-Pr\u00fcfung bestanden, w\u00e4hrend die A1-Variante in die Greybox-Phase geht.\n\n\"Das \u00c4u\u00dfere macht gute Fortschritte, die wichtigsten Formen stehen fest und alle wichtigen Elemente, wie Fahrwerk und VTOLs, sind fertiggestellt. Der Innenraum macht Fortschritte und wir sind sehr zufrieden damit, auch wenn wir noch ein paar optische \u00c4nderungen an den T\u00fcren vornehmen m\u00f6chten, um die visuelle Sprache der Crusader zu unterstreichen.\" Schiffsteam\n\nEin bisher unangek\u00fcndigtes Bodenfahrzeug hat die Greybox-Pr\u00fcfung bestanden, bevor das Artwork in LOD0 \u00fcberging. Das \u00c4u\u00dfere ist fast fertig und ben\u00f6tigt nur noch zus\u00e4tzliche Details, w\u00e4hrend das Innere gut vorankommt.\n\nDas US-Team hat die Whitebox f\u00fcr ein weiteres Fahrzeug, das sich in der Produktion befindet, fertiggestellt und an das Systemdesign-Team weitergegeben.\n\nBei einem anderen Schiff wurde mit der Greybox begonnen. Die eine H\u00e4lfte des Teams konzentrierte sich auf die Hauptgeometrie des Rumpfes, w\u00e4hrend die andere einen Prototyp f\u00fcr eine neue Art des Ein- und Ausstiegs entwickelte.\n\nBei den Schiffen wurde schlie\u00dflich ein v\u00f6llig neues Fahrzeug in die Greybox gebracht und ein neuer Satz von Alien-Farben f\u00fcr eine zuk\u00fcnftige Version erstellt.\n\nCommunity\nDas Community-Team hat das neue Jahr mit der Bekanntgabe der Gewinner des Luminalia Holiday Card- und des Luminalia Screenshot-Wettbewerbs eingeleitet.\n\nDann unterst\u00fctzten sie die Feierlichkeiten zum Roten Fest 2953, einschlie\u00dflich des Wettbewerbs \"Monde des Gl\u00fccks\". Zus\u00e4tzlich zu den roten Umschl\u00e4gen des Jahres 2953 erhielten langj\u00e4hrige Spieler\/innen die Umschl\u00e4ge des Roten Festes aus den drei vorangegangenen Feiern als Sammlerst\u00fccke im Spiel. Au\u00dferdem konnten die Spieler drei h\u00f6lzerne H\u00e4hne erhalten.\n\nDie Community unterst\u00fctzte die R\u00fcckkehr des dynamischen Ereignisses \"Belagerung von Orison\" auch mit einem ausf\u00fchrlichen Leitfaden.\n\nDen ganzen Januar hindurch arbeitete die Community an dem \"Event-Feature\", einem neuen Bereich, der n\u00e4chste Woche im Community Hub erscheinen wird. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie eng mit Turbulent an anderen spannenden Neuerungen wie Textbeitr\u00e4gen, Fehlerbehebungen usw.\n\nSie planen auch neue Community Events, die in einer Bar in deiner N\u00e4he stattfinden werden.\n\nEbenfalls im Januar hat die Community einen neuen zweisprachigen Community Manager im B\u00fcro in LA begr\u00fc\u00dft, den wir euch bald vorstellen werden.\n\nEngine\nIm Januar stand f\u00fcr das Physik-Team vor allem die Fehlerbehebung und der Support f\u00fcr Alpha 3.18 auf dem Plan. Au\u00dferdem wurden die Vertex- und Normalentransformationen f\u00fcr die Physik-Dreiecksnetze neu geschrieben, um SSE\/AVX zu verwenden, was 30% der Kosten spart. Au\u00dferdem kann die Physikalisierungsmethode f\u00fcr Seile jetzt pro Seil-Entit\u00e4t ausgew\u00e4hlt werden.\n\nBeim Renderer wurden verschiedene Optimierungen in Gen12 implementiert (teilweise auf der Grundlage von Telemetriedaten, die w\u00e4hrend der Alpha 3.18 PTU gesammelt wurden). Dazu geh\u00f6rten unter anderem Leistungsverbesserungen f\u00fcr transiente Listen, die Zeichnungsanfragen aufzeichnen, eine spezielle Vorlage f\u00fcr das Rendering von Szenen mit reduzierter Thread-Synchronisation und eine Reduzierung der Aufrufe an das Betriebssystem f\u00fcr allgemeine Multi-Threading-Zwecke. Au\u00dferdem wurde die Renderer-Initialisierung \u00fcberarbeitet, um sie auf Vulkan vorzubereiten. Die im letzten Monat eingef\u00fchrte Gen12-Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Partikelbrechung funktioniert jetzt auch wie vorgesehen.\n\nAn der Core-Engine wurden weitere Verbesserungen am Remote-Shader-Compiler vorgenommen. Die Arbeit des letzten Monats an der Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr riesige Seiten wurde intern umgesetzt. Riesige Seiten werden jetzt auch in der Low-Level-Speicherzuweisung (JeMalloc) verwendet. Um die Gr\u00f6\u00dfe der ausf\u00fchrbaren Dateien des Linux DGS weiter zu reduzieren, wird jetzt der \"Gold Linker\" verwendet, um identische Funktionen und verschiedene vom Compiler erzeugte Daten in Bin\u00e4rdateien zu falten. Page Heap wird jetzt auch f\u00fcr Entit\u00e4ten unterst\u00fctzt, die einen speziellen Allocator verwenden, um die Fehlersuche bei Speicherfehlern zu erleichtern. Schlie\u00dflich wurde die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die Version 2 der pk4-Dateien verbessert, die Ende letzten Jahres in den internen Entwicklungstools eingef\u00fchrt wurde.\n\nFunktionen (Arena Commander)\nIm Januar konzentrierte sich das Team auf den Feinschliff des neuen Arena Commander-Frontends und der Rennstrecken, einschlie\u00dflich der Platzierung der New Horizon Speedway-Strecken \u00fcber einem neuen Planeten, Green III des Ellis-Systems. Auch an den Rennstrecken selbst wurden einige Anpassungen vorgenommen, um sie an die neue erd\u00e4hnliche Atmosph\u00e4re anzupassen. Das Team experimentierte auch mit neuen Ausr\u00fcstungsvorschauen im Frontend und feilte an dessen Stil und Fluss.\n\nDie Arbeit an der \u00dcberarbeitung der klassischen Rennen wurde fortgesetzt, wobei die erste Version des neuen Rennmanagers und der Checkpoint-Setups getestet und das Feedback ber\u00fccksichtigt wurde. Optimierungen und Erg\u00e4nzungen wie Splits, Qualifying und neue Analysedaten wurden ebenso vorgenommen wie Verbesserungen der Zeitgenauigkeit. Die \u00dcberarbeitung der Module \"Runden\" und \"Spawning\" wurde in Arena Commander und Star Marine fortgesetzt. Mit diesem Refactor wird der Code drastisch verbessert und auf den aktuellen Stand gebracht, w\u00e4hrend gleichzeitig mehr Modularit\u00e4t f\u00fcr neue Funktionen geschaffen wird. Au\u00dferdem werden einige Problembereiche angegangen, die eine Erweiterung der alten Systeme verhinderten, z. B. die Trennung unbeabsichtigter Verbindungen zu PU-Charakteren, die Validierung von Loadouts und das Hinzuf\u00fcgen der M\u00f6glichkeit, die Schiffsauswahl im Spiel zu \u00e4ndern.\n\nFeatures (Charaktere & Waffen)\nIm letzten Monat hat das Features-Team die bevorstehende Patch-Ver\u00f6ffentlichung mit kritischen Fehlerkorrekturen unterst\u00fctzt, insbesondere im Zusammenhang mit dem Ladungssystem, dem Traktorstrahl und dem Inventar. Au\u00dferdem wurden mehrere Client- und Serverabst\u00fcrze behoben.\n\nAu\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie an der Funktion \"Spielerf\u00e4higkeiten\". Diese Funktion verfolgt bestimmte Spieleraktivit\u00e4ten und -aktionen mit minimalen Eingriffen in die Spiellogik und mit Schwerpunkt auf der Leistung. Anhand der gesammelten Daten und Ereignisse k\u00f6nnen die Spieler\/innen bestimmte Aspekte ihrer Leistung verbessern. Zum Beispiel kann ein Spieler mit einem h\u00f6heren Fitnesslevel mehr Ausdauer haben oder seine Ausdauer langsamer verbrauchen.\n\nDas Team hat an einer besseren Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Spieleranimationen gearbeitet, die durch Interaktionen mit der Umgebung ausgel\u00f6st werden, z. B. wenn ein Charakter eine Schrankt\u00fcr \u00f6ffnet oder Kn\u00f6pfe auf dem Armaturenbrett eines Fahrzeugs dr\u00fcckt. Dabei handelt es sich entweder um schnelle oder dekorative Aktionssequenzen, bei denen ein gro\u00dfer Schwerpunkt auf der Wiederverwendbarkeit liegt, um mit der Menge der geplanten Inhalte zu skalieren. Es gibt eine Menge Abw\u00e4gungen, um sicherzustellen, dass die Immersion erh\u00f6ht wird, ohne die Reaktionsf\u00e4higkeit zu beeintr\u00e4chtigen.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nDas EU-Team setzte die Arbeit am Traktorstrahl fort und konzentrierte sich diesmal auf die \"Flucht\"-Mechanik, z. B. darauf, wie sich Schilde auf die erforderliche St\u00e4rke eines Traktorstrahls auswirken, um ein Schiff zu sichern. Es wurde ein Prototyp gebaut, um das Potenzial zu testen und zu entscheiden, ob die durchschnittliche Schildst\u00e4rke oder die St\u00e4rke pro Schildfl\u00e4che die erforderliche St\u00e4rke bestimmt. Au\u00dferdem begann das Team mit der Arbeit am Abnehmen und Anbringen von Gegenst\u00e4nden mit dem Traktorstrahl, was eine Erweiterung der Funktion des Anbringens an einem Frachtgitter ist.\n\nEs wurde auch eine klarere Richtung f\u00fcr das zu erwartende Schiffsingenieur-Gameplay festgelegt. Dabei ging es darum, die Spielabl\u00e4ufe festzulegen und die m\u00f6glichen Fehlfunktionen und Gefahren zu planen, denen die Spieler\/innen bei der Wartung ihrer Schiffe begegnen werden.\n\nAu\u00dferdem kam das laufende Update der Bergbau-Balance gut voran, wobei kleine \u00c4nderungen, die gr\u00f6\u00dfere Auswirkungen haben, dem System hinzugef\u00fcgt wurden. Bei der Bergung halfen Gameplay-Features den Missionen bei der Vorbereitung auf die Nutzung der Mechanik in neuen Inhalten.\n\nIn den USA wurden die Gameplay-Features f\u00fcr das Be- und Entladen von physischer Fracht fortgesetzt und die Entw\u00fcrfe f\u00fcr Missionen, die die neuen Frachtsysteme nutzen, wurden gestartet. Diese Missionen werden auch die Boarding-Aktionen nutzen, die jetzt mit Soft Death m\u00f6glich sind, sowie die Bergung von Containern oder anderen interessanten Objekten.\n\nEs wurden Untersuchungen und erste Entw\u00fcrfe f\u00fcr \u00c4nderungen an der Schiffsversicherung und ihrer Funktionsweise in Verbindung mit der Schiffszerst\u00f6rung durchgef\u00fchrt. Diese \u00c4nderungen sind notwendig, um das Abschleppen und Reparieren von Schiffen an Stationen oder im Weltraum zu verbessern.\n\nEs wurde damit begonnen, eine \u00c4nderung an den Rohstoffen vorzunehmen, einschlie\u00dflich der Orte, an denen sie gekauft und verkauft werden k\u00f6nnen. Die \u00c4nderungen an den Abbauorten werden sich zum Beispiel auf den Standort und die Preise f\u00fcr abgebaute und veredelte Erze bei den Rohstoffh\u00e4ndlern auswirken.\n\nFunktionen (Mission)\nDas Team f\u00fcr die Missionsfeatures hat den Gro\u00dfteil des Monats damit verbracht, Bugs zu beheben und das Balancing f\u00fcr Alpha 3.18 zu verbessern. Au\u00dferdem wurden Fortschritte bei der Entwicklung und dem Prototyping verschiedener neuer Missionen, einschlie\u00dflich der Bergungsmissionen, erzielt.\n\n\"Die Reihenfolge, in der wir diese Missionen in Angriff nehmen, richtet sich danach, wann wir die n\u00f6tige Unterst\u00fctzung erhalten, also werden die ersten Missionen die einfacheren Bergungsmissionen sein. Dazu geh\u00f6ren ein legaler Auftrag, bei dem die Spieler f\u00fcr den Ort der Bergung bezahlen m\u00fcssen, eine ungesetzliche Zeitmission, bei der die Spieler ein Schiff schnell bergen oder sich mit ankommenden Feinden auseinandersetzen m\u00fcssen, eine gesetzlose Mission, bei der mehrere Spieler f\u00fcr den Ort derselben gro\u00dfen Bergungsm\u00f6glichkeit bezahlen, und eine Mission, bei der die Spieler ein Schiff mit Hilfe von Materialien aus nahegelegenen Wracks wiederherstellen m\u00fcssen.\" Missionsmerkmale\n\nEs wurde auch ein Prototyp f\u00fcr eine Bergbaumission entwickelt, bei der die Spieler\/innen den Standort einer wertvollen Sch\u00fcrfstelle kaufen. Derzeit gibt es drei Varianten: die legale, die in einer \u00fcberwachten Zone stattfindet und \u00fcber Verteidigungsanlagen zum Schutz vor Feinden verf\u00fcgt; die illegale, bei der die Spieler\/innen legale Bergbaugebiete erobern; und die illegale, die in nicht \u00fcberwachten Zonen stattfindet und von mehreren Spieler\/innen angenommen werden kann.\n\nDas Team entwickelt au\u00dferdem gr\u00f6\u00dfere Missionen, die auf den Orison-Plattformen spielen. Dabei m\u00fcssen die Spieler\/innen entweder die Nine Tails-Bande daran hindern, Prototypenteile von Crusader Industries zu stehlen, oder sie f\u00fcr eine andere kriminelle Organisation stehlen.\n\nEinige andere Missionen wurden weiterentwickelt und die Arbeit an Bounty Hunting v2 und dem Missionsmanager-Update wurde fortgesetzt.\n\nBei den Missionsfeatures schlie\u00dflich wurde an Entw\u00fcrfen f\u00fcr die Verteidigung von Spielerschiffen gegen Eindringlinge und schiffsbasierte Feindseligkeiten gearbeitet. Diese Funktionen sollen die vereinfachte Feindseligkeit im Spiel ersetzen, bei der sich Schiffe an die Feindseligkeit ihres letzten Piloten erinnern oder feindselig werden, sobald ein feindseliger Spieler an Bord kommt.\n\nIn-Game Branding (Montreal)\nIm letzten Monat hat das In-Game Branding-Team die Arbeit an der Skyline von Lorville vorangetrieben. Dann ging es zur Invictus Launch Week \u00fcber, in der auch das DefenseCon-Branding aufgefrischt wurde, das in den kommenden Wochen im Mittelpunkt stehen wird. Auch am Markenkatalog wurde weiter gearbeitet.\n\nBeleuchtung\nDie Beleuchtungsabteilung begann das Jahr mit Fortschritten in mehreren Schl\u00fcsselbereichen, einschlie\u00dflich der Aufr\u00e4umarbeiten und der Fehlerbehebung in Area18, um das beabsichtigte Aussehen wiederherzustellen.\n\nDie Arbeit an Pyro wurde fortgesetzt, indem das Team die Innen- und Au\u00dfenbereiche der kolonialen Au\u00dfenposten und der Ruinenstation beleuchtete.\n\nAu\u00dferdem unterst\u00fctzten sie die laufende \u00dcberarbeitung der Skyline von Lorville, indem sie mehrere Bereiche der Stadt ausbesserten und verbesserten.\n\nLive Tools (Montreal)\nIm Januar hat das Live Tools-Team an verschiedenen Verbesserungen der lokalen Entwicklungsumgebung gearbeitet. Derzeit wird der letzte Schritt der Implementierung des Entity Graph Tools in das Network Operation Center abgeschlossen. Au\u00dferdem wurde die Roadmap f\u00fcr die Projekte des Jahres 2023 verfeinert und um neue Projekte erg\u00e4nzt, die Server Meshing unterst\u00fctzen werden.\n\nStandorte (EU)\nIm Januar hat das Locations-Team die Arbeit an Pyro's Ruin Station fortgesetzt.\n\n\"Das ist eine riesige Aufgabe, an der das Team flei\u00dfig gearbeitet hat, und es sieht von Tag zu Tag besser aus. EU-Standorte 1\n\nIn EU Locations 2 wurden die Arbeiten an der im letzten Bericht erw\u00e4hnten \u00f6rtlichen Anwaltskanzlei fortgesetzt und neben den Missionsmerkmalen neue Inhalte erstellt.\n\nDie Sandbox-Teams entwickelten die kolonialen Au\u00dfenposten weiter und setzten die Erkundung und Entwicklung der unterirdischen Anlagen fort.\n\n\"Die Produktion l\u00e4uft auf Hochtouren und das Team ist mit der geleisteten Arbeit sehr zufrieden. Sandbox-Team\n\nDas Organics-Team verbrachte den Monat damit, bereits im Spiel befindliche Bereiche zu \u00fcberarbeiten und machte Fortschritte mit dem Art-Benchmark f\u00fcr die Felsh\u00f6hlen.\n\nNarrative\nDas Narrative-Team begann das neue Jahr mit der Unterst\u00fctzung des neuesten Patches und f\u00fchrte die vor den Feiertagen begonnenen Aufgaben fort. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Zusammenarbeit mit den Designteams, um mit der Skripterstellung f\u00fcr die kommenden Bergbau- und Bergungsmissionen zu beginnen. Au\u00dferdem wurden die Geschichten f\u00fcr die erste Reihe von Ermittlungsmissionen weiterentwickelt und m\u00f6gliche neue Inhalte besprochen.\n\nDie Umwelt- und Designteams informierten \u00fcber neue Orte, die im Spiel erscheinen werden, um die Kopfgeldjagd zu unterst\u00fctzen. Narrative arbeitete eng mit ihnen zusammen, um sicherzustellen, dass diese Gebiete mit der bestehenden Geschichte und den Erwartungen an das Spiel \u00fcbereinstimmen.\n\nAuch die Planung f\u00fcr das kommende Jahr wurde in Angriff genommen. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Erstellung einer umfassenden Ressource, in der alle verschiedenen Organisationen und NSCs und die von ihnen angebotenen Missionsinhalte aufgelistet sind. So haben die Teammitglieder eine einzige Quelle, auf die sie sich beziehen k\u00f6nnen, wenn sie neue Missionen entwickeln. Narrative versuchen au\u00dferdem, ihre engagierten Narrative Designer zu nutzen, um das aktuelle Missionssystem zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen und einfache, storybasierte Missionen zu entwerfen, die in den verschiedenen Landezonen platziert werden k\u00f6nnen, um zus\u00e4tzliche Inhalte zu liefern.\n\nDas Team hat au\u00dferdem seinen neuen Zeitplan und seine Herangehensweise an die \u00dcbermittlung von Informationen ver\u00f6ffentlicht.\n\n\"Kurz gesagt: Wir haben die Zahl der fiktionalen Inhalte auf der Website reduziert, um uns auf die Inhalte im Spiel zu konzentrieren. Letztendlich hoffen wir, dass wir diese Geschichten und Neuigkeiten im Spiel wieder aufleben lassen k\u00f6nnen.\" Narrative Team\n\nOnline-Dienste (Montreal)\nIn Montreal planten die Online-Dienste das kommende Jahr und diskutierten mit dem Netzwerkteam \u00fcber Server Meshing. Ziel war es, einen Konsens \u00fcber das technische Design und die Aufteilung der Zust\u00e4ndigkeiten zwischen den Teams zu erreichen, um das Feature zu realisieren. In der darauffolgenden Woche legten die Online-Dienste die Aufgaben fest, die f\u00fcr die Umsetzung von Server Meshing Tier 0 erforderlich sind.\n\nDen Rest des Monats verbrachten wir damit, den letzten Feinschliff an den Funktionen der Alpha 3.18 vorzunehmen, darunter Charakterreparatur, Langzeitpersistenz, Versicherung und Fehlerbehebung.\n\nTechnische Schiffskunst \/ Animation\nIm Januar arbeiteten sie an der Animation und dem Status-Setup f\u00fcr den erweiterten Frachtmodus des Schiffes.\n\nTech-Animation und Schadensunterst\u00fctzung wurden f\u00fcr mehrere Schiffe in der Pipeline bereitgestellt, und alle Schiffe wurden zusammen mit der QA \u00fcberpr\u00fcft, um sicherzustellen, dass relevante Anbauteile Schaden nehmen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde das Shader-Schaden-Scraping f\u00fcr verschiedene Schiffsanbauteile aktiviert und mehrere Probleme mit dem Rumpf-Scraping an Schiffsaufbauten behoben.\n\nUI\nDas UI-Tech-Team hat die Alpha 3.18 weiter unterst\u00fctzt und noch bestehende Probleme mit der Art und Weise, wie die Fahrzeug- und Charakterausr\u00fcstungssysteme mit Persistent Streaming interagieren, behoben.\n\nDas Team hat auch an der Sternenkarte von Squadron 42 mitgearbeitet, die sp\u00e4ter in PU integriert werden soll. Derzeit liegt der Schwerpunkt auf dem Hinzuf\u00fcgen von Navigationshilfen wie Gitternetzen und Koordinaten, der Verbesserung der Gr\u00f6\u00dfe von Planeten und Markierungen und dem optischen Feinschliff.\n\nVFX\nIm letzten Monat hat VFX mehrere Konvertierungen der Partikelbibliothek von der CPU zur GPU durchgef\u00fchrt, angefangen bei den Fahrzeugen.\n\n\"Die schiere Anzahl der bestehenden Bibliotheken und die st\u00e4ndig hinzukommenden neuen Inhalte machen es f\u00fcr das Team manchmal schwierig, die \u00e4lteren Bibliotheken zu \u00fcberarbeiten und zu aktualisieren. Aber wir kommen voran!\" VFX-Team\n\nAn anderer Stelle wurde mit der Vorproduktion f\u00fcr einige neue Drehorte begonnen, darunter eine riesige unterirdische Anlage und Felsh\u00f6hlen.\n\nDas Team arbeitete auch an der Liste der Probleme weiter, die letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnt wurde. Einiges davon wurde im Arbeitsbereich der Alpha 3.18 gemacht, aber auch im Staging-Content, als die Alpha 3.18 im Vorfeld der Ver\u00f6ffentlichung gesperrt wurde.","zh_CN":"PU Monthly Report\nJanuary 2023\nWelcome to January\u2019s PU Monthly Report. Although the upcoming patch is still being tested and tweaked in the Persistent Test Universe (PTU), most teams began the year moving on from their work on Alpha 3.18. From extensive AI updates to new vehicles, locations, and features, read on for everything done in pursuit of 2023\u2019s extensive content schedule.\n\nAI (Features)\nThe AI Features team started the year enabling AI characters to throw grenades. This involved work in multiple areas, including new logic for when to throw grenades to ensure a challenge without overwhelming the player, parabola collision checking to ensure the grenade lands correctly, and animation so that the AI looks correct when throwing.\n\nJanuary also saw the implementation of \u2018attack\u2019 and \u2018defend\u2019 areas, which can be assigned to AI characters to direct and control fighting in specific ways. On the most basic level, the defend area limits where NPCs are positioned when fighting, whereas the attack area limits where they target. When assigned either area, NPCs will prepare to fight by equipping their weapons and taking ready stances before moving to the area on high alert (so perception happens quickly and perception reactions are skipped). When defending, AI will move to a cover point inside the area and defensively peek out. When attacking, they will use the existing investigate behavior to search for hostile forces.\n\n\u201cThe attack area is great for building pressure on the player, whereas the defend area can provide the player with a tough challenge as AI are hunkered down and ready to fight. The implementation of this feature involved reusing existing systems in new ways - changing the tactical queries (positional and target selection) to take into consideration the attack or defend area that the AI may have.\u201d AI Team\n\nAI (Tech)\nLate last year, AI Tech completed the first iteration of NPCs driving ground vehicles. Last month, they fixed several related bugs as more designers began using the feature.\n\nThey also progressed with the feature that enables NPCs to use transit systems (like elevators) and move between platforms. This time, they focused on NPCs using trains to move between locations. This required exposing new functionality on the transit manager and more complex behaviors before and during transit. New functionality includes providing more information about the gateways at specific destinations and information about carriages, such as time spent at a destination and time until arrival.\n\nOn the locomotion side, the team added further support for \u2018soft stops\u2019 and separated them from \u2018harsh stops.\u2019 A soft stop means that an NPC will choose the best animation for stopping even if it will overshoot its destination, while a harsh stop will attempt to stop immediately. Locomotion support was also given for bug fixing and alien-creature movement.\n\nFor the Subsumption Apollo tool, the team progressed with implementing feedback and bug fixing. They also added new functionality to the Subsumption mastergraph, making it possible to have functions on top of transitions to determine whether a state transition can be done.\n\nThe Usable Coordinator was also completed, which allows the designers to specify a selection of usables for NPCs in specific areas and prioritize the order of selection.\n\nThe feature that allows NPCs to perceive threats through audio and visual stimuli and react to hostile vehicles was completed. In a related area, further updates were made to the behavior that enables NPCs reacting to stimuli to enter combat.\n\nAI Tech started work on two new features: One allows overrides for navigation mesh generation so that the team can create navigation meshes for specific agents in narrow areas. For example, this will enable NPCs to traverse areas where only a crouched state is possible, such as vents and underfloor areas.\n\nThe second feature enables the team to mark areas with increased navigation cost, which will influence the path chosen by NPCs. This will be used to create areas that NPCs should avoid, like areas with fire, or to encourage them to travel on specific areas, like a sidewalk.\n\nThey also supported Alpha 3.18 and allocated time to tech debt to update some of the AI system\u2019s functionalities.\n\nAI (Vehicles Features)\nThe Vehicle Feature team focused on space combat AI improvements in January. The intent is to have combat AI behave in a more dynamic way that encourages players to move and explore the various ship mechanics. This involved breaking the AI into different well-defined trees, which will help players to identify what kind of enemies they\u2019re up against. These improvements also allow the easier integration of more maneuvers to further increase the skill level and interest of higher-level ships.\n\nSimilarly, AI Vehicle Features worked on a new behavior logic to deliver improved atmospheric flight combat. This is intended to work with the \u2018control surface\u2019 feature being developed by the Vehicle Feature team and will lead to AI ships tailing and chasing players to get behind them, flying more like a plane when appropriate.\n\nAnimation\nAlongside embedded work for the various feature teams, facial animations were developed for emotes and background characters, such as the female vendor.\n\nArt (Characters)\nIn January, the Character Art team began production of the \u2018frontier environmental wear\u2019 costumes and polished the frontier undersuit.\n\nCharacter Concept progressed with concept exploration for the Rough and Ready gang, fauna, and the Dusters faction.\n\nArt (Ships)\nIn the UK, the Art team continued work on the \u2018small ship\u2019 mentioned in last month\u2019s report, with certain elements reaching LOD0-complete. They also began exploring ideas for a variant.\n\nThe Argo SRV progressed through final art. Final polish is currently underway on the exterior before the LOD and damage passes begin. The interior continued through final art and received a LOD pass.\n\nDevelopment of the Crusader Spirit continued, which passed its whitebox review, with the A1 variant moving into the greybox phase.\n\n\u201cThe exterior is shaping up nicely with the key forms all established and all major elements, like landing gear and VTOLs, resolved. The interior is coming along and we\u2019re very pleased with the space so far, though there are a few visual changes we\u2019d like to make to the doorways to emphasize Crusader\u2019s visual language.\u201d Ship Team\n\nA previously unannounced ground vehicle passed its greybox sanity review before the artwork progressed to LOD0. The exterior is almost finalized, only requiring additional detail, while the interior is progressing well.\n\nThe US team completed art whitebox for another in-production vehicle, which was then passed to the Systems Design team.\n\nGreybox began on another ship. Half the team focused on the main fuselage geometry, while the other prototyped a new way to enter and exit the ship.\n\nFinally for Ships, an all-new vehicle entered greybox, and a new set of alien paints was created for a future release.\n\nCommunity\nThe Community team kicked off the new year by announcing the winners of the Luminalia Holiday Card and Luminalia Screenshot contests.\n\nThey then supported the Red Festival 2953 celebrations, including the Moons of Fortune contest. In addition to the now-persistent red envelopes of 2953, long-time players received the Red Festival envelopes from the previous three celebrations as in-game collector\u2019s items. Furthermore, players could claim three wooden roosters.\n\nCommunity also supported the return of the Siege of Orison Dynamic Event with an in-depth guide.\n\nThoughout January, Community continued to work on the \"Events Feature\" which is a new section coming to the Community Hub next week. They also worked closely with Turbulent on other exciting additions such as text posts, bug fixes, etc.\n\nThey are planning out new Community Events as well, coming to a bar near you.\n\nAlso in January, Community welcomed a new bilingual Community Manager to the LA office, and we're excited to introduce them soon.\n\nEngine\nIn January, the Physics team's schedule was dominated by Alpha 3.18 bug fixing and support. Aside from this, triangle vertex and normal transforms for physics triangle meshes were rewritten to use SSE\/AVX, which saves 30% of the cost. Furthermore, the physicalization method for ropes can now be chosen per rope entity.\n\nOn the renderer, various optimizations were implemented into Gen12 (partly based on telemetry gathered during Alpha 3.18 PTU). Among other things, this included performance improvements for transient lists recording draw requests, a special submission for scene rendering with reduced thread synchronization, and a reduction of calls into the OS for general multi-threading purposes. Additionally, renderer initialization was refactored to prepare for Vulkan. Last month's Gen12 support for particle refraction now also works as intended.\n\nOn the core engine, further improvements were made to the remote shader compiler. Last month's work on adding support for huge pages was rolled out internally. Huge pages are now also used within the low-level memory allocator (JeMalloc). To further reduce the executable size of the Linux DGS, the \u2018gold linker\u2019 is now utilized to fold identical functions and various compiler-generated data inside binaries. Page heap is now also supported for entities, which use a special allocator, to make debugging memory corruptions easier. Lastly, more work was done to support v2 of the pk4 files introduced at the end of last year in the internal development tools.\n\nFeatures (Arena Commander)\nThroughout January, the team focused on polishing the new Arena Commander frontend and racing tracks, including placing the New Horizon Speedway tracks above a new planet, Green III of the Ellis System. Some adjustments were also made to the racetracks themselves to suit the new earth-like atmosphere. The team also experimented with new loadout selection previews on the frontend alongside polishing its style and flow.\n\nWork continued on the Classic Race refactor, with the first version of the new Race Manager and checkpoint setups being tested and feedback addressed. Optimizations and additions, such as splits, qualifying, and new analytic data, were made alongside improvements to time accuracy. The refactors of both the Rounds and Spawning modules continued across Arena Commander and Star Marine. This refactor sees the code drastically improved and brought up to current standards while providing more modularity for new features. It also tackles some of the problem areas that prevented expansion of the old systems, such as separating unintended connections to PU characters, validating loadouts, and adding the ability to change the ship selection while in-game.\n\nFeatures (Characters & Weapons)\nLast month, the Features team continued to support the upcoming patch release with critical bug fixes, specifically issues relating to the cargo system, tractor beam, and inventory. They fixed several client and server crashes too.\n\nThey also worked on the player skills feature. This tracks certain player activities and actions with minimal hooks into the gameplay feature logic and with an emphasis on performance. From the data and events gathered, players can improve certain aspects of their performance. For example, a player with a higher level of fitness may have more stamina or consume stamina at a slower rate.\n\nThe team has been working on better support for the player playing animations triggered by environmental interactions, such as a character physically opening a locker door or pressing buttons on a vehicle dashboard. These are either quick or decorative action sequences with a large focus on reusability to scale with the amount of planned content. There\u2019s a lot of balancing to ensure it increases immersion with minimal impact on responsiveness.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nThe EU team continued work on the tractor beam, this time focusing on \u2018escaping\u2019 mechanics, such as how shields affect the required strength of a tractor beam to secure a ship. A prototype was built to test the potential and help decide whether average shield strength or per-shield-face determines the required strength. Additionally, the team began work on detaching and attaching items with the tractor beam, which is an expansion of the attaching-to-cargo-grid feature.\n\nA clearer direction for the expected ship engineer gameplay was also defined. This involved determining the gameplay beats and planning the possible malfunctions and dangers players will face while maintaining their ships.\n\nAdditionally, the ongoing mining balance update progressed well, with small changes that have bigger impacts being added to the system. For Salvage, Gameplay Features helped Missions prepare to use the mechanic in new content.\n\nIn the US, Gameplay Features continued with the overall design for loading and unloading physicalized cargo, and designs for missions that leverage the new cargo systems kicked off. These missions will also utilize the boarding actions now available with soft death alongside the retrieval of containers or other objects of interest.\n\nInvestigation and preliminary design work started on changes to ship insurance and how it works in conjunction with ship destruction. These changes are necessary to make towing and repairing either at stations or in space a better choice.\n\nTasks were started for a change to commodities, including the locations they can be bought and sold from. For example, changes to mining locations will impact the location and prices for mined and refined ores at commodity brokers.\n\nFeatures (Mission)\nThe majority of the Mission Feature team\u2019s month was spent addressing bugs and balancing for Alpha 3.18. Progress was also made on the design and prototyping of various new missions, including salvage.\n\n\u201cThe order we are tackling these missions is based on when we receive the necessary support, so the first missions produced will be the more simplistic salvage ones. These include a lawful contract in which players must pay for the location of salvage, an unlawful timed mission in which players must strip a ship quickly or deal with inbound hostiles, a lawless mission in which multiple players pay for the location of the same large salvage opportunity, and one in which players must restore a ship using nearby wrecks for materials.\u201d Mission Features\n\nA mining mission was also prototyped in which players purchase the location of a valuable prospect. There are currently three variants: lawful, which takes place in a monitored zone and has friendly defenses to protect against hostiles; unlawful, where players seize legally owned mining claims; and lawless, which takes place in unmonitored zones and can be accepted by multiple players.\n\nThe team are also developing larger missions set on the Orison platforms. These task players with either preventing the Nine Tails gang from stealing Crusader Industries prototype parts or stealing them for another criminal organization.\n\nA few other missions progressed through the design and work on Bounty Hunting v2 and the Mission Manager update continued.\n\nFinally for Mission Features, designs for defending player ships from intruders and ship-based hostility were worked on. These features are intended to replace the simplistic hostility currently in-game where ships remember the hostility of their last pilot or turn hostile the moment a hostile player steps aboard.\n\nIn-Game Branding (Montreal)\nLast month, the In-Game Branding team progressed with their work on the Lorville skyline. They then transitioned to Invictus Launch Week, including a refresh of the DefenseCon branding, which will become the main focus for the upcoming weeks. Progress continued on the brand catalog too.\n\nLighting\nLighting began the year making progress in several key areas, including tidying and bug-fixing Area18 to restore its intended appearance.\n\nWork on Pyro continued, with the team lighting the interiors and exteriors of the colonial outposts and Ruin Station.\n\nThey also supported the ongoing rework of Lorville\u2019s skyline, touching up and improving several areas around the city.\n\nLive Tools (Montreal)\nIn January, the Live Tools team worked on several improvements to the local development environment tool. They\u2019re currently finalizing the last step of implementing the Entity Graph tool into the Network Operation Center. The roadmap for 2023 projects was also refined, with the addition of new projects that will support Server Meshing.\n\nLocations (EU)\nJanuary saw the Locations team continuing work on Pyro\u2019s Ruin Station.\n\n\u201cThis is a behemoth task that the team have been diligently working on and it's looking better day on day.\u201d EU Locations 1\n\nEU Locations 2 progressed with the local law office mentioned in last month\u2019s report and created new content alongside Mission Features.\n\nThe Sandbox teams further developed the colonial outposts and continued exploration and development of the underground facilities.\n\n\u201cProduction is starting to ramp up and the team are feeling good about the work being done.\u201d Sandbox team\n\nThe Organics team spent the month reworking areas already in the game and progressed with the art benchmark for rocky caves.\n\nNarrative\nNarrative began the new year with a continued push to support the latest patch and progressed with tasks started before the holidays. This included working with the Design teams to start scripting upcoming mining and salvage mission content. They also continued developing stories for the first batch of \u2018Investigation\u2019 missions and discussed potential upcoming content.\n\nThe Environment and Design teams provided updates on new locations that will start appearing in the game to support Bounty Hunting. Narrative worked closely with them to ensure these areas align with existing lore and gameplay expectations.\n\nPlanning was also undertaken for the year ahead. Part of this included building a comprehensive resource listing all the various organizations and NPCs and what mission content they offer. This provides a single source for team members to reference when coming up with new missions. Narrative are also seeking to leverage their dedicated narrative designers to look at the current mission-giver setup as well as prototype simple story-based missions that could be placed around the various landing zones to provide additional content.\n\nThe team also published their new schedule and approach to lore dispatches.\n\n\u201cIn short, we have scaled back on original fictional content for the website in order to focus on in-game content. The ultimate hope is that we will be able to resurrect these stories and news updates in the game.\u201d Narrative Team\n\nOnline Services (Montreal)\nIn Montreal, Online Services planned the year ahead, discussing Server Meshing with the Networking team. The goal was to achieve technical design consensus and division of responsibilities between the teams in order to deliver the feature. The following week, Online Services further defined the tasks needed to achieve Server Meshing tier 0.\n\nThe remainder of the month was spent putting the final touches on Alpha 3.18\u2019s features, including character repair, long-term persistence, insurance, and bug fixing.\n\nShip Tech Art \/ Animation\nShip Tech Art and Animation progressed with the Hull C. January saw them working on the animation and state setup for the ship\u2019s expanded cargo mode.\n\nTech animation and damage support was provided for several ships in the pipleline, and all ships were reviewed alongside QA to ensure that relevant component attachments can take damage.\n\nThey also enabled shader damage scraping on various ship attachments and fixed several hull-scraping issues on ship bodies.\n\nUI\nThe UI Tech team continued to support Alpha 3.18, ironing out any remaining issues with the way the vehicle and character loadout systems interact with Persistent Streaming.\n\nThe team also helped with the Squadron 42 Starmap, which will eventually make its way into PU. The current focus is on adding navigation aids, such as grids and coordinates, improving the sizing of planets and markers, and adding visual polish.\n\nVFX\nLast month, VFX carried out several CPU-to-GPU particle library conversions, starting with vehicles.\n\n\u201cThe sheer number of existing libraries, combined with new content being added all the time, means it can sometimes be tricky for the team to revisit and update the older libraries. We are getting there, though!\u201d VFX Team\n\nElsewhere, pre-production began on some new locations, including a huge underground facility and rock caves.\n\nThe team also continued with the snag list mentioned last month. While some of this was done in the Alpha 3.18 workspace, it was continued in staging-content when Alpha 3.18 was locked down in the build-up to release."},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2023-02-01T23:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"3 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-04-26 13:43:06","valid_relations":["images","links","translations"],"prev_id":19102,"next_id":19105}}