{"data":{"id":19160,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: February 2023","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/19160-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-February-2023","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/19160","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/19160","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\nFebruary 2023\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 03:01:2023\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits.\n\nWelcome to February\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including enemy creatures, saving and loading, and naval behaviors.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Content)\nFollowing on from their recent work of enabling characters to drink in usables, the AI Content team began setting characters up to use the mobiGlas at a variety of seats and tables.\n\n\u201cThis is actually simpler than drinking and allowed us to get some great results in a short space of time.\u201d AI Content\n\nThey also completed a large amount of animation polish, including a medic inspecting a patient, exiting beds from different directions and heights, and sitting on the floor feeling sick.\n\nOn the Design side, the team enabled utility characters to load boxes onto a trolley, move the trolley, and then unload the boxes to add additional life to large areas. They also began populating chapter 15 with AI characters in a variety of locations. For this, they utilized new technology to simplify the process and give them more control, the first pass of which is looking promising.\n\nAlongside this, the bridge crew behavior in Shubin Station was refined and a first-pass setup for an interactive weapon rack was completed.\n\nAI (Features)\nLast month, the AI Features team finished work on a non-Humanoid creature AI. This involved increasing the range of animations that the creature can use, including a slow walk that allows the creature to stalk its prey, and look-poses that allow the creature to turn its head to face the target.\n\nImprovements were also made to the code that distributes the creatures around a target when they attack in groups. This uses the formation system currently used by spaceship AI; when moving towards the target, it checks for and creates a formation around the target, with offsets designed to space the attacks equally. This implementation is currently with the designers for feedback before final adjustments are made.\n\nAI Features continued with the medic behaviors, which allows the enemy AI to revive friends. \u2018Downed\u2019 AI are those that have taken near-fatal damage and can only be revived using a med-pen. \u2018Unconscious\u2019 AI are those that have been knocked out (e.g. by stealth takedown) and can be revived by any friendly. Recent work saw the team tidying up the different interactions and, in particular, focusing on what the AI does when encountering a downed or unconscious AI during combat. For example, if the AI is a medic, they will respond and revive their friend, regardless of condition. However, if they\u2019re not a medic, they will call for one and any nearby will come to their aid.\n\nDevelopment of the buddy AI mentioned last month continued too. This now includes matching the player\u2019s stance (e.g. crouch) and moving between cover when enemies are near.\n\nOn the animation side, the team prepared for and shot additional performance capture to replace various blockout animations.\n\nFinally for AI Features, the team spent time re-reviewing their existing features to check that everything worked as expected as a whole. This led to them testing and fixing issues that could only be seen when all the functionality was working together.\n\nAI (Tech)\nAI Tech began February by completing the NPC Transit feature, which manages elevators and trains. Now, NPCs will understand if a transit carriage is present at their location and whether they can move directly inside, if they need to wait, or if they should press a button to call it. They will also understand when they\u2019ve arrived at their destination and will move outside. While in the carriage, NPCs will look for a usable and idle there until they reach their destination. Upon completion, the feature was passed to Design, following which AI Tech addressed feedback and fixed bugs.\n\nThe team then allocated time to improving NPC trolley usage, ensuring that NPCs can use elevators and move trolleys with them if the behavior requests it. To achieve this, they had to write new and update existing behaviors and fix bugs related to path-following while pushing a trolley.\n\nThe team also finished the base skeleton for \u2018boids\u2019 (bird-oid objects), which will enable groups of small creatures like birds, fish, and rats. This required them to implement new components, including a system that allows designers to write rules and constraints related to spawning and movement, which were exposed to DataForge for easy access.\n\nOn the navigation-system side, AI Teach continued to work on cost area shapes that will influence the topology of navigation mesh triangles. This will enable the pathfinder to avoid or prefer to use specific areas. As mentioned in last month\u2019s report, this will initially be used to avoid fire hazards and define sidewalks for social AI actors.\n\nThe team also progressed with navigation agent-type override parameters, which are used when creating areas with specific navigation constraints. For example, they enable an NPC to transition from standing in a regular space to crouching in a vent.\n\nAI Tech also exposed new parameters to specify entity properties during the navigation-generation phase. Now, the designers will be able to mark entities as:\n\nIncluded: The default value - the entity is processed during voxelization and the nav-mesh is generated using that object.\n\nExcluded: One entity will be ignored during generation - for the navigation system, it will be equivalent to not having found that object.\n\nIgnoring Walkability: The entity will cause the nav-mesh to consider it an obstacle - NPCs will not be able to walk on top of that object.\n\nFor AI tools, the team progressed their work on Apollo (the Subsumption tool) and added new functionality requested by the designers, including:\n\nMastergraph editing to allow users to select the default state of each parent state.\n\nThe ability to create new multigraph nodes by dragging functions from the outlier.\n\nSupport for comments inside XMLs (this was an engine-wide improvement).\n\nSupport to read object-container information related to platform creation directly from P4K files.\n\nThey also fixed several issues relating to the resizing of the node graph view.\nWork continued on the usable coordinator tool, with the team adding support for multiple input types that can better specify when choosing the next usable or usable group. For example, specifying the number of usables required to determine that a group is \u2018complete.\u2019 They also fixed an issue preventing the usable group coordinator from working correctly with object containers and implemented the ability to add multiple instances of the same usable with different properties.\n\nAI (Vehicle Features)\nVehicle Feature\u2019s embedded AI team continued working on the new AI combat behaviors.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of back and forth with the Design teams and directors to nail down behavior tactics that we\u2019re happy with, and we are now working to implement and test this new combat AI.\u201d AI Vehicle Features\n\nAdditionally, the new control surface feature for the vehicle flight system is being integrated with AI. Adjustments are being made to the AI movement systems to enable them to fly correctly and reliably with control surfaces rather than thrusters.\n\nAnimation\nThroughout February, the SQ42 Animation team worked on various features, including their first creature enemy, Vanduul searching actions and threatens, ammo looting, and AI healing. They also worked on pro-style takedowns based on the recent unskilled versions; some design changes were made and responses to failed attacks were blocked out.\n\nBackground AI was developed for sick characters, medical wards, and emergency exits from object use. The team also worked on the Kastak Arms sniper rifle and began reviewing the first pass of the Titan animation rig. Zero-g grenade use for the player was also developed alongside further zero-g traversal and movement.\n\nVarious mo-cap data was captured, including a crowd watching a fight, numerous walk styles, use of hygiene cubicles, movement and stacking boxes, security weapon racks, and improved threat reactions for civilians.\n\nThe Facial Animation team worked on lines for enemies in Aciedo and captured facial forms and locomotion performances for injured and sick characters.\n\nArt (Characters)\nFebruary saw the Character Art team continue work on the Screaming Galsons faction, including a set of cybernetic arms that the team are excited to implement.\n\nThey\u2019re currently progressing with the high-poly stages for the navy pilot flightsuit and other navy assets. Work began on the OMC faction and the model for the enemy creature mentioned above.\n\nEngine\nIn February, the Physics team made several improvements to box pruning. For example, changes were made to avoid bipartite box pruning inefficiencies, to decide when to run box pruning before obb pruning, and to significantly improve box pruning performance in general. Additional optimizations include using the spaceship's localspace obb for IFCS collision warning sweep checks to reduce the size of the checked volume. Furthermore, support for various unary and binary distance-field operations was added to the physics system as well as support for tapered capsules (aka bispheres) on articulated entities. Lastly, huge pages are now used for physical entity factories.\n\nOn the renderer, Gen12 received motion vector support for render-to-texture pipelines. Also, redundant copying of render target data for partial refractions was eliminated. Moreover, the team spent time improving ultra-wide-screen support. As one of the results, rendering of the in-game console was vastly improved, resulting in clearer text display. Improving the visor for ultra-wide screens is still being worked on. Lastly, the CPU side code for scatter queries was optimized.\n\nFor the core engine, further substantial improvements and performance optimizations were implemented for the remote shader compiler server. Work on streaming system improvements started, and the final touches on p4k v2 support for internal development tools are being wrapped up. The team also started looking into more advanced tool support for memory tracking of both the server and client.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nLast month, Gameplay Features continued working on save and load, getting the Subsumption missions restoring correctly and back to their correct state. They set save points up in one of the missions and passed it to QA to see what wasn\u2019t loading back in correctly so they could debug and fix it.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re now getting the save time down and saving in the background so there isn\u2019t a long stall each time.\u201d Gameplay Features Team\n\nThey also implemented a tutorial feature for the designers. At opportune moments, they\u2019ll be able to slow down and pause the game while bringing up instructions for a particular piece of gameplay functionality before continuing when the player achieves what\u2019s required. They also set up consoles and datapads to run mobiGlas apps. This allows them to access the same functionality from different places or even create console-specific apps.\n\nThe new Starmap was enabled as the radar in the Gladius, which can transition between radar and full-screen modes and power on and off. The initial implementation of the new display markers was completed too.\n\nFurther polish was done on the seamless transition between the player camera and cinematic camera based on the Cinematics team\u2019s feedback. For example, they improved the appearance when the player is moving over standing still.\n\nFinally, the team further developed a feature that controls vehicles remotely. They can now constrain vehicles to a given area and ultimately lock them in a given place.\n\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nThe Vehicle team spent part of the month enabling the newly redesigned quantum travel feature across various chapters in the campaign.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s taken a lot of bug fixing, testing, and iteration to get to this stage, but so far it\u2019s been going well and the new quantum travel is set to be enabled game-wide very shortly. As well as just bug fixing and testing, we\u2019ve had lots of design feedback from the directors and we\u2019ve been making iterations to the UI, controls, VFX, and general feel of the feature.\u201d Vehicle Features Team\n\nThe other major area of focus was vehicle UI. The team recently received new features from UI Tech that enables them to render 3D UI on the player visor as an AR layer. This led to them building up reticles and aiming and targeting UI in this new tech as they work toward a vehicle heads-up display that integrates with the new multi-function display (MFD) system.\n\nOn a related topic, the underlying MFD tech is complete and the feature is almost usable in-game. The team now have the goal of enabling it game-wide for use in playtests by all devs in the company.\n\nShip radar received further work due to requests made by other teams to support their design work. Most of these came from the Level Design teams and involve mission logic manipulating the radar system to generate gameplay encounters.\n\nLastly, the ship-recall feature mentioned in last month\u2019s report was fed back on, with Vehicle Features further iterating on it to improve and polish the gameplay. This involved collaboration with the AI, Flight Systems, and other Feature teams. When complete, the player will be able to use the SQ42 mobiGlas to call their ship and request it fly back to them.\n\nGameplay Story\nGameplay Story concentrated on mo-cap planning and polish passes last month to further improve their scenes. For example, they updated chapters 1 and 13 by completing thorough passes on the characters and reusing animations to make the scenes function correctly. They also created various new scenes by reusing old animations and using new mo-cap to add to others.\n\nA significant scene in chapter 12 received a full pass, with a key character guiding and interacting with the player across a new environment.\n\nThe team also worked on a scene used if the player is injured and visits the medical bay to be healed. The scene was initially created using wildlines but didn't flow as well as hoped, so new animations were produced to make the character interact better with the player. Additional content was also added to allow the player to abandon and rejoin the scene.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nLast month, the Graphics team continued to close out the final tasks for Gen12 before they transition to assisting in the completion of the Vulkan graphics API.\n\nThe damage-map system was converted to Gen12, and support for profile groups was added to achieve parity with profiling tools in the legacy renderer. Additionally, the render pipeline was made configurable to allow secondary viewports to balance the desired quality and cost. Finally, legacy lens flares were converted to Gen12 alongside initial support for HDR.\n\nSupport for TSAA is currently being added to secondary viewports, which will significantly improve visual quality, especially for hair. The team also submitted the first iteration of a new render-layer feature to allow easy customization of objects in the world for use with game features such as scanning and the mini-map.\n\nFor features, the Graphics team further developed several shaders, including converting LayerBlend v1 assets to the more recent v2 and adding usability improvements to the new shader. Various improvements were also made to the UI shaders, including stability fixes for anti-aliased borders, the option to render circles on each vertex, and lighting support to allow planets in the Starmap to appear both lit and holographic in a single pass.\n\nFor tools, texture processing was made significantly faster through parallelizing filtering and compression, which will be a significant improvement for the artists and build system. Work started on a new mesh format too, with the goal of vastly improving loading times and render performance.\n\nThe VFX Programming team's time was split between fire, quantum travel, and tool work. For fire, work began on decal shading to achieve glow, burn, and soot on objects within the scene. Quantum travel now has support for 'quantum casting' and \u2018red shift\u2019 along with various other code improvements. For tools, usability improvements continued and support was added for referencing particle effects from other particle effects.\n\nThe Planet Tech team worked on better shaping support for asteroid fields, improvements to the harvestable system, and adding support for instancing to terrain chunks.\n\nAlso, the Planet and Graphics teams worked together on a new water system. This is still at an early stage but aims to allow for GPU wave\/ripple simulations at multiple scales as well as network-synced impacts for larger events (e.g. spaceships crashing). Shading improvements are also being made to achieve better reflections, refraction, and foam.\n\nLevel Design (Flight)\nThe Space\/Dogfight team continued working to get all of the ship combat sections of the game flowing seamlessly into the social and FPS sections. They also continued working with the various Feature teams to get critical system updates integrated into the game flow. Last month, they further improved quantum travel and pinned targets. Save and load was also worked on alongside Gameplay Features.\n\nLevel Design (Social)\nLast month, Level Design\u2019s Social team made a concerted push on content across various chapters, including a major focus on background behaviors and schedules for the Idris. This content brings \u2018interstitials\u2019 (the connective tissue that bridges all scene content) to life. This was rolled out to one focus chapter to enable the team to see and evaluate in situ all of the Idris-specific behaviors, including the deck crew, bridge crew, utility, marines, engineers, gunners, medical, leisure, sleeping, sustenance, and hygiene. A large party scene aboard the ship progressed well too.\n\nNarrative\nA bulk of Narrative\u2019s month was spent preparing for an upcoming mo-cap shoot. This included meeting with various stakeholders to review the content and ensure that the script reflects the latest changes, outline any potential lines they\u2019d like to capture, and go through the casting process.\n\nThe team is also planning to use this shoot to start capturing scripts for some of the background characters (codenamed Redshirts) who will be used to populate larger spaces. These characters will utilize dynamic conversation tech along with an array of wildlines to act in a variety of careers. Narrative are aiming to capture a few of these line sets in every shoot to slowly build up numbers as opposed to scheduling them all into a single shoot. They\u2019ll also capture additional combat sets for some of the campaign\u2019s enemies.\n\nNarrative continued meeting with the Design teams to walk through the latest level iterations. This is to assess if any additional content is required to support gameplay, provide guidance, or embellish the tone and flavor of the moment.\n\nOtherwise, the team kicked off outlining the various collectibles that will be scattered throughout the game. Now that the types of collectibles have been decided, Narrative can start outlining each one so the Props team can start creating assets.\n\nTech Animation\nLast month, the Tech Animation team were on set at Pinewood Studios in London, working alongside an outsource studio to finalize face scanning to populate the remainder of the gene pool for the head generation systems (DNA). This is relevant for both the PU and Squadron 42.\n\n\u201cWe scanned a broad range of models, young and old, from all facets of Humanity available to us, which will go a long way to truly showing diversity in our game. The scanning went exceptionally well, our chosen outsource studio has a fantastic resource in their facial scanning rig, which delivered exceptional results. Coupled with lots of hard work and a good sense of humor, we made the most of our two weeks.\u201d Tech Animation Team\n\nUI\nLast month, the UI Art and Design team worked on reusable signage created in Building Blocks to make things easier for the environment artists. This means they can select options from a menu and the sign is automatically generated rather than them having to create a unique texture each time.\n\nThey also continued concept work on two UI styles, ensuring they\u2019re unique and the art direction is well received. They also produced concepts for additional MFD screen layouts and tweaked aiming and targeting alongside the Vehicle team.\n\nUI continued to iterate on one of the in-world holographic UIs.\n\n\u201cAs it\u2019s the first of its kind in the game, after reviewing the prototype, we found lots of things to improve, so it had another concepting and in-game implementation pass to get it to the level we need.\u201d UI Team\n\nThe team made an initial visual pass on the new hacking UI to make it feel more three-dimensional and holographic. UI also supported the SQ42 Feature team in setting up a universal 3D marker in the Starmap, and continued to create UI assets for the Cinematics team.\n\nUI Tech created a color picker for use in the character customizer. They also continued to help polish the Starmap, adding space dust to make it easier to perceive movement, improving the controls, and creating cubic holo volumes. They added workflow fixes too, such as improved comments in Building Blocks, and making it easier to inspect drawn UIs.\n\nVFX\nLast month, VFX spent time cleaning up data asserts coming from various assets (including particle libraries). This was made easier by the VFX programmers who added more detailed information to the errors, including file paths for missing assets.\n\nThe team also completed their overhaul of the particle library structure, meaning older VFX can be swapped out for new and improved versions.\n\nFinally, the team provided close support to Art, Design, and Cinematics on a variety of locations.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION","de_DE":"Geschwader 42 Monatsbericht\nFebruar 2023\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 03:01:2023\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO-Geschwader 42 Rekruten.\n\nWillkommen zum Entwicklungsbericht f\u00fcr Squadron 42 im Februar. Anbei findest du Details zu den neuesten Fortschritten in der Kampagne, wie z.B. feindliche Kreaturen, Speichern und Laden sowie das Verhalten der Marine.\n\nVielen Dank f\u00fcr eure anhaltende Unterst\u00fctzung von Squadron 42.\n\nMit freundlichen Gr\u00fc\u00dfen,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Inhalt)\nNachdem das KI-Content-Team vor Kurzem den Charakteren die M\u00f6glichkeit gegeben hat, in den Usables zu trinken, hat es nun begonnen, die Charaktere so aufzustellen, dass sie das mobiGlas an verschiedenen Sitzen und Tischen benutzen.\n\n\"Das ist einfacher als Trinken und wir konnten in kurzer Zeit tolle Ergebnisse erzielen. AI Content\n\nDas Team hat auch eine gro\u00dfe Anzahl von Animationen fertiggestellt, z. B. einen Sanit\u00e4ter, der einen Patienten untersucht, der aus verschiedenen Richtungen und H\u00f6hen aus dem Bett steigt und der auf dem Boden sitzt und sich krank f\u00fchlt.\n\nAuf der Designseite erm\u00f6glichte das Team, dass Gebrauchsgegenst\u00e4nde Kisten auf einen Wagen laden, den Wagen bewegen und die Kisten wieder ausladen k\u00f6nnen, um gro\u00dfe Bereiche mit Leben zu f\u00fcllen. Au\u00dferdem begannen sie, Kapitel 15 mit KI-Charakteren an verschiedenen Orten zu bev\u00f6lkern. Daf\u00fcr haben sie neue Technologien eingesetzt, die den Prozess vereinfachen und ihnen mehr Kontrolle geben - der erste Durchlauf sieht vielversprechend aus.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde das Verhalten der Br\u00fcckenbesatzung in der Shubin-Station verfeinert und ein erster Durchlauf f\u00fcr ein interaktives Waffenregal abgeschlossen.\n\nKI (Features)\nIm letzten Monat beendete das KI-Features-Team die Arbeit an der KI f\u00fcr nicht-humanoide Kreaturen. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Erweiterung der Animationen, die die Kreatur verwenden kann, wie z. B. ein langsamer Gang, mit dem sie sich an ihre Beute heranpirschen kann, und Blickhaltungen, mit denen die Kreatur ihren Kopf drehen kann, um ihr Ziel zu sehen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde der Code verbessert, der die Kreaturen um ein Ziel herum verteilt, wenn sie in Gruppen angreifen. Dabei kommt das Formationssystem zum Einsatz, das derzeit von der Raumschiff-KI verwendet wird: Wenn sie sich auf das Ziel zubewegt, pr\u00fcft sie, ob es eine Formation um das Ziel herum gibt, und erstellt diese, wobei die Angriffe gleichm\u00e4\u00dfig verteilt werden sollen. Diese Implementierung liegt derzeit bei den Designern, um Feedback zu erhalten, bevor endg\u00fcltige Anpassungen vorgenommen werden.\n\nDie KI-Funktionen wurden mit dem Sanit\u00e4terverhalten fortgesetzt, das es der gegnerischen KI erm\u00f6glicht, Freunde wiederzubeleben. KI, die am Boden liegt, ist eine KI, die fast t\u00f6dlichen Schaden erlitten hat und nur mit einem Med-Pen wiederbelebt werden kann. Bewusstlose KI ist eine KI, die ausgeschaltet wurde (z. B. durch einen Stealth-Takedown) und von einem beliebigen Freund wiederbelebt werden kann. In letzter Zeit hat das Team die verschiedenen Interaktionen aufger\u00e4umt und sich vor allem darauf konzentriert, was die KI tut, wenn sie im Kampf auf eine ausgeschaltete oder bewusstlose KI trifft. Wenn die KI zum Beispiel ein Sanit\u00e4ter ist, wird sie reagieren und ihren Freund wiederbeleben, unabh\u00e4ngig von seinem Zustand. Wenn sie jedoch kein Sanit\u00e4ter ist, ruft sie nach einem und jeder, der in der N\u00e4he ist, kommt ihr zu Hilfe.\n\nDie Entwicklung der im letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnten Buddy-KI wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt. Sie passt sich jetzt der Haltung des Spielers an (z. B. in der Hocke) und bewegt sich aus der Deckung, wenn Feinde in der N\u00e4he sind.\n\nAuf der Animationsseite hat das Team zus\u00e4tzliche Performance Captures vorbereitet und gedreht, um verschiedene Blockout-Animationen zu ersetzen.\n\nBei den KI-Funktionen schlie\u00dflich verbrachte das Team einige Zeit damit, die bestehenden Funktionen zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen, um sicherzustellen, dass alles wie erwartet funktioniert. Das f\u00fchrte dazu, dass sie Probleme testeten und behoben, die nur sichtbar waren, wenn alle Funktionen zusammen funktionierten.\n\nKI (Technik)\nDie KI-Abteilung hat im Februar das NPC-Transit-Feature fertiggestellt, das Aufz\u00fcge und Z\u00fcge steuert. Jetzt wissen die NSCs, ob an ihrem Standort ein Transitwagen steht und ob sie direkt einsteigen k\u00f6nnen, warten m\u00fcssen oder einen Knopf dr\u00fccken sollen, um ihn zu rufen. Sie wissen auch, wann sie an ihrem Ziel angekommen sind und gehen nach drau\u00dfen. W\u00e4hrend sie in der Kutsche sitzen, suchen die NSCs nach einem brauchbaren Platz und warten dort, bis sie ihr Ziel erreicht haben. Nach der Fertigstellung wurde das Feature an das Design weitergeleitet, woraufhin AI Tech das Feedback aufnahm und die Fehler beseitigte.\n\nAnschlie\u00dfend widmete sich das Team der Verbesserung der NSC-Wagennutzung und stellte sicher, dass NSCs Aufz\u00fcge benutzen und Wagen mit sich f\u00fchren k\u00f6nnen, wenn das Verhalten es erfordert. Um dies zu erreichen, mussten sie neue Verhaltensweisen schreiben und bestehende aktualisieren sowie Fehler im Zusammenhang mit dem Wegverfolgen beim Schieben eines Wagens beheben.\n\nDas Team hat auch das Grundger\u00fcst f\u00fcr \"Boids\" (vogel\u00e4hnliche Objekte) fertiggestellt, die Gruppen von kleinen Lebewesen wie V\u00f6geln, Fischen und Ratten erm\u00f6glichen werden. Dazu mussten sie neue Komponenten implementieren, darunter ein System, mit dem die Designer Regeln und Einschr\u00e4nkungen f\u00fcr das Spawnen und die Bewegung schreiben k\u00f6nnen, die f\u00fcr einen einfachen Zugriff in DataForge ver\u00f6ffentlicht wurden.\n\nAuf der Seite des Navigationssystems arbeitete AI Teach weiter an den Formen der Kostenbereiche, die die Topologie der Dreiecke des Navigationsnetzes beeinflussen werden. So kann der Pfadfinder bestimmte Gebiete meiden oder bevorzugen. Wie im Bericht vom letzten Monat erw\u00e4hnt, wird dies zun\u00e4chst zur Vermeidung von Feuergefahren und zur Festlegung von Gehwegen f\u00fcr soziale KI-Akteure genutzt.\n\nDas Team hat auch die \u00dcberschreibungsparameter f\u00fcr Navigationsagenten weiterentwickelt, die bei der Erstellung von Bereichen mit bestimmten Navigationsbeschr\u00e4nkungen verwendet werden. Sie erm\u00f6glichen es einem NSC zum Beispiel, in einem normalen Raum zu stehen und in einem L\u00fcftungsschacht zu kauern.\n\nAI Tech hat auch neue Parameter eingef\u00fchrt, mit denen die Eigenschaften von Entit\u00e4ten w\u00e4hrend der Navigationsphase festgelegt werden k\u00f6nnen. Jetzt k\u00f6nnen die Designer Entit\u00e4ten wie folgt markieren:\n\nEingeschlossen: Der Standardwert - das Objekt wird w\u00e4hrend der Voxelisierung verarbeitet und das Nav-Mesh wird mit diesem Objekt erstellt.\n\nAusgeschlossen: Ein Objekt wird bei der Erstellung ignoriert - f\u00fcr das Navigationssystem bedeutet das, dass das Objekt nicht gefunden wurde.\n\nBegehbarkeit ignorieren: Das Objekt wird vom Nav-Mesh als Hindernis betrachtet - NSCs k\u00f6nnen nicht \u00fcber das Objekt laufen.\n\nBei den KI-Tools hat das Team die Arbeit an Apollo (dem Subsumptionstool) vorangetrieben und neue Funktionen hinzugef\u00fcgt, die von den Designern gew\u00fcnscht wurden, darunter:\n\nBearbeitung des Mastergraphen, damit die Benutzer den Standardzustand jedes \u00fcbergeordneten Zustands ausw\u00e4hlen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nDie M\u00f6glichkeit, neue Multigraphenknoten durch Ziehen von Funktionen aus dem Ausrei\u00dfer zu erstellen.\n\nUnterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Kommentare innerhalb von XMLs (dies war eine engineweite Verbesserung).\n\nUnterst\u00fctzung des Lesens von Objekt-Container-Informationen f\u00fcr die Erstellung von Plattformen direkt aus P4K-Dateien.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden mehrere Probleme im Zusammenhang mit der Gr\u00f6\u00dfen\u00e4nderung der Node-Graph-Ansicht behoben.\nDas Team f\u00fcgte Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr mehrere Eingabetypen hinzu, mit denen die Auswahl der n\u00e4chsten verwendbaren oder verwendbaren Gruppe besser spezifiziert werden kann. So kann z. B. die Anzahl der nutzbaren Gruppen festgelegt werden, die erforderlich sind, um eine Gruppe als \"vollst\u00e4ndig\" zu betrachten. Au\u00dferdem wurde ein Problem behoben, das den Koordinator f\u00fcr verwendbare Gruppen daran hinderte, korrekt mit Objektcontainern zu arbeiten, und es wurde die M\u00f6glichkeit geschaffen, mehrere Instanzen desselben verwendbaren Objekts mit unterschiedlichen Eigenschaften hinzuzuf\u00fcgen.\n\nKI (Fahrzeugfunktionen)\nDas Team f\u00fcr die eingebettete KI von Vehicle Feature arbeitete weiter an den neuen KI-Kampfverhaltensweisen.\n\n\"Wir haben viel mit den Designteams und den Direktoren diskutiert, um eine Verhaltenstaktik festzulegen, mit der wir zufrieden sind, und wir arbeiten jetzt daran, diese neue Kampf-KI zu implementieren und zu testen\". KI-Fahrzeugeigenschaften\n\nAu\u00dferdem wird das neue Steuerfl\u00e4chen-Feature f\u00fcr das Fahrzeug-Flugsystem in die KI integriert. Es werden Anpassungen an den KI-Bewegungssystemen vorgenommen, damit sie korrekt und zuverl\u00e4ssig mit Steuerfl\u00e4chen anstelle von Triebwerken fliegen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAnimation\nIm Februar hat das SQ42 Animationsteam an verschiedenen Features gearbeitet, darunter der erste Kreaturenfeind, Vanduul-Suchaktionen und Bedrohungen, das Pl\u00fcndern von Munition und die KI-Heilung. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie an Takedowns im Profi-Stil, die auf den letzten ungelernten Versionen basierten; es wurden einige Design\u00e4nderungen vorgenommen und Reaktionen auf fehlgeschlagene Angriffe ausgeblendet.\n\nDie Hintergrund-KI wurde f\u00fcr kranke Charaktere, Krankenstationen und Notausg\u00e4nge bei der Benutzung von Gegenst\u00e4nden entwickelt. Das Team arbeitete auch am Kastak Arms Scharfsch\u00fctzengewehr und begann mit der \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung des ersten Durchgangs des Titan-Animations-Rigs. Au\u00dferdem wurde der Einsatz von Granaten in der Schwerelosigkeit f\u00fcr den Spieler entwickelt und die Bewegung in der Schwerelosigkeit weiter verbessert.\n\nEs wurden verschiedene Mo-Cap-Daten aufgenommen, darunter eine Menschenmenge, die einen Kampf beobachtet, zahlreiche Laufstile, die Verwendung von Hygienekabinen, Bewegungs- und Stapelboxen, Sicherheitswaffenst\u00e4nder und verbesserte Bedrohungsreaktionen f\u00fcr Zivilisten.\n\nDas Team f\u00fcr Gesichtsanimation arbeitete an den Linien f\u00fcr die Gegner in Aciedo und nahm Gesichtsformen und Bewegungsabl\u00e4ufe f\u00fcr verletzte und kranke Charaktere auf.\n\nKunst (Charaktere)\nIm Februar hat das Character Art Team die Arbeit an der Fraktion der Screaming Galsons fortgesetzt und unter anderem kybernetische Arme entworfen, die das Team gerne einbauen m\u00f6chte.\n\nZurzeit arbeiten sie an den High-Poly-Phasen f\u00fcr den Fluganzug des Marinepiloten und andere Marine-Assets. Die Arbeit an der OMC-Fraktion und dem Modell f\u00fcr die oben erw\u00e4hnte feindliche Kreatur hat begonnen.\n\nMotor\nIm Februar hat das Physikteam mehrere Verbesserungen am Box Pruning vorgenommen. Zum Beispiel wurden \u00c4nderungen vorgenommen, um Ineffizienzen beim bipartiten Box Pruning zu vermeiden, um zu entscheiden, wann das Box Pruning vor dem Obb Pruning ausgef\u00fchrt werden soll, und um die Leistung des Box Pruning im Allgemeinen deutlich zu verbessern. Zu den weiteren Optimierungen geh\u00f6rt die Verwendung des Lokalraum-Obb f\u00fcr IFCS-Kollisionswarnungs-Sweep-Checks, um die Gr\u00f6\u00dfe des gepr\u00fcften Volumens zu reduzieren. Au\u00dferdem wurde das Physiksystem um die Unterst\u00fctzung verschiedener un\u00e4rer und bin\u00e4rer Abstandsfeldoperationen erweitert und unterst\u00fctzt nun auch verj\u00fcngte Kapseln (auch bekannt als Biskugeln) bei gelenkigen Objekten. Und schlie\u00dflich werden jetzt gro\u00dfe Seiten f\u00fcr physische Entit\u00e4tsfabriken verwendet.\n\nBeim Renderer erhielt Gen12 Bewegungsvektor-Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Render-to-Texture-Pipelines. Au\u00dferdem wurde das \u00fcberfl\u00fcssige Kopieren von Renderziel-Daten f\u00fcr partielle Brechungen abgeschafft. Au\u00dferdem verbrachte das Team viel Zeit damit, die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Ultrabreitbildschirme zu verbessern. So wurde unter anderem das Rendering der Spielkonsole deutlich verbessert, was zu einer klareren Textdarstellung f\u00fchrte. An der Verbesserung des Visors f\u00fcr Ultrabreitbildschirme wird noch gearbeitet. Und schlie\u00dflich wurde der CPU-seitige Code f\u00fcr Scatter-Abfragen optimiert.\n\nF\u00fcr die Core Engine wurden weitere wesentliche Verbesserungen und Leistungsoptimierungen f\u00fcr den Remote Shader Compiler Server implementiert. Die Arbeit an den Verbesserungen des Streaming-Systems wurde aufgenommen und der letzte Schliff an der p4k v2-Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die internen Entwicklungstools wird gerade fertiggestellt. Das Team hat au\u00dferdem damit begonnen, die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr fortgeschrittene Tools zur Speicherverfolgung sowohl auf dem Server als auch auf dem Client zu verbessern.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nIm letzten Monat haben die Gameplay-Features weiter am Speichern und Laden gearbeitet und daf\u00fcr gesorgt, dass die Subsumption-Missionen korrekt wiederhergestellt werden. Sie setzten Speicherpunkte in einer der Missionen und \u00fcbergaben sie an die QA, um zu sehen, was nicht richtig geladen wurde, damit sie es beheben konnten.\n\n\"Wir reduzieren jetzt die Speicherzeit und speichern im Hintergrund, damit es nicht jedes Mal zu einem langen Stillstand kommt. Gameplay Features Team\n\nSie haben auch ein Tutorial-Feature f\u00fcr die Designer\/innen eingef\u00fchrt. In geeigneten Momenten k\u00f6nnen sie das Spiel verlangsamen und anhalten, w\u00e4hrend sie Anweisungen f\u00fcr eine bestimmte Spielfunktion einblenden. Sie richten auch Konsolen und Datenpads ein, auf denen mobiGlas-Apps laufen. So k\u00f6nnen sie von verschiedenen Orten aus auf dieselben Funktionen zugreifen oder sogar konsolenspezifische Apps erstellen.\n\nDie neue Starmap wurde als Radar im Gladius aktiviert, das zwischen Radar- und Vollbildmodus wechseln und ein- und ausgeschaltet werden kann. Die erste Implementierung der neuen Anzeigemarkierungen wurde ebenfalls abgeschlossen.\n\nAuf der Grundlage des Feedbacks des Cinematics-Teams wurde der nahtlose \u00dcbergang zwischen der Spielerkamera und der Filmkamera weiter verfeinert. So wurde zum Beispiel die Darstellung verbessert, wenn sich der Spieler bewegt, anstatt stillzustehen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich hat das Team eine Funktion weiterentwickelt, mit der Fahrzeuge ferngesteuert werden k\u00f6nnen. Sie k\u00f6nnen jetzt Fahrzeuge auf ein bestimmtes Gebiet beschr\u00e4nken und sie schlie\u00dflich an einem bestimmten Ort festsetzen.\n\nFunktionen (Fahrzeuge)\nDas Fahrzeugteam verbrachte einen Teil des Monats damit, die neu gestaltete Quantenreisefunktion in verschiedenen Kapiteln der Kampagne zu aktivieren.\n\n\"Es hat eine Menge Fehlerbehebung, Tests und Iterationen gebraucht, um dieses Stadium zu erreichen, aber bis jetzt l\u00e4uft es gut und die neue Quantenreise wird bald spielweit aktiviert. Neben der Fehlerbehebung und dem Testen haben wir auch viel Design-Feedback von den Regisseuren erhalten und die Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che, die Steuerung, die VFX und das allgemeine Gef\u00fchl des Features \u00fcberarbeitet. Team Fahrzeugfunktionen\n\nEin weiterer wichtiger Bereich war die Fahrzeug-UI. Das Team hat vor Kurzem neue Funktionen von UI Tech erhalten, mit denen es die 3D-Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che als AR-Layer auf dem Visier des Spielers darstellen kann. Das f\u00fchrte dazu, dass sie Fadenkreuze und die Zielerfassung mit dieser neuen Technologie entwickelten, w\u00e4hrend sie an einem Fahrzeug-Heads-up-Display arbeiteten, das in das neue Multifunktionsdisplay (MFD) integriert wurde.\n\nDie zugrundeliegende MFD-Technologie ist fertiggestellt und das Feature ist fast im Spiel nutzbar. Das Team hat sich nun zum Ziel gesetzt, die Funktion spielweit zu aktivieren, damit sie von allen Entwicklern im Unternehmen in Playtests genutzt werden kann.\n\nAm Schiffsradar wurde weiter gearbeitet, weil andere Teams darum gebeten hatten, ihre Designarbeit zu unterst\u00fctzen. Die meisten dieser Anfragen kamen von den Level Design Teams und beinhalten Missionslogik, die das Radarsystem manipuliert, um Begegnungen im Spiel zu erzeugen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich wurde das im letzten Bericht erw\u00e4hnte Schiffsr\u00fcckruf-Feature von Vehicle Features weiter bearbeitet, um das Gameplay zu verbessern und zu verfeinern. Dies geschah in Zusammenarbeit mit den Teams f\u00fcr KI, Flugsysteme und andere Features. Sobald die Funktion fertiggestellt ist, k\u00f6nnen die Spieler\/innen mit dem SQ42 mobiGlas ihr Schiff rufen und es bitten, zu ihnen zur\u00fcckzufliegen.\n\nGameplay Story\nDas Team von Gameplay Story hat sich im letzten Monat auf die Planung des Mo-Caps und den Feinschliff konzentriert, um seine Szenen weiter zu verbessern. Sie haben zum Beispiel die Kapitel 1 und 13 aktualisiert, indem sie die Charaktere gr\u00fcndlich \u00fcberarbeitet und Animationen wiederverwendet haben, damit die Szenen richtig funktionieren. Au\u00dferdem haben sie verschiedene neue Szenen erstellt, indem sie alte Animationen wiederverwendet und andere mit neuem Mo-Cap erg\u00e4nzt haben.\n\nEine wichtige Szene in Kapitel 12 wurde komplett \u00fcberarbeitet, in der eine Hauptfigur den Spieler durch eine neue Umgebung f\u00fchrt und mit ihm interagiert.\n\nDas Team arbeitete auch an einer Szene, die verwendet wird, wenn der Spieler verletzt ist und die Krankenstation aufsucht, um geheilt zu werden. Die Szene wurde zun\u00e4chst mit Wildlines erstellt, funktionierte aber nicht so gut wie erhofft, also wurden neue Animationen erstellt, damit die Figur besser mit dem Spieler interagieren kann. Au\u00dferdem wurden zus\u00e4tzliche Inhalte hinzugef\u00fcgt, die es dem Spieler erm\u00f6glichen, die Szene zu verlassen und wieder einzusteigen.\n\nGrafik & VFX-Programmierung\nIm letzten Monat schloss das Grafikteam die letzten Aufgaben f\u00fcr Gen12 ab, bevor es zur Unterst\u00fctzung bei der Fertigstellung der Vulkan-Grafik-API \u00fcbergeht.\n\nDas Damage-Map-System wurde auf Gen12 umgestellt und die Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr Profilgruppen wurde hinzugef\u00fcgt, um Parit\u00e4t mit den Profilierungswerkzeugen im alten Renderer zu erreichen. Au\u00dferdem wurde die Render-Pipeline konfigurierbar gemacht, um sekund\u00e4re Ansichtsfenster zu erm\u00f6glichen, um die gew\u00fcnschte Qualit\u00e4t und die Kosten auszugleichen. Schlie\u00dflich wurden auch die alten Lens Flares auf Gen12 umgestellt und die erste Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr HDR eingef\u00fchrt.\n\nDie Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr TSAA wird derzeit zu den sekund\u00e4ren Ansichtsfenstern hinzugef\u00fcgt, was die visuelle Qualit\u00e4t, insbesondere bei Haaren, deutlich verbessern wird. Das Team hat au\u00dferdem die erste Version eines neuen Renderlayer-Features eingereicht, mit dem sich Objekte in der Welt f\u00fcr Spielfunktionen wie Scannen und die Minikarte leicht anpassen lassen.\n\nDas Grafikteam hat mehrere Shader weiterentwickelt, darunter die Konvertierung von LayerBlend v1 in die neuere Version v2 und Verbesserungen der Benutzerfreundlichkeit des neuen Shaders. Au\u00dferdem wurden verschiedene Verbesserungen an den UI-Shadern vorgenommen, darunter Stabilit\u00e4tskorrekturen f\u00fcr Anti-Aliasing-R\u00e4nder, die Option, Kreise an jedem Scheitelpunkt zu rendern, und Beleuchtungsunterst\u00fctzung, damit Planeten in der Sternenkarte in einem einzigen Durchgang sowohl beleuchtet als auch holografisch erscheinen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nBei den Werkzeugen wurde die Texturverarbeitung durch die Parallelisierung von Filterung und Komprimierung deutlich beschleunigt, was eine erhebliche Verbesserung f\u00fcr die K\u00fcnstler und das Build-System darstellt. Au\u00dferdem wurde mit der Arbeit an einem neuen Mesh-Format begonnen, mit dem die Ladezeiten und die Renderleistung erheblich verbessert werden sollen.\n\nDie Zeit des VFX-Programmierteams wurde zwischen Feuer, Quantenreisen und Werkzeugen aufgeteilt. Beim Feuer wurde mit der Arbeit am Decal Shading begonnen, um Gl\u00fchen, Brennen und Ru\u00df auf Objekten in der Szene zu erzielen. Bei der Quantenreise gibt es jetzt Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr \"Quantencasting\" und \"Rotverschiebung\" sowie verschiedene andere Codeverbesserungen. Bei den Werkzeugen wurde die Benutzerfreundlichkeit weiter verbessert und es wurde Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die Referenzierung von Partikeleffekten aus anderen Partikeleffekten hinzugef\u00fcgt.\n\nDas Planet Tech-Team arbeitete an einer besseren Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr die Formgebung von Asteroidenfeldern, Verbesserungen am Erntesystem und an der Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr das Instanzieren von Gel\u00e4ndest\u00fccken.\n\nAu\u00dferdem haben das Planeten- und das Grafikteam gemeinsam an einem neuen Wassersystem gearbeitet. Es befindet sich noch in einem fr\u00fchen Stadium, soll aber GPU-Wellen-\/Riffel-Simulationen in verschiedenen Ma\u00dfst\u00e4ben sowie netzwerksynchrone Auswirkungen f\u00fcr gr\u00f6\u00dfere Ereignisse (z. B. abst\u00fcrzende Raumschiffe) erm\u00f6glichen. Auch das Shading wird verbessert, um bessere Reflexionen, Brechungen und Schaum zu erzielen.\n\nLeveldesign (Flug)\nDas Space\/Dogfight-Team hat weiter daran gearbeitet, dass alle Schiffskampfabschnitte des Spiels nahtlos in die sozialen und FPS-Abschnitte \u00fcbergehen. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie weiter mit den verschiedenen Feature-Teams zusammen, um wichtige System-Updates in den Spielablauf zu integrieren. Im letzten Monat haben sie die Quantenreise und das Anheften von Zielen weiter verbessert. Neben den Gameplay-Features wurde auch am Speichern und Laden gearbeitet.\n\nLevel Design (Soziales)\nIm letzten Monat hat das Level Design Social Team einen konzertierten Vorsto\u00df bei den Inhalten in verschiedenen Kapiteln unternommen, einschlie\u00dflich eines gro\u00dfen Fokus auf Hintergrundverhalten und Zeitpl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr die Idris. Diese Inhalte erwecken die \"Interstitials\" (das Bindegewebe, das alle Szeneninhalte miteinander verbindet) zum Leben. Dies wurde auf ein Schwerpunktkapitel ausgeweitet, um dem Team die M\u00f6glichkeit zu geben, alle Idris-spezifischen Verhaltensweisen an Ort und Stelle zu sehen und zu bewerten, einschlie\u00dflich der Decksmannschaft, der Br\u00fcckenmannschaft, der Versorgungseinrichtungen, der Marinesoldaten, der Ingenieure, der Kanoniere, der medizinischen Versorgung, der Freizeit, des Schlafens, der Verpflegung und der Hygiene. Auch eine gro\u00dfe Partyszene an Bord des Schiffes kam gut voran.\n\nNarrative\nEin Gro\u00dfteil des Monats wurde damit verbracht, die Vorbereitungen f\u00fcr den anstehenden MoCap-Dreh zu treffen. Dazu geh\u00f6rten Treffen mit verschiedenen Interessengruppen, um den Inhalt zu besprechen und sicherzustellen, dass das Drehbuch die neuesten \u00c4nderungen widerspiegelt, um m\u00f6gliche S\u00e4tze zu skizzieren, die sie gerne aufnehmen w\u00fcrden, und um den Casting-Prozess zu durchlaufen.\n\nDas Team plant au\u00dferdem, diesen Dreh zu nutzen, um die Skripte f\u00fcr einige der Hintergrundfiguren (Codename Redshirts) zu erstellen, die gr\u00f6\u00dfere R\u00e4ume bev\u00f6lkern werden. Diese Charaktere werden mit dynamischer Konversationstechnologie und einer Reihe von Wildlines ausgestattet sein, um eine Vielzahl von Berufen auszu\u00fcben. Die Narrative wollen bei jedem Dreh ein paar dieser Linien-Sets einfangen, um die Anzahl langsam zu erh\u00f6hen, anstatt sie alle in einem einzigen Dreh einzuplanen. Au\u00dferdem werden sie zus\u00e4tzliche Kampfsets f\u00fcr einige der Feinde der Kampagne einfangen.\n\nNarrative haben sich weiterhin mit den Design-Teams getroffen, um die neuesten Level-Iterationen durchzugehen. Dabei soll festgestellt werden, ob zus\u00e4tzliche Inhalte ben\u00f6tigt werden, um das Gameplay zu unterst\u00fctzen, Anleitungen zu geben oder den Ton und den Geschmack des Moments zu versch\u00f6nern.\n\nAnsonsten hat das Team damit begonnen, die verschiedenen Sammelobjekte, die im Spiel verteilt sein werden, vorzustellen. Jetzt, wo die Arten von Sammelobjekten feststehen, k\u00f6nnen die Narrative damit beginnen, die einzelnen Objekte zu skizzieren, damit das Requisitenteam mit der Erstellung der Objekte beginnen kann.\n\nTechnische Animation\nLetzten Monat war das Tech Animationsteam am Set in den Pinewood Studios in London und hat mit einem externen Studio zusammengearbeitet, um das Scannen von Gesichtern abzuschlie\u00dfen und den Rest des Genpools f\u00fcr die Kopfgenerierungssysteme (DNA) zu f\u00fcllen. Dies ist sowohl f\u00fcr die PU als auch f\u00fcr Squadron 42 relevant.\n\n\"Wir haben eine breite Palette von Modellen gescannt, junge und alte, aus allen Facetten der Menschheit, die uns zur Verf\u00fcgung stehen, was einen gro\u00dfen Beitrag zur Vielfalt in unserem Spiel leisten wird. Das Scannen verlief au\u00dferordentlich gut, denn das von uns gew\u00e4hlte externe Studio verf\u00fcgt \u00fcber eine fantastische Anlage zum Scannen von Gesichtern, die au\u00dfergew\u00f6hnliche Ergebnisse liefert. Gepaart mit viel harter Arbeit und einem guten Sinn f\u00fcr Humor haben wir das Beste aus unseren zwei Wochen gemacht.\" Tech Animation Team\n\nUI\nIm letzten Monat hat das UI Art and Design Team an wiederverwendbaren Schildern gearbeitet, die in Building Blocks erstellt wurden, um es den Environment Artists leichter zu machen. Das bedeutet, dass sie Optionen aus einem Men\u00fc ausw\u00e4hlen k\u00f6nnen und das Schild automatisch generiert wird, damit sie nicht jedes Mal eine neue Textur erstellen m\u00fcssen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem haben sie die Konzeptarbeit f\u00fcr zwei UI-Stile fortgesetzt, um sicherzustellen, dass sie einzigartig sind und die k\u00fcnstlerische Ausrichtung gut ankommt. Au\u00dferdem erstellten sie Konzepte f\u00fcr zus\u00e4tzliche MFD-Bildschirmlayouts und optimierten gemeinsam mit dem Fahrzeugteam das Zielen und Anvisieren.\n\nUI hat eine der holografischen Benutzeroberfl\u00e4chen in der Welt weiterentwickelt.\n\n\"Da es das erste seiner Art im Spiel ist, fanden wir nach der \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung des Prototyps viele Dinge, die wir verbessern konnten, so dass es einen weiteren Konzeptions- und Implementierungsdurchlauf gab, um es auf das Niveau zu bringen, das wir brauchen. UI-Team\n\nDas Team hat einen ersten visuellen Pass f\u00fcr die neue Hacking UI gemacht, damit sie sich dreidimensionaler und holografischer anf\u00fchlt. Au\u00dferdem unterst\u00fctzte das UI-Team das SQ42-Feature-Team bei der Einrichtung eines universellen 3D-Markers in der Starmap und erstellte weiterhin UI-Assets f\u00fcr das Cinematics-Team.\n\nUI Tech hat einen Farbw\u00e4hler f\u00fcr die Charakteranpassung erstellt. Sie haben auch weiter an der Starmap gefeilt, indem sie Raumstaub hinzugef\u00fcgt haben, um Bewegungen besser wahrnehmen zu k\u00f6nnen, die Steuerung verbessert und kubische Holo-Volumen erstellt haben. Au\u00dferdem haben sie den Arbeitsablauf verbessert, z. B. durch verbesserte Kommentare in den Bausteinen und eine einfachere \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung der gezeichneten Benutzeroberfl\u00e4chen.\n\nVFX\nIm letzten Monat hat VFX Zeit damit verbracht, Datenbest\u00e4tigungen aus verschiedenen Assets (einschlie\u00dflich Partikelbibliotheken) zu bereinigen. Dies wurde von den VFX-Programmierern erleichtert, indem sie den Fehlern detailliertere Informationen hinzuf\u00fcgten, einschlie\u00dflich der Dateipfade f\u00fcr fehlende Assets.\n\nAu\u00dferdem hat das Team die \u00dcberarbeitung der Partikelbibliotheksstruktur abgeschlossen, so dass \u00e4ltere VFX durch neue und verbesserte Versionen ersetzt werden k\u00f6nnen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich unterst\u00fctzte das Team die Bereiche Art, Design und Cinematics bei einer Vielzahl von Aufgaben.\n\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...\n\/\/ ENDE DER \u00dcBERTRAGUNG","zh_CN":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report\nFebruary 2023\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 03:01:2023\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits.\n\nWelcome to February\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including enemy creatures, saving and loading, and naval behaviors.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Content)\nFollowing on from their recent work of enabling characters to drink in usables, the AI Content team began setting characters up to use the mobiGlas at a variety of seats and tables.\n\n\u201cThis is actually simpler than drinking and allowed us to get some great results in a short space of time.\u201d AI Content\n\nThey also completed a large amount of animation polish, including a medic inspecting a patient, exiting beds from different directions and heights, and sitting on the floor feeling sick.\n\nOn the Design side, the team enabled utility characters to load boxes onto a trolley, move the trolley, and then unload the boxes to add additional life to large areas. They also began populating chapter 15 with AI characters in a variety of locations. For this, they utilized new technology to simplify the process and give them more control, the first pass of which is looking promising.\n\nAlongside this, the bridge crew behavior in Shubin Station was refined and a first-pass setup for an interactive weapon rack was completed.\n\nAI (Features)\nLast month, the AI Features team finished work on a non-Humanoid creature AI. This involved increasing the range of animations that the creature can use, including a slow walk that allows the creature to stalk its prey, and look-poses that allow the creature to turn its head to face the target.\n\nImprovements were also made to the code that distributes the creatures around a target when they attack in groups. This uses the formation system currently used by spaceship AI; when moving towards the target, it checks for and creates a formation around the target, with offsets designed to space the attacks equally. This implementation is currently with the designers for feedback before final adjustments are made.\n\nAI Features continued with the medic behaviors, which allows the enemy AI to revive friends. \u2018Downed\u2019 AI are those that have taken near-fatal damage and can only be revived using a med-pen. \u2018Unconscious\u2019 AI are those that have been knocked out (e.g. by stealth takedown) and can be revived by any friendly. Recent work saw the team tidying up the different interactions and, in particular, focusing on what the AI does when encountering a downed or unconscious AI during combat. For example, if the AI is a medic, they will respond and revive their friend, regardless of condition. However, if they\u2019re not a medic, they will call for one and any nearby will come to their aid.\n\nDevelopment of the buddy AI mentioned last month continued too. This now includes matching the player\u2019s stance (e.g. crouch) and moving between cover when enemies are near.\n\nOn the animation side, the team prepared for and shot additional performance capture to replace various blockout animations.\n\nFinally for AI Features, the team spent time re-reviewing their existing features to check that everything worked as expected as a whole. This led to them testing and fixing issues that could only be seen when all the functionality was working together.\n\nAI (Tech)\nAI Tech began February by completing the NPC Transit feature, which manages elevators and trains. Now, NPCs will understand if a transit carriage is present at their location and whether they can move directly inside, if they need to wait, or if they should press a button to call it. They will also understand when they\u2019ve arrived at their destination and will move outside. While in the carriage, NPCs will look for a usable and idle there until they reach their destination. Upon completion, the feature was passed to Design, following which AI Tech addressed feedback and fixed bugs.\n\nThe team then allocated time to improving NPC trolley usage, ensuring that NPCs can use elevators and move trolleys with them if the behavior requests it. To achieve this, they had to write new and update existing behaviors and fix bugs related to path-following while pushing a trolley.\n\nThe team also finished the base skeleton for \u2018boids\u2019 (bird-oid objects), which will enable groups of small creatures like birds, fish, and rats. This required them to implement new components, including a system that allows designers to write rules and constraints related to spawning and movement, which were exposed to DataForge for easy access.\n\nOn the navigation-system side, AI Teach continued to work on cost area shapes that will influence the topology of navigation mesh triangles. This will enable the pathfinder to avoid or prefer to use specific areas. As mentioned in last month\u2019s report, this will initially be used to avoid fire hazards and define sidewalks for social AI actors.\n\nThe team also progressed with navigation agent-type override parameters, which are used when creating areas with specific navigation constraints. For example, they enable an NPC to transition from standing in a regular space to crouching in a vent.\n\nAI Tech also exposed new parameters to specify entity properties during the navigation-generation phase. Now, the designers will be able to mark entities as:\n\nIncluded: The default value - the entity is processed during voxelization and the nav-mesh is generated using that object.\n\nExcluded: One entity will be ignored during generation - for the navigation system, it will be equivalent to not having found that object.\n\nIgnoring Walkability: The entity will cause the nav-mesh to consider it an obstacle - NPCs will not be able to walk on top of that object.\n\nFor AI tools, the team progressed their work on Apollo (the Subsumption tool) and added new functionality requested by the designers, including:\n\nMastergraph editing to allow users to select the default state of each parent state.\n\nThe ability to create new multigraph nodes by dragging functions from the outlier.\n\nSupport for comments inside XMLs (this was an engine-wide improvement).\n\nSupport to read object-container information related to platform creation directly from P4K files.\n\nThey also fixed several issues relating to the resizing of the node graph view.\nWork continued on the usable coordinator tool, with the team adding support for multiple input types that can better specify when choosing the next usable or usable group. For example, specifying the number of usables required to determine that a group is \u2018complete.\u2019 They also fixed an issue preventing the usable group coordinator from working correctly with object containers and implemented the ability to add multiple instances of the same usable with different properties.\n\nAI (Vehicle Features)\nVehicle Feature\u2019s embedded AI team continued working on the new AI combat behaviors.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of back and forth with the Design teams and directors to nail down behavior tactics that we\u2019re happy with, and we are now working to implement and test this new combat AI.\u201d AI Vehicle Features\n\nAdditionally, the new control surface feature for the vehicle flight system is being integrated with AI. Adjustments are being made to the AI movement systems to enable them to fly correctly and reliably with control surfaces rather than thrusters.\n\nAnimation\nThroughout February, the SQ42 Animation team worked on various features, including their first creature enemy, Vanduul searching actions and threatens, ammo looting, and AI healing. They also worked on pro-style takedowns based on the recent unskilled versions; some design changes were made and responses to failed attacks were blocked out.\n\nBackground AI was developed for sick characters, medical wards, and emergency exits from object use. The team also worked on the Kastak Arms sniper rifle and began reviewing the first pass of the Titan animation rig. Zero-g grenade use for the player was also developed alongside further zero-g traversal and movement.\n\nVarious mo-cap data was captured, including a crowd watching a fight, numerous walk styles, use of hygiene cubicles, movement and stacking boxes, security weapon racks, and improved threat reactions for civilians.\n\nThe Facial Animation team worked on lines for enemies in Aciedo and captured facial forms and locomotion performances for injured and sick characters.\n\nArt (Characters)\nFebruary saw the Character Art team continue work on the Screaming Galsons faction, including a set of cybernetic arms that the team are excited to implement.\n\nThey\u2019re currently progressing with the high-poly stages for the navy pilot flightsuit and other navy assets. Work began on the OMC faction and the model for the enemy creature mentioned above.\n\nEngine\nIn February, the Physics team made several improvements to box pruning. For example, changes were made to avoid bipartite box pruning inefficiencies, to decide when to run box pruning before obb pruning, and to significantly improve box pruning performance in general. Additional optimizations include using the spaceship's localspace obb for IFCS collision warning sweep checks to reduce the size of the checked volume. Furthermore, support for various unary and binary distance-field operations was added to the physics system as well as support for tapered capsules (aka bispheres) on articulated entities. Lastly, huge pages are now used for physical entity factories.\n\nOn the renderer, Gen12 received motion vector support for render-to-texture pipelines. Also, redundant copying of render target data for partial refractions was eliminated. Moreover, the team spent time improving ultra-wide-screen support. As one of the results, rendering of the in-game console was vastly improved, resulting in clearer text display. Improving the visor for ultra-wide screens is still being worked on. Lastly, the CPU side code for scatter queries was optimized.\n\nFor the core engine, further substantial improvements and performance optimizations were implemented for the remote shader compiler server. Work on streaming system improvements started, and the final touches on p4k v2 support for internal development tools are being wrapped up. The team also started looking into more advanced tool support for memory tracking of both the server and client.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nLast month, Gameplay Features continued working on save and load, getting the Subsumption missions restoring correctly and back to their correct state. They set save points up in one of the missions and passed it to QA to see what wasn\u2019t loading back in correctly so they could debug and fix it.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re now getting the save time down and saving in the background so there isn\u2019t a long stall each time.\u201d Gameplay Features Team\n\nThey also implemented a tutorial feature for the designers. At opportune moments, they\u2019ll be able to slow down and pause the game while bringing up instructions for a particular piece of gameplay functionality before continuing when the player achieves what\u2019s required. They also set up consoles and datapads to run mobiGlas apps. This allows them to access the same functionality from different places or even create console-specific apps.\n\nThe new Starmap was enabled as the radar in the Gladius, which can transition between radar and full-screen modes and power on and off. The initial implementation of the new display markers was completed too.\n\nFurther polish was done on the seamless transition between the player camera and cinematic camera based on the Cinematics team\u2019s feedback. For example, they improved the appearance when the player is moving over standing still.\n\nFinally, the team further developed a feature that controls vehicles remotely. They can now constrain vehicles to a given area and ultimately lock them in a given place.\n\nFeatures (Vehicles)\nThe Vehicle team spent part of the month enabling the newly redesigned quantum travel feature across various chapters in the campaign.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s taken a lot of bug fixing, testing, and iteration to get to this stage, but so far it\u2019s been going well and the new quantum travel is set to be enabled game-wide very shortly. As well as just bug fixing and testing, we\u2019ve had lots of design feedback from the directors and we\u2019ve been making iterations to the UI, controls, VFX, and general feel of the feature.\u201d Vehicle Features Team\n\nThe other major area of focus was vehicle UI. The team recently received new features from UI Tech that enables them to render 3D UI on the player visor as an AR layer. This led to them building up reticles and aiming and targeting UI in this new tech as they work toward a vehicle heads-up display that integrates with the new multi-function display (MFD) system.\n\nOn a related topic, the underlying MFD tech is complete and the feature is almost usable in-game. The team now have the goal of enabling it game-wide for use in playtests by all devs in the company.\n\nShip radar received further work due to requests made by other teams to support their design work. Most of these came from the Level Design teams and involve mission logic manipulating the radar system to generate gameplay encounters.\n\nLastly, the ship-recall feature mentioned in last month\u2019s report was fed back on, with Vehicle Features further iterating on it to improve and polish the gameplay. This involved collaboration with the AI, Flight Systems, and other Feature teams. When complete, the player will be able to use the SQ42 mobiGlas to call their ship and request it fly back to them.\n\nGameplay Story\nGameplay Story concentrated on mo-cap planning and polish passes last month to further improve their scenes. For example, they updated chapters 1 and 13 by completing thorough passes on the characters and reusing animations to make the scenes function correctly. They also created various new scenes by reusing old animations and using new mo-cap to add to others.\n\nA significant scene in chapter 12 received a full pass, with a key character guiding and interacting with the player across a new environment.\n\nThe team also worked on a scene used if the player is injured and visits the medical bay to be healed. The scene was initially created using wildlines but didn't flow as well as hoped, so new animations were produced to make the character interact better with the player. Additional content was also added to allow the player to abandon and rejoin the scene.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nLast month, the Graphics team continued to close out the final tasks for Gen12 before they transition to assisting in the completion of the Vulkan graphics API.\n\nThe damage-map system was converted to Gen12, and support for profile groups was added to achieve parity with profiling tools in the legacy renderer. Additionally, the render pipeline was made configurable to allow secondary viewports to balance the desired quality and cost. Finally, legacy lens flares were converted to Gen12 alongside initial support for HDR.\n\nSupport for TSAA is currently being added to secondary viewports, which will significantly improve visual quality, especially for hair. The team also submitted the first iteration of a new render-layer feature to allow easy customization of objects in the world for use with game features such as scanning and the mini-map.\n\nFor features, the Graphics team further developed several shaders, including converting LayerBlend v1 assets to the more recent v2 and adding usability improvements to the new shader. Various improvements were also made to the UI shaders, including stability fixes for anti-aliased borders, the option to render circles on each vertex, and lighting support to allow planets in the Starmap to appear both lit and holographic in a single pass.\n\nFor tools, texture processing was made significantly faster through parallelizing filtering and compression, which will be a significant improvement for the artists and build system. Work started on a new mesh format too, with the goal of vastly improving loading times and render performance.\n\nThe VFX Programming team's time was split between fire, quantum travel, and tool work. For fire, work began on decal shading to achieve glow, burn, and soot on objects within the scene. Quantum travel now has support for 'quantum casting' and \u2018red shift\u2019 along with various other code improvements. For tools, usability improvements continued and support was added for referencing particle effects from other particle effects.\n\nThe Planet Tech team worked on better shaping support for asteroid fields, improvements to the harvestable system, and adding support for instancing to terrain chunks.\n\nAlso, the Planet and Graphics teams worked together on a new water system. This is still at an early stage but aims to allow for GPU wave\/ripple simulations at multiple scales as well as network-synced impacts for larger events (e.g. spaceships crashing). Shading improvements are also being made to achieve better reflections, refraction, and foam.\n\nLevel Design (Flight)\nThe Space\/Dogfight team continued working to get all of the ship combat sections of the game flowing seamlessly into the social and FPS sections. They also continued working with the various Feature teams to get critical system updates integrated into the game flow. Last month, they further improved quantum travel and pinned targets. Save and load was also worked on alongside Gameplay Features.\n\nLevel Design (Social)\nLast month, Level Design\u2019s Social team made a concerted push on content across various chapters, including a major focus on background behaviors and schedules for the Idris. This content brings \u2018interstitials\u2019 (the connective tissue that bridges all scene content) to life. This was rolled out to one focus chapter to enable the team to see and evaluate in situ all of the Idris-specific behaviors, including the deck crew, bridge crew, utility, marines, engineers, gunners, medical, leisure, sleeping, sustenance, and hygiene. A large party scene aboard the ship progressed well too.\n\nNarrative\nA bulk of Narrative\u2019s month was spent preparing for an upcoming mo-cap shoot. This included meeting with various stakeholders to review the content and ensure that the script reflects the latest changes, outline any potential lines they\u2019d like to capture, and go through the casting process.\n\nThe team is also planning to use this shoot to start capturing scripts for some of the background characters (codenamed Redshirts) who will be used to populate larger spaces. These characters will utilize dynamic conversation tech along with an array of wildlines to act in a variety of careers. Narrative are aiming to capture a few of these line sets in every shoot to slowly build up numbers as opposed to scheduling them all into a single shoot. They\u2019ll also capture additional combat sets for some of the campaign\u2019s enemies.\n\nNarrative continued meeting with the Design teams to walk through the latest level iterations. This is to assess if any additional content is required to support gameplay, provide guidance, or embellish the tone and flavor of the moment.\n\nOtherwise, the team kicked off outlining the various collectibles that will be scattered throughout the game. Now that the types of collectibles have been decided, Narrative can start outlining each one so the Props team can start creating assets.\n\nTech Animation\nLast month, the Tech Animation team were on set at Pinewood Studios in London, working alongside an outsource studio to finalize face scanning to populate the remainder of the gene pool for the head generation systems (DNA). This is relevant for both the PU and Squadron 42.\n\n\u201cWe scanned a broad range of models, young and old, from all facets of Humanity available to us, which will go a long way to truly showing diversity in our game. The scanning went exceptionally well, our chosen outsource studio has a fantastic resource in their facial scanning rig, which delivered exceptional results. Coupled with lots of hard work and a good sense of humor, we made the most of our two weeks.\u201d Tech Animation Team\n\nUI\nLast month, the UI Art and Design team worked on reusable signage created in Building Blocks to make things easier for the environment artists. This means they can select options from a menu and the sign is automatically generated rather than them having to create a unique texture each time.\n\nThey also continued concept work on two UI styles, ensuring they\u2019re unique and the art direction is well received. They also produced concepts for additional MFD screen layouts and tweaked aiming and targeting alongside the Vehicle team.\n\nUI continued to iterate on one of the in-world holographic UIs.\n\n\u201cAs it\u2019s the first of its kind in the game, after reviewing the prototype, we found lots of things to improve, so it had another concepting and in-game implementation pass to get it to the level we need.\u201d UI Team\n\nThe team made an initial visual pass on the new hacking UI to make it feel more three-dimensional and holographic. UI also supported the SQ42 Feature team in setting up a universal 3D marker in the Starmap, and continued to create UI assets for the Cinematics team.\n\nUI Tech created a color picker for use in the character customizer. They also continued to help polish the Starmap, adding space dust to make it easier to perceive movement, improving the controls, and creating cubic holo volumes. They added workflow fixes too, such as improved comments in Building Blocks, and making it easier to inspect drawn UIs.\n\nVFX\nLast month, VFX spent time cleaning up data asserts coming from various assets (including particle libraries). This was made easier by the VFX programmers who added more detailed information to the errors, including file paths for missing assets.\n\nThe team also completed their overhaul of the particle library structure, meaning older VFX can be swapped out for new and improved versions.\n\nFinally, the team provided close support to Art, Design, and Cinematics on a variety of locations.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2023-03-09T03:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"3 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-14 07:36:00","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":19156,"next_id":19161}}