{"data":{"id":19474,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: August 2023","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/transmission\/19474-Squadron-42-Monthly-Report-August-2023","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/19474","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/19474","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":4,"translations":{"en_EN":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report\nAugust 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 09:13:2023\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX,\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits.\n\nWelcome to August\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including AI perception, vehicle UI, and ambient audio.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Features)\nLast month, AI reviewed perception to fix issues where NPCs wouldn\u2019t correctly recognize that a target had died or that they\u2019d seen a situation before. These issues led to various bugs, including the AI constantly calling for med-pens or remaining in combat after it had finished.\n\nThey also revisited cover usage, polishing various functionality and animations to ensure the feature works across a range of situations and environments.\n\nChanges and fixes were also made to the tactical point system, which is used to drive where the AI moves. This will help identify what needs to be adjusted when reviewing combat in new locations.\n\nBalancing was done for AI ammunition usage while maintaining reload and ammo-finding functionality to provide realistic and emergent behaviors and gameplay situations.\n\nThe team continued to review, revisit, and polish combat, including low and high-cover reload animations for different weapons and female animations converted from male assets. They also began developing animations for marine squad hand signals to sell group movement and combat.\n\nAI (Tech)\nLast month, AI Tech added undo-and-redo functionality to the Apollo Subsumption tool. They also began improving Subsumption data validation for better presentation and more explicit validation errors. This will allow the designers to iterate faster when creating or adjusting missions and behaviors.\n\nOn the boids feature mentioned in last month\u2019s report, AI Tech continued implementing base functionality to allow agents (rats, birds, etc.) to adopt different states, such as wandering, idling, or fleeing, and transition between them. They\u2019re currently looking for a low-cost solution to keep agents on terrain while moving.\n\nFor NPC audio perception, the team implemented new functionality for how audio stimuli is propagated. This involves using the room system and how rooms are connected to determine whether an audio event should be heard.\n\nThey also continued to improve navigation links. Firstly, how links connect navigation triangles from different zones, which wasn\u2019t working as intended. Secondly, they fixed how animations play when they begin and finish in different zones. For example, when NPCs jump to the ground from a hovering ship.\n\nFinally, investigation began into performance issues relating to the navigation system and pathfinder.\n\nAI (Vehicles)\nVehicle AI\u2019s priority in August was working through issues preventing the new AI features from working correctly. They fixed faults with the recent aiming system refactor to ensure NPCs shoot correctly and worked with the level designers to fix various miscellaneous problems causing the AI to not work in certain places.\n\nFollowing this, the team will focus on game-wide flight AI improvements as they continue to fine-tune the gameplay experience throughout the flight sections.\n\nAnimation\nThe animators collaborated with the level and AI designers to close out animations across various locations, including the med-bay, bridge, mess hall, and hangar.\n\nThey\u2019re currently improving the overall feel of player actions through slides, basic movement, weapon usage, and more. This involves adjusting weapon malfunctions, first-person interactions with the environment (such as opening a hatch), first selects for new weapons, and a selection of other animations.\n\nAdditionally, progress was made on combat AI for both enemies and civilians, and Animation worked with Narrative and Design to get level-specific scenes implemented correctly.\n\nThe Motion Capture team worked alongside the writers to add the finishing narrative touches to certain areas and supported spot improvements to AI behaviors.\n\nOn the facial side, the team completed a large number of behavioral lines and performances to bring the flight combat, ground combat, and background ambience to life. They also progressed with polish tasks for the cast characters.\n\nAudio\nThroughout August, the team worked towards a major audio milestone. The aim of this is to provide sound effects for all the work done by the upstream strike teams and identifies any required post-alpha changes or improvements.\n\nThe Tech team made significant progress on the walla (crowd audio) system, which is close to first-pass complete. This system groups NPCs into clusters based on their proximity, allowing for dynamic, localized audio that simulates ambient chatter. Resonance tech progressed too, which was detailed in a recent episode of Inside Star Citizen. They also continued to ensure that the game builds remain stable during development so that the devs could work seamlessly.\n\nAudio then began tagging cinematic animations with new foley sound effects. This is an integral push towards implementing audible layers to cinematics, with bespoke animations such as punches or fist bumps receiving their initial audio pass.\n\nThe team continued to design and implement effects for a variety of SQ42-specific weapons, including the VOLT manufacturer, ensuring the sounds align with its bold, high-tech designs.\n\n\u201cWe are excited for the community to get their hands on these weapons and feel the brawny impact of a Galson shotgun blast or our VOLT sniper.\u201d Audio Team\n\nThere was also a significant push to create and improve the sound effects for the various puzzles found throughout the campaign; every puzzle being in some way unique opened the doors to providing distinctive and innovative sounds. In-game gadgets, including the flashbang, also received fine-tuning and new implementations.\n\nFinally for Audio, they made significant post-alpha improvements to the game environments, building on what was already in place and providing locations with more subtle ambience.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nAugust saw work begin on the vehicle radar\u2019s landing UI. To begin with, the team investigated rendering the environment outside of a ship in the vehicle\u2019s radar display (similar to the minimap) so players can see the area they intend to land on. The geometry will be marked up so will only display the relevant landing area.\n\nFor camera transitions from first-person view to cinematic sequences, the team added the ability to create small TrackView sequences for the initial cut-away with smooth transitions to the cinematic cameras. For example, if the player is in a cockpit seat, the team can create a camera transition out through the windscreen for a better visual flow.\n\nElsewhere, Gameplay Features continued extending crane-controller functionality based on a new use case. They also made improvements to hints and tutorials, mobiGlas notification forwarding to the visor, and mobiGlas linking.\n\nFeatures (Vehicle)\nLast month, Vehicle Features worked towards closing out the self-status UI, filling out missing features in the various sub-screens, including information on quantum travel and fuel. They received support from the UI Art team on this to improve the visuals and ship rendering. Relating to this, the turret variant of the self-status MFD can now render a 3D model of the turret, which will also be improved by the UI artists in the near future.\n\nThe vehicle loadout terminal is approaching feature-complete with the addition of special features for group-equipping items. For example, changing a single ship thruster will change the others if required, or equipping a specific missile will automatically swap to the correct missile rack. Additionally, the UI Art team is creating a 3D augmented-reality display for the vehicle loadout terminal. This will be located in the Idris\u2019 hangar where players can customize their ships.\n\nVehicle Features began looking into changes to vehicle aiming, exploring a feature similar to ADS. This will allow players to zoom in on their target and receive additional aiming assistance to target subcomponents or line up a better shot. This is still being explored.\n\nProgress was also made on the Resource Network, with the team providing support for various vehicle items that use fuel and power, such as quantum drives and thrusters.\n\n\u201cThrusters using power is one of the more complicated aspects of this, so we\u2019re still working through it.\u201d Vehicle Features Team\n\nLastly, Vehicle Features supported Level Design on their gameplay sequences, providing bug fixing and technical support for new smaller features to aid with building out levels and experiences.\n\nGameplay Story\nMost of Gameplay Story\u2019s focus throughout August was on supporting the strike team with improvements and additions around the Idris. This involved refactoring and supporting the recently created deck-crew TrackViews and adding additional idle animations and improved prop interactions to the mess-hall scenes. They also spent a few days working on new turret content to add additional life to these areas.\n\nNew mo-cap data was used to incorporate several dialogue changes to key character scenes requested by Design. They also created several \u2018resolve\u2019 and \u2018out-of\u2019 animations to help characters exit their scenes and return to AI control.\n\nTowards the end of the month, the team switched focus to preparing for upcoming narrative shoots.\n\n\u201cWe have about 20 new Gameplay Story scenes being recorded and we are keen to ensure the resulting data can be implemented as smoothly as possible.\u201d Gameplay Story Team\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nIn August, improvements were made to the internal implementation of Temporal Super Resolution.\n\nFurther progress was made on water, with the shader gaining improved lighting and foam. Work on the simulation continued too, with foam propagation and bullet-impact support being added.\n\nThe prototype of the glint shading model was completed and comes in three versions with different performance characteristics. The team are now investigating whether they can take one of these into production. Distant lights are now drawn as tiny bright glows that pass through the existing post-effect system, with the aim of replacing the more traditional 'composite flare' system that can't support post-effects.\n\nOn the tooling side, the streaming debugger was expanded and now provides a powerful tool to track the detailed history of any asset or group to diagnose issues and facilitate optimizations. The Mesh Setup Editor was also expanded to allow finer-grained control of how animated meshes are imported.\n\nThe Vulkan sub-team added new extensions, including Synchronization2, Maintenance4, and TimelineSemaphore, to improve various aspects of the backend. Focus is now shifting to unblocking progress on Global Illumination, as the ray-tracing component is Vulkan-only.\n\nThe VFX Programming team implemented smoke spawning on fire along with various other quality improvements to bring the feature to a visually complete and \u201crather impressive\u201d state.\n\nFinally, further improvements to lightning effects were made, which will be used in the future within gas clouds.\n\nLevel Design\nLast month, Level Design continued to focus on the Idris interstitials.\n\nOutside of scene maintenance and updates, the Social Narrative team worked closely with AI Content, pushing hard on crew behaviors. This included supporting the implementation of background vignettes in the Idris\u2019 hangar for use after a player lands. These include the deck crew pushing ladders up to the Gladius and climbing on top to carry out maintenance, refueling the ship, and carrying out cockpit and weapons checks. The same was then done for pre-flight vignettes, with the deck crew prepping the player\u2019s ship for take-off with thruster and weapons checks.\n\nThe team also started work on having the previously static Idris moving during interstitials, which is subtle but makes a difference.\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative team was heavily involved in recent performance-capture shoots. This included interfacing with the level designers to solidify the flow of levels and scripts as well as working with the Core Gameplay and Audio teams to detail wildline scripts for characters. These included some new characters that had been introduced in the latest levels as well as pickups for a handful of returning actors that had been previously captured. Part of these lines included buddy-AI designs for both FPS and flight sections that had been implemented since the last time they had been captured.\n\nThe subtitle validation work that began last month was completed, with the team reviewing and updating several thousand lines of dialogue to ensure the subtitles accurately reflected what the performers said.\n\nThe team continued to delve into some of the collectibles that players will be able to find scattered throughout the levels. They also progressed with defining the categories and content that will go into the Squadron 42 Galactapedia.\n\nR&D\nIn August, work on the temporal render mode for atmosphere and volumetric clouds continued; various methods to rectify or reject frame history were experimented with.\n\nFurthermore, a new disocclusion detection system to reject history was implemented that, in spirit, is similar to the general up-sampling solution.\n\nAdditionally, various code was updated to work with recent Gen12 improvements.\n\nVFX\nVFX continued the work discussed in July\u2019s report. In particular, fire propagation visuals were further improved, with fog volumes being used to show smoke accumulating at ceiling height alongside further visual breakup of the fire particle effects.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION","de_DE":"Geschwader 42 Monatsbericht\nAugust 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 09:13:2023\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX,\n\nFAO-Geschwader 42 Rekruten.\n\nWillkommen zum Entwicklungsbericht f\u00fcr Squadron 42 im August. Anbei findest du Details zu den neuesten Fortschritten in der Kampagne, einschlie\u00dflich KI-Wahrnehmung, Fahrzeug-UI und Umgebungsger\u00e4uschen.\n\nWir danken euch f\u00fcr eure anhaltende Unterst\u00fctzung von Squadron 42.\n\nMit freundlichen Gr\u00fc\u00dfen,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nKI (Features)\nLetzten Monat wurde die Wahrnehmung der KI \u00fcberarbeitet, um Probleme zu beheben, bei denen NSCs nicht richtig erkannten, dass ein Ziel gestorben war oder dass sie eine Situation schon einmal gesehen hatten. Diese Probleme f\u00fchrten zu verschiedenen Fehlern, z. B. dass die KI st\u00e4ndig nach Sanit\u00e4tern rief oder im Kampf blieb, nachdem dieser bereits beendet war.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde die Nutzung der Deckung \u00fcberarbeitet und verschiedene Funktionen und Animationen verbessert, um sicherzustellen, dass die Funktion in verschiedenen Situationen und Umgebungen funktioniert.\n\nAuch am taktischen Punktesystem, das die Bewegungen der KI bestimmt, wurden \u00c4nderungen und Korrekturen vorgenommen. So l\u00e4sst sich leichter erkennen, was angepasst werden muss, wenn man den Kampf an neuen Orten \u00fcberpr\u00fcft.\n\nDer Munitionsverbrauch der KI wurde angepasst, wobei die Nachlade- und Munitionsfindungsfunktionen beibehalten wurden, um realistisches und neues Verhalten und neue Spielsituationen zu erm\u00f6glichen.\n\nDas Team \u00fcberpr\u00fcfte, \u00fcberarbeitete und polierte die K\u00e4mpfe weiter, einschlie\u00dflich der Nachladeanimationen f\u00fcr verschiedene Waffen in niedriger und hoher Deckung und der Animationen f\u00fcr Frauen, die aus den m\u00e4nnlichen Assets umgewandelt wurden. Sie begannen auch mit der Entwicklung von Animationen f\u00fcr die Handsignale der Marinesoldaten, um Gruppenbewegungen und K\u00e4mpfe zu verkaufen.\n\nKI (Tech)\nLetzten Monat hat AI Tech das Apollo Subsumption Tool um eine Undo-and-Redo-Funktion erweitert. Au\u00dferdem wurde die Validierung der Subsumption-Daten verbessert, um eine bessere Darstellung und deutlichere Validierungsfehler zu erreichen. Dadurch k\u00f6nnen die Designer bei der Erstellung oder Anpassung von Missionen und Verhaltensweisen schneller iterieren.\n\nF\u00fcr das im letzten Bericht erw\u00e4hnte Boids-Feature hat AI Tech die Implementierung der Basisfunktionalit\u00e4t fortgesetzt, die es Agenten (Ratten, V\u00f6geln usw.) erm\u00f6glicht, verschiedene Zust\u00e4nde einzunehmen, z. B. wandern, faulenzen oder fliehen, und zwischen diesen zu wechseln. Derzeit wird nach einer kosteng\u00fcnstigen L\u00f6sung gesucht, um die Agenten auf dem Boden zu halten, w\u00e4hrend sie sich bewegen.\n\nF\u00fcr die Audiowahrnehmung der NSCs hat das Team neue Funktionen f\u00fcr die Weitergabe von Audiostimuli implementiert. Dabei werden das Raumsystem und die Art, wie R\u00e4ume miteinander verbunden sind, genutzt, um zu bestimmen, ob ein Audio-Ereignis geh\u00f6rt werden soll.\n\nAu\u00dferdem haben sie die Navigationslinks weiter verbessert. Erstens die Art und Weise, wie Links die Navigationsdreiecke aus verschiedenen Zonen verbinden, was nicht wie vorgesehen funktionierte. Zweitens wurde die Art und Weise korrigiert, wie Animationen abgespielt werden, wenn sie in verschiedenen Zonen beginnen und enden. Zum Beispiel, wenn NSCs aus einem schwebenden Schiff auf den Boden springen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich wurden Leistungsprobleme im Zusammenhang mit dem Navigationssystem und dem Pfadfinder untersucht.\n\nKI (Fahrzeuge)\nDie Priorit\u00e4t bei der Fahrzeug-KI lag im August auf der Behebung von Problemen, die verhinderten, dass die neuen KI-Funktionen korrekt funktionierten. Es wurden Fehler mit dem k\u00fcrzlich \u00fcberarbeiteten Zielsystem behoben, um sicherzustellen, dass NSCs richtig schie\u00dfen, und mit den Leveldesignern zusammengearbeitet, um verschiedene Probleme zu beheben, die dazu f\u00fchrten, dass die KI an bestimmten Stellen nicht funktionierte.\n\nIm Anschluss daran wird sich das Team auf spielweite Verbesserungen der Flug-KI konzentrieren, um das Spielerlebnis in den Flugabschnitten weiter zu verfeinern.\n\nAnimation\nDie Animatoren haben mit den Level- und KI-Designern zusammengearbeitet, um die Animationen an verschiedenen Orten wie der Krankenstation, der Br\u00fccke, der Kantine und dem Hangar abzuschlie\u00dfen.\n\nSie verbessern derzeit das allgemeine Gef\u00fchl der Spieleraktionen durch Rutschen, grundlegende Bewegungen, Waffeneinsatz und mehr. Dazu geh\u00f6ren die Anpassung von Waffenfehlfunktionen, Interaktionen aus der ersten Person mit der Umgebung (z. B. das \u00d6ffnen einer Luke), die erste Auswahl neuer Waffen und eine Reihe anderer Animationen.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden Fortschritte bei der Kampf-KI f\u00fcr Feinde und Zivilisten gemacht und die Animation hat mit Narrative und Design zusammengearbeitet, um stufenspezifische Szenen korrekt zu implementieren.\n\nDas Motion-Capture-Team arbeitete mit den Autoren zusammen, um bestimmten Bereichen den letzten erz\u00e4hlerischen Schliff zu geben, und unterst\u00fctzte punktuelle Verbesserungen des KI-Verhaltens.\n\nAuf der Gesichtsseite vervollst\u00e4ndigte das Team eine gro\u00dfe Anzahl von Verhaltenslinien und Performances, um den Flug- und Bodenkampf sowie das Hintergrundambiente zum Leben zu erwecken. Auch an den Charakteren der Hauptdarsteller wurde weiter gefeilt.\n\nAudio\nDen ganzen August \u00fcber arbeitete das Team an einem wichtigen Meilenstein im Bereich Audio. Ziel ist es, die Soundeffekte f\u00fcr die gesamte Arbeit der vorgelagerten Strike-Teams bereitzustellen und alle erforderlichen Post-Alpha-\u00c4nderungen oder Verbesserungen zu identifizieren.\n\nDas Tech-Team hat gro\u00dfe Fortschritte beim Walla-System (Crowd-Audio) gemacht, das kurz vor der Fertigstellung steht. Dieses System gruppiert NSCs je nach ihrer N\u00e4he in Gruppen und erm\u00f6glicht so einen dynamischen, lokalisierten Ton, der das Gespr\u00e4ch der Umgebung simuliert. Auch bei der Resonanztechnologie wurden Fortschritte erzielt, die in einer k\u00fcrzlich erschienenen Folge von Inside Star Citizen ausf\u00fchrlich beschrieben wurden. Au\u00dferdem wurde sichergestellt, dass die Spiel-Builds w\u00e4hrend der Entwicklung stabil bleiben, damit die Entwickler\/innen nahtlos arbeiten k\u00f6nnen.\n\nIm Bereich Audio wurde damit begonnen, filmische Animationen mit neuen Foley-Soundeffekten zu versehen. Dies ist ein wesentlicher Schritt in Richtung der Implementierung von h\u00f6rbaren Layern in die Cinematics, wobei ma\u00dfgeschneiderte Animationen wie Schl\u00e4ge oder Faustst\u00f6\u00dfe ihren ersten Audio-Pass erhalten.\n\nDas Team entwarf und implementierte weiterhin Effekte f\u00fcr eine Reihe von SQ42-spezifischen Waffen, darunter auch f\u00fcr den VOLT-Hersteller, um sicherzustellen, dass die Ger\u00e4usche zu dessen k\u00fchnem Hightech-Design passen.\n\n\"Wir freuen uns darauf, dass die Community diese Waffen in die H\u00e4nde bekommt und die brachiale Wirkung einer Galson-Schrotflinte oder unseres VOLT-Scharfsch\u00fctzen sp\u00fcren kann. Audio-Team\n\nAuch die Soundeffekte f\u00fcr die verschiedenen R\u00e4tsel, die in der Kampagne vorkommen, wurden mit Nachdruck entwickelt und verbessert. Auch die Gadgets im Spiel, wie z. B. der Flashbang, wurden \u00fcberarbeitet und neu implementiert.\n\nIm Bereich Audio schlie\u00dflich wurden die Spielumgebungen in der Post-Alpha-Phase erheblich verbessert, indem man auf dem Vorhandenen aufbaute und den Orten ein subtileres Ambiente verlieh.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nIm August wurde mit der Arbeit an der Lande-UI des Fahrzeugradars begonnen. Zun\u00e4chst untersuchte das Team, wie die Umgebung au\u00dferhalb des Schiffes in der Radaranzeige des Fahrzeugs dargestellt werden kann (\u00e4hnlich wie auf der Minimap), damit die Spieler\/innen den Bereich sehen k\u00f6nnen, auf dem sie landen wollen. Die Geometrie wird so markiert, dass nur der relevante Landebereich angezeigt wird.\n\nF\u00fcr die Kamera\u00fcberg\u00e4nge von der Ego-Perspektive zu den filmischen Sequenzen hat das Team die M\u00f6glichkeit hinzugef\u00fcgt, kleine TrackView-Sequenzen f\u00fcr den anf\u00e4nglichen Cutaway mit flie\u00dfenden \u00dcberg\u00e4ngen zu den filmischen Kameras zu erstellen. Wenn sich der Spieler\/die Spielerin zum Beispiel im Cockpit befindet, kann das Team einen Kamera\u00fcbergang durch die Windschutzscheibe erstellen, um einen besseren visuellen Fluss zu erreichen.\n\nAn anderer Stelle haben die Gameplay-Funktionen die Funktionalit\u00e4t der Kransteuerung auf der Grundlage eines neuen Anwendungsfalls erweitert. Au\u00dferdem wurden Hinweise und Tutorials, die Weiterleitung von mobiGlas-Benachrichtigungen an das Visier und die Verkn\u00fcpfung von mobiGlas verbessert.\n\nFunktionen (Fahrzeug)\nIm letzten Monat hat die Abteilung Fahrzeugfunktionen an der Fertigstellung der Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che f\u00fcr den Selbststatus gearbeitet und fehlende Funktionen in den verschiedenen Unterfenstern erg\u00e4nzt, darunter Informationen \u00fcber Quantenreisen und Treibstoff. Das UI-Art-Team hat sie dabei unterst\u00fctzt, um die Optik und die Darstellung der Schiffe zu verbessern. In diesem Zusammenhang kann die Gesch\u00fctzturm-Variante des Selbststatus-MFD jetzt ein 3D-Modell des Gesch\u00fctzturms rendern, das in naher Zukunft ebenfalls von den UI-Artists verbessert werden wird.\n\nDas Terminal f\u00fcr die Fahrzeugbeladung n\u00e4hert sich der Vollendung, da spezielle Funktionen f\u00fcr das Ausr\u00fcsten von Gruppen hinzugekommen sind. Wenn du zum Beispiel ein einzelnes Schiffstriebwerk \u00e4nderst, werden auch die anderen ge\u00e4ndert, oder wenn du eine bestimmte Rakete ausr\u00fcstest, wird automatisch zum richtigen Raketengestell gewechselt. Au\u00dferdem entwickelt das UI-Art-Team eine 3D-Augmented-Reality-Anzeige f\u00fcr das Fahrzeugladeterminal. Es wird sich im Hangar von Idris befinden, wo die Spieler\/innen ihre Schiffe anpassen k\u00f6nnen.\n\nBei den Fahrzeug-Features wurden \u00c4nderungen an der Zielerfassung f\u00fcr Fahrzeuge in Angriff genommen und eine Funktion \u00e4hnlich wie ADS erforscht. Damit k\u00f6nnen die Spieler\/innen ihr Ziel heranzoomen und erhalten zus\u00e4tzliche Zielhilfen, um Teilkomponenten anzuvisieren oder eine bessere Schusslinie zu erstellen. Dies wird noch erforscht.\n\nAuch beim Ressourcennetzwerk wurden Fortschritte gemacht: Das Team unterst\u00fctzt verschiedene Fahrzeuggegenst\u00e4nde, die Treibstoff und Energie verbrauchen, wie zum Beispiel Quantenantriebe und Schubd\u00fcsen.\n\n\"Triebwerke, die Energie verbrauchen, sind einer der komplizierteren Aspekte, deshalb arbeiten wir noch daran.\" Team Fahrzeugeigenschaften\n\nSchlie\u00dflich unterst\u00fctzte das Vehicle Features Team das Level Design bei den Gameplay-Sequenzen, indem es Fehler beseitigte und technischen Support f\u00fcr neue, kleinere Features leistete, die beim Aufbau von Levels und Erlebnissen helfen.\n\nGameplay Story\nIm August konzentrierte sich das Gameplay Story Team haupts\u00e4chlich auf die Unterst\u00fctzung des Strike Teams bei Verbesserungen und Erweiterungen rund um die Idris. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die \u00dcberarbeitung und Unterst\u00fctzung der k\u00fcrzlich erstellten TrackViews f\u00fcr die Deckcrew sowie das Hinzuf\u00fcgen zus\u00e4tzlicher Leerlaufanimationen und verbesserter Interaktionen mit den Requisiten in den Messehallenszenen. Au\u00dferdem arbeiteten sie ein paar Tage lang an neuen Inhalten f\u00fcr die Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrme, um diese Bereiche noch lebendiger zu gestalten.\n\nNeue Mo-Cap-Daten wurden verwendet, um mehrere Dialog\u00e4nderungen in wichtigen Charakterszenen einzubauen, die vom Design angefordert wurden. Au\u00dferdem erstellten sie mehrere Aufl\u00f6sungs- und Ausstiegsanimationen, damit die Charaktere ihre Szenen verlassen und zur KI-Kontrolle zur\u00fcckkehren k\u00f6nnen.\n\nGegen Ende des Monats konzentrierte sich das Team auf die Vorbereitungen f\u00fcr die kommenden Dreharbeiten.\n\n\"Wir haben etwa 20 neue Gameplay-Story-Szenen aufgenommen und wollen sicherstellen, dass die daraus resultierenden Daten so reibungslos wie m\u00f6glich umgesetzt werden k\u00f6nnen.\" Gameplay Story Team\n\nGrafik & VFX Programmierung\nIm August wurden Verbesserungen an der internen Implementierung von Temporal Super Resolution vorgenommen.\n\nWeitere Fortschritte wurden beim Wasser gemacht, indem der Shader eine verbesserte Beleuchtung und Schaum erhielt. Auch die Arbeit an der Simulation wurde fortgesetzt, indem die Schaumausbreitung und die Unterst\u00fctzung von Geschosseinschl\u00e4gen hinzugef\u00fcgt wurden.\n\nDer Prototyp des Glint-Shading-Modells wurde fertiggestellt und liegt in drei Versionen mit unterschiedlichen Leistungsmerkmalen vor. Das Team pr\u00fcft nun, ob es eine davon in die Produktion \u00fcbernehmen kann. Entfernte Lichter werden jetzt als winzige helle Gl\u00fchw\u00fcrmchen gezeichnet, die das bestehende Post-Effekt-System durchlaufen, mit dem Ziel, das traditionellere \"Composite Flare\"-System zu ersetzen, das keine Post-Effekte unterst\u00fctzen kann.\n\nAuf der Werkzeugseite wurde der Streaming-Debugger erweitert und bietet nun ein leistungsstarkes Werkzeug, um den detaillierten Verlauf eines Assets oder einer Gruppe zu verfolgen, um Probleme zu diagnostizieren und Optimierungen zu erleichtern. Der Mesh-Setup-Editor wurde ebenfalls erweitert und erm\u00f6glicht nun eine feinere Kontrolle dar\u00fcber, wie animierte Meshes importiert werden.\n\nDas Vulkan-Subteam f\u00fcgte neue Erweiterungen hinzu, darunter Synchronization2, Maintenance4 und TimelineSemaphore, um verschiedene Aspekte des Backends zu verbessern. Der Schwerpunkt liegt jetzt darauf, den Fortschritt bei Global Illumination freizugeben, da die Raytracing-Komponente nur f\u00fcr Vulkan verf\u00fcgbar ist.\n\nDas VFX-Programmierungsteam hat das Spawnen von Rauch bei Feuer zusammen mit verschiedenen anderen Qualit\u00e4tsverbesserungen implementiert, um das Feature auf einen visuell vollst\u00e4ndigen und \"ziemlich beeindruckenden\" Stand zu bringen.\n\nSchlie\u00dflich wurden weitere Verbesserungen an den Blitzeffekten vorgenommen, die in Zukunft in Gaswolken zum Einsatz kommen werden.\n\nLevel Design\nIm letzten Monat konzentrierte sich das Leveldesign weiterhin auf die Idris-Zwischensequenzen.\n\nNeben der Wartung und Aktualisierung der Szenen arbeitete das Social Narrative Team eng mit den KI-Inhalten zusammen und arbeitete intensiv an den Verhaltensweisen der Crew. Dazu geh\u00f6rte auch die Unterst\u00fctzung bei der Implementierung von Hintergrundvignetten im Hangar der Idris, die nach der Landung eines Spielers eingesetzt werden. Dazu geh\u00f6rt, dass die Deckbesatzung Leitern zur Gladius hinaufschiebt und auf das Schiff klettert, um Wartungsarbeiten durchzuf\u00fchren, das Schiff aufzutanken und das Cockpit und die Waffen zu \u00fcberpr\u00fcfen. Das Gleiche gilt f\u00fcr die Vignetten vor dem Flug, in denen die Deckscrew das Schiff des Spielers mit Triebwerks- und Waffenkontrollen auf den Start vorbereitet.\n\nDas Team hat auch damit begonnen, die bisher statische Idris w\u00e4hrend der Zwischensequenzen zu bewegen, was zwar subtil ist, aber einen gro\u00dfen Unterschied macht.\n\nNarrative\nDas Narrative-Team war stark an den letzten Performance-Capture-Drehs beteiligt. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Zusammenarbeit mit den Leveldesignern, um den Ablauf der Level und die Skripte zu festigen, sowie die Zusammenarbeit mit den Teams f\u00fcr Core Gameplay und Audio, um die Skripte f\u00fcr die Charaktere in freier Wildbahn auszuarbeiten. Dazu geh\u00f6rten einige neue Charaktere, die in den letzten Levels eingef\u00fchrt worden waren, sowie die Abholung einer Handvoll wiederkehrender Schauspieler, die bereits zuvor gefangen genommen worden waren. Dazu geh\u00f6rten auch Buddy-AI-Designs f\u00fcr die FPS- und Flugabschnitte, die seit der letzten Aufnahme implementiert worden waren.\n\nDie im letzten Monat begonnene Validierung der Untertitel wurde abgeschlossen. Das Team \u00fcberpr\u00fcfte und aktualisierte mehrere tausend Dialogzeilen, um sicherzustellen, dass die Untertitel genau das wiedergeben, was die Darsteller sagen.\n\nDas Team besch\u00e4ftigte sich weiter mit einigen der Sammelobjekte, die die Spieler\/innen in den Levels finden k\u00f6nnen. Au\u00dferdem wurden die Kategorien und Inhalte f\u00fcr die Galactapedia von Squadron 42 festgelegt.\n\nF&E\nIm August wurde die Arbeit am temporalen Rendering-Modus f\u00fcr die Atmosph\u00e4re und die volumetrischen Wolken fortgesetzt; es wurden verschiedene Methoden zum Korrigieren oder Verwerfen der Frame History ausprobiert.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde ein neues System zur Erkennung von Ausschl\u00fcssen implementiert, das im Prinzip der allgemeinen Up-Sampling-L\u00f6sung \u00e4hnelt.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurden verschiedene Codes aktualisiert, damit sie mit den j\u00fcngsten Verbesserungen von Gen12 funktionieren.\n\nVFX\nIm Bereich VFX wurde die im Juli-Bericht beschriebene Arbeit fortgesetzt. Insbesondere die visuelle Darstellung der Feuerausbreitung wurde weiter verbessert, indem Nebelvolumen verwendet wurden, um die Ansammlung von Rauch in Deckenh\u00f6he zu zeigen, und die Feuerpartikeleffekte visuell weiter aufgel\u00f6st wurden.\n\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...\n\/\/ ENDE DER \u00dcBERTRAGUNG","zh_CN":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report\nAugust 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 09:13:2023\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX,\n\nFAO Squadron 42 Recruits.\n\nWelcome to August\u2019s Squadron 42 development report. Enclosed you will find details on the latest progress made across the campaign, including AI perception, vehicle UI, and ambient audio.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Features)\nLast month, AI reviewed perception to fix issues where NPCs wouldn\u2019t correctly recognize that a target had died or that they\u2019d seen a situation before. These issues led to various bugs, including the AI constantly calling for med-pens or remaining in combat after it had finished.\n\nThey also revisited cover usage, polishing various functionality and animations to ensure the feature works across a range of situations and environments.\n\nChanges and fixes were also made to the tactical point system, which is used to drive where the AI moves. This will help identify what needs to be adjusted when reviewing combat in new locations.\n\nBalancing was done for AI ammunition usage while maintaining reload and ammo-finding functionality to provide realistic and emergent behaviors and gameplay situations.\n\nThe team continued to review, revisit, and polish combat, including low and high-cover reload animations for different weapons and female animations converted from male assets. They also began developing animations for marine squad hand signals to sell group movement and combat.\n\nAI (Tech)\nLast month, AI Tech added undo-and-redo functionality to the Apollo Subsumption tool. They also began improving Subsumption data validation for better presentation and more explicit validation errors. This will allow the designers to iterate faster when creating or adjusting missions and behaviors.\n\nOn the boids feature mentioned in last month\u2019s report, AI Tech continued implementing base functionality to allow agents (rats, birds, etc.) to adopt different states, such as wandering, idling, or fleeing, and transition between them. They\u2019re currently looking for a low-cost solution to keep agents on terrain while moving.\n\nFor NPC audio perception, the team implemented new functionality for how audio stimuli is propagated. This involves using the room system and how rooms are connected to determine whether an audio event should be heard.\n\nThey also continued to improve navigation links. Firstly, how links connect navigation triangles from different zones, which wasn\u2019t working as intended. Secondly, they fixed how animations play when they begin and finish in different zones. For example, when NPCs jump to the ground from a hovering ship.\n\nFinally, investigation began into performance issues relating to the navigation system and pathfinder.\n\nAI (Vehicles)\nVehicle AI\u2019s priority in August was working through issues preventing the new AI features from working correctly. They fixed faults with the recent aiming system refactor to ensure NPCs shoot correctly and worked with the level designers to fix various miscellaneous problems causing the AI to not work in certain places.\n\nFollowing this, the team will focus on game-wide flight AI improvements as they continue to fine-tune the gameplay experience throughout the flight sections.\n\nAnimation\nThe animators collaborated with the level and AI designers to close out animations across various locations, including the med-bay, bridge, mess hall, and hangar.\n\nThey\u2019re currently improving the overall feel of player actions through slides, basic movement, weapon usage, and more. This involves adjusting weapon malfunctions, first-person interactions with the environment (such as opening a hatch), first selects for new weapons, and a selection of other animations.\n\nAdditionally, progress was made on combat AI for both enemies and civilians, and Animation worked with Narrative and Design to get level-specific scenes implemented correctly.\n\nThe Motion Capture team worked alongside the writers to add the finishing narrative touches to certain areas and supported spot improvements to AI behaviors.\n\nOn the facial side, the team completed a large number of behavioral lines and performances to bring the flight combat, ground combat, and background ambience to life. They also progressed with polish tasks for the cast characters.\n\nAudio\nThroughout August, the team worked towards a major audio milestone. The aim of this is to provide sound effects for all the work done by the upstream strike teams and identifies any required post-alpha changes or improvements.\n\nThe Tech team made significant progress on the walla (crowd audio) system, which is close to first-pass complete. This system groups NPCs into clusters based on their proximity, allowing for dynamic, localized audio that simulates ambient chatter. Resonance tech progressed too, which was detailed in a recent episode of Inside Star Citizen. They also continued to ensure that the game builds remain stable during development so that the devs could work seamlessly.\n\nAudio then began tagging cinematic animations with new foley sound effects. This is an integral push towards implementing audible layers to cinematics, with bespoke animations such as punches or fist bumps receiving their initial audio pass.\n\nThe team continued to design and implement effects for a variety of SQ42-specific weapons, including the VOLT manufacturer, ensuring the sounds align with its bold, high-tech designs.\n\n\u201cWe are excited for the community to get their hands on these weapons and feel the brawny impact of a Galson shotgun blast or our VOLT sniper.\u201d Audio Team\n\nThere was also a significant push to create and improve the sound effects for the various puzzles found throughout the campaign; every puzzle being in some way unique opened the doors to providing distinctive and innovative sounds. In-game gadgets, including the flashbang, also received fine-tuning and new implementations.\n\nFinally for Audio, they made significant post-alpha improvements to the game environments, building on what was already in place and providing locations with more subtle ambience.\n\nFeatures (Gameplay)\nAugust saw work begin on the vehicle radar\u2019s landing UI. To begin with, the team investigated rendering the environment outside of a ship in the vehicle\u2019s radar display (similar to the minimap) so players can see the area they intend to land on. The geometry will be marked up so will only display the relevant landing area.\n\nFor camera transitions from first-person view to cinematic sequences, the team added the ability to create small TrackView sequences for the initial cut-away with smooth transitions to the cinematic cameras. For example, if the player is in a cockpit seat, the team can create a camera transition out through the windscreen for a better visual flow.\n\nElsewhere, Gameplay Features continued extending crane-controller functionality based on a new use case. They also made improvements to hints and tutorials, mobiGlas notification forwarding to the visor, and mobiGlas linking.\n\nFeatures (Vehicle)\nLast month, Vehicle Features worked towards closing out the self-status UI, filling out missing features in the various sub-screens, including information on quantum travel and fuel. They received support from the UI Art team on this to improve the visuals and ship rendering. Relating to this, the turret variant of the self-status MFD can now render a 3D model of the turret, which will also be improved by the UI artists in the near future.\n\nThe vehicle loadout terminal is approaching feature-complete with the addition of special features for group-equipping items. For example, changing a single ship thruster will change the others if required, or equipping a specific missile will automatically swap to the correct missile rack. Additionally, the UI Art team is creating a 3D augmented-reality display for the vehicle loadout terminal. This will be located in the Idris\u2019 hangar where players can customize their ships.\n\nVehicle Features began looking into changes to vehicle aiming, exploring a feature similar to ADS. This will allow players to zoom in on their target and receive additional aiming assistance to target subcomponents or line up a better shot. This is still being explored.\n\nProgress was also made on the Resource Network, with the team providing support for various vehicle items that use fuel and power, such as quantum drives and thrusters.\n\n\u201cThrusters using power is one of the more complicated aspects of this, so we\u2019re still working through it.\u201d Vehicle Features Team\n\nLastly, Vehicle Features supported Level Design on their gameplay sequences, providing bug fixing and technical support for new smaller features to aid with building out levels and experiences.\n\nGameplay Story\nMost of Gameplay Story\u2019s focus throughout August was on supporting the strike team with improvements and additions around the Idris. This involved refactoring and supporting the recently created deck-crew TrackViews and adding additional idle animations and improved prop interactions to the mess-hall scenes. They also spent a few days working on new turret content to add additional life to these areas.\n\nNew mo-cap data was used to incorporate several dialogue changes to key character scenes requested by Design. They also created several \u2018resolve\u2019 and \u2018out-of\u2019 animations to help characters exit their scenes and return to AI control.\n\nTowards the end of the month, the team switched focus to preparing for upcoming narrative shoots.\n\n\u201cWe have about 20 new Gameplay Story scenes being recorded and we are keen to ensure the resulting data can be implemented as smoothly as possible.\u201d Gameplay Story Team\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nIn August, improvements were made to the internal implementation of Temporal Super Resolution.\n\nFurther progress was made on water, with the shader gaining improved lighting and foam. Work on the simulation continued too, with foam propagation and bullet-impact support being added.\n\nThe prototype of the glint shading model was completed and comes in three versions with different performance characteristics. The team are now investigating whether they can take one of these into production. Distant lights are now drawn as tiny bright glows that pass through the existing post-effect system, with the aim of replacing the more traditional 'composite flare' system that can't support post-effects.\n\nOn the tooling side, the streaming debugger was expanded and now provides a powerful tool to track the detailed history of any asset or group to diagnose issues and facilitate optimizations. The Mesh Setup Editor was also expanded to allow finer-grained control of how animated meshes are imported.\n\nThe Vulkan sub-team added new extensions, including Synchronization2, Maintenance4, and TimelineSemaphore, to improve various aspects of the backend. Focus is now shifting to unblocking progress on Global Illumination, as the ray-tracing component is Vulkan-only.\n\nThe VFX Programming team implemented smoke spawning on fire along with various other quality improvements to bring the feature to a visually complete and \u201crather impressive\u201d state.\n\nFinally, further improvements to lightning effects were made, which will be used in the future within gas clouds.\n\nLevel Design\nLast month, Level Design continued to focus on the Idris interstitials.\n\nOutside of scene maintenance and updates, the Social Narrative team worked closely with AI Content, pushing hard on crew behaviors. This included supporting the implementation of background vignettes in the Idris\u2019 hangar for use after a player lands. These include the deck crew pushing ladders up to the Gladius and climbing on top to carry out maintenance, refueling the ship, and carrying out cockpit and weapons checks. The same was then done for pre-flight vignettes, with the deck crew prepping the player\u2019s ship for take-off with thruster and weapons checks.\n\nThe team also started work on having the previously static Idris moving during interstitials, which is subtle but makes a difference.\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative team was heavily involved in recent performance-capture shoots. This included interfacing with the level designers to solidify the flow of levels and scripts as well as working with the Core Gameplay and Audio teams to detail wildline scripts for characters. These included some new characters that had been introduced in the latest levels as well as pickups for a handful of returning actors that had been previously captured. Part of these lines included buddy-AI designs for both FPS and flight sections that had been implemented since the last time they had been captured.\n\nThe subtitle validation work that began last month was completed, with the team reviewing and updating several thousand lines of dialogue to ensure the subtitles accurately reflected what the performers said.\n\nThe team continued to delve into some of the collectibles that players will be able to find scattered throughout the levels. They also progressed with defining the categories and content that will go into the Squadron 42 Galactapedia.\n\nR&D\nIn August, work on the temporal render mode for atmosphere and volumetric clouds continued; various methods to rectify or reject frame history were experimented with.\n\nFurthermore, a new disocclusion detection system to reject history was implemented that, in spirit, is similar to the general up-sampling solution.\n\nAdditionally, various code was updated to work with recent Gen12 improvements.\n\nVFX\nVFX continued the work discussed in July\u2019s report. In particular, fire propagation visuals were further improved, with fog volumes being used to show smoke accumulating at ceiling height alongside further visual breakup of the fire particle effects.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2023-09-21T20:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"2 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-04-27 11:02:45","valid_relations":["images","links","translations"],"prev_id":19473,"next_id":19475}}