{"data":{"id":19836,"title":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report: February 2024","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/comm-link\/SCW\/19836-API","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-links\/19836","api_public_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/comm-links\/19836","channel":"Undefined","category":"Undefined","series":"None","images":[{"id":26651,"name":"STARCITIZEN_WHITE.png","rsi_url":"https:\/\/robertsspaceindustries.com\/media\/y1f0boj8fak5rr\/source\/STARCITIZEN_WHITE.png","alt":"","size":73278,"mime_type":"image\/png","last_modified":"2021-02-03T06:54:29+00:00","api_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/26651","similar_url":"https:\/\/api.star-citizen.wiki\/api\/comm-link-images\/26651\/similar"}],"images_count":4,"translations":{"en_EN":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report\nFebruary 2024\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 03:06:2024\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 combat encounters, vehicle collisions, and environmental storytelling.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Content)\nAI Content continued to make key enhancements and refinements, with the Idris Stanton receiving focus in February. For example, dynamic conversations were fine-tuned with updates to NPC standing positions and additional randomizations to provide a more authentic feel.\n\nUpdates were also made to the gym, including punch bags that now align perfectly and animate smoothly. They also reworked gym hours to be more balanced, so players will see the correct number of NPCs whenever they choose to visit. Plans for busier times were created too to ensure NPCs can always find a place to work out.\n\nAdditional animations were added to the bridge, including \u2018hands-on-ears,\u2019 to demonstrate cross-ship communication and add variety. Throughout the ship, NPCs will now carry a more diverse range of items too.\n\nTrolly-pushing and cargo-handling animations were refined for added realism, while the security officer outside the bridge salutes players as they walk by.\n\nAI (Features)\nLast month, the AI Features team progressed with two key fights and continued to improve combat animations for FPS encounters. Hit reactions were also enabled for NPCs.\n\nThe team also expanded the movement system to allow NPCs to use ad-hoc animations to enter cover locations without passing through dynamically created paths.\n\nThey also continued to support the other SQ42 teams by investigating and fixing various bugs.\n\nAI (Tech)\nDuring February, AI Tech focused on a variety of improvements. For NPCs using trolleys, focus was on the exact positioning of trolleys in the environment. Now, an NPC can correctly push a trolley to a location with an arbitrary orientation. The team also improved transit and elevator usage while pushing trolleys so that the overall flow is more robust and fluid.\n\nSpaceship behaviors were also iterated on to deliver better ship-vs-turret combat. Fighters will now correctly target standalone turrets and perform appropriate combat behaviors.\n\nNumerous updates were added to the Apollo tool, such as improved feedback for errors in missions. The team also increased usability when navigating between mission callbacks, allowing the designers to jump to the appropriate logic from multiple elements of the interface. A new UI for the Subsumption tool is underway too.\n\nSpecifically for SQ42, AI Tech focused on support and bug fixes across the project. For example, they fixed the calculation that animations use when NPCs enter cover to ensure they\u2019re facing their target.\n\nThey also fixed an issue with ship operator seats caused by the AI thinking that only a specific animation was available when exiting.\n\nArt (Weapons)\nFebruary saw the Weapons team improving wear maps across all FPS weapons. They also redesigned iron sights alongside the screen sizes for dedicated tools and Multi-Tools.\n\nThe Behring P4-AR rifle was reworked and various improvements were made to the fire extinguisher too.\n\nGameplay Story\nGameplay Story began February updating a number of scenes in Chapter 16 with the newly standardized helmet setup.\n\n\u201cIt felt great to get these scenes finished off and to see the helmet animating nicely as the characters put it on.\u201d Gameplay Story Team\n\nThe team also began receiving new facial animations and mastered audio, allowing them to complete several existing scenes. Alongside this, new motion capture enabled significant updates to a range of scenes. For example, a two-person scene in Chapter 4 was reshot to account for a new location and start poses, significantly improving the overall scene.\n\nPolish was done for Chapter 1, and a small but significant update was made to the cast in Chapter 14.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nThroughout February, the Graphics teams progressed with their longer-term tasks. For example, work is nearing completion on the unification of gas-cloud and planet-cloud upscaling, though challenges caused by animated lights in gas clouds need to be solved. The gas-cloud occlusion effect is also nearing completion, which will increase the detail level of all gas clouds, even in flat-lit scenarios. The team also resolved a long-standing issue that caused a harsh line to appear when 600m from where a gas cloud blends with the near-fog system.\n\nThe Global Illumination team continued to work on a system to approximate complex materials within a ray-traced view of the world. Last month, they began looking into performance improvements before tackling some of the more complex issues, like moving objects and zones.\n\nDevs from the water strike team closed out the issues that came up in their final review alongside several new features, including SDF interaction for accurate collisions when vehicles hit water and an improved water-intersection shader.\n\nThe rest of the Graphics team focused on improving the upscaling tech. This involved finalizing a new mesh format that gives major performance improvements.\n\nLevel Design\nThe Social Narrative team continued to work on their \u2018focus\u2019 chapters, the majority of which are Idris interstitials. February\u2019s work involved making sure the chapter can play out from start to finish and that all narrative and scene content is present and correct. For example, ensuring that the medical flow is working, objectives and markers are in place, emails are set up, ship chatroom content is present, mission-brief text is updated, and the landing and take-off sequences are correct.\n\nOutside of interstitials, feedback was addressed and polishing was done for Chapter One and the Fortunes Cross and Shubin Archon locations.\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative team continued to close out SQ42\u2019s remaining text needs. This included providing chatter for some of the background environments, creating mobiGlas content, writing content for cinematics, and continuing to create other opportunities for environmental storytelling to enrich the locations and provide a sense of history.\n\nAs mentioned in last month\u2019s report, the team continued to work with the Gameplay and Design teams to polish the Galactapedia experience, solidifying the approach for when and how articles unlock. The existing entries were also passed along to the Localization team to start translating.\n\n\u201cWithout spoiling anything, the team kept working closely with an artist to create some exciting content. The team also developed some lore for another set of collectibles that will require art as well. No spoilers!\u201d Narrative Team\n\nFinally, Narrative continued to review the latest levels via playthrough and video to see if scenes are triggering as intended alongside polishing the overall narrative experience.\n\nR&D\nIn February, the R&D team continued work on the temporal render mode. History filtering was switched to a custom bicubic filter to avoid diffusion and resampling blur due to repeated history look ups. Care was also taken to eliminate potential ringing artifacts during strong camera movements.\n\nThe temporal filtering of transmittance was improved to avoid glowing thin silhouettes around objects in foregrounds with clouds and the sun behind them. Various improvements were made to preserve history details for as long as possible (slow movement, no significant cloud disocclusion, etc.), and to quickly converge to a full-resolution image in case history needs to be rejected.\n\nTech Animation\nLast month, Tech Animation focused on refining head assets and cleaning up technical debt around their implementation. This comes as a precursor to polishing head assets and refining eye alignment in the editor to ensure characters look as good as possible.\n\nFurther to this, a large contingent of the department is working on asset setup for lockers. These will allow players and NPCs to change their apparel to something more appropriate to their current priorities.\n\n\u201cThis sounds simple but, in practice, we have to support a wide array of assets that can be stowed and recovered from these vessels. It can take quite some time to ensure everything is set up correctly.\u201d Tech Art\/Animation Team\n\nThe team also kicked off initiatives to ensure the health of the build remains stable and triage technical debt built up over the course of the project.\n\nUI\nThe UI team worked closely with the Environment and Cinematics teams last month, creating several pieces of \u2018movie style\u2019 UI that appear during cutscenes. They also created screens around the game levels to help with storytelling and atmosphere. Design work was done to help improve EVA and AR markers too.\n\nVFX\nLast month, as well as the usual Art, Cinematics, and Design support, the VFX team focused on polishing and optimizing an effects-intensive in-game scenario. As part of this, the artists began looking at areas where they can create bespoke explosion texture sequences to create a more cinematic, high-fidelity experience for the player.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION","de_DE":"Geschwader 42 Monatsbericht\nFebruar 2024\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 03:06:2024\n\nREF: CIG UK, CIG DE, CIG LA, CIG TX\n\nFAO-Geschwader 42 Rekruten.\n\nWillkommen zum Entwicklungsbericht von Squadron 42 im Februar. Anbei findest du Details zu den neuesten Fortschritten in der Kampagne, einschlie\u00dflich Kampfbegegnungen, Fahrzeugkollisionen und Umweltgeschichten.\n\nVielen Dank f\u00fcr eure anhaltende Unterst\u00fctzung von Squadron 42.\n\nMit freundlichen Gr\u00fc\u00dfen,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Inhalt)\nDie KI-Inhalte wurden weiter verbessert und verfeinert, wobei der Schwerpunkt im Februar auf Idris Stanton lag. So wurden zum Beispiel die dynamischen Unterhaltungen mit Aktualisierungen der NSC-Standpositionen und zus\u00e4tzlichen Zufallseinstellungen verfeinert, um ein authentischeres Gef\u00fchl zu vermitteln.\n\nAuch das Fitnessstudio wurde \u00fcberarbeitet, z. B. sind die Boxs\u00e4cke jetzt perfekt ausgerichtet und lassen sich fl\u00fcssig animieren. Au\u00dferdem wurden die \u00d6ffnungszeiten der Turnhalle \u00fcberarbeitet, damit die Spieler\/innen die richtige Anzahl an NSCs sehen, wenn sie die Halle besuchen. Es wurden auch Pl\u00e4ne f\u00fcr belebtere Zeiten erstellt, damit die NSCs immer einen Platz zum Trainieren finden k\u00f6nnen.\n\nAuf der Br\u00fccke wurden zus\u00e4tzliche Animationen hinzugef\u00fcgt, wie z. B. \"Hand-Ohren\", um die schiffs\u00fcbergreifende Kommunikation zu demonstrieren und f\u00fcr Abwechslung zu sorgen. \u00dcberall auf dem Schiff tragen die NSCs jetzt eine gr\u00f6\u00dfere Auswahl an Gegenst\u00e4nden mit sich.\n\nDie Animationen zum Schieben von Trolleys und zum Umschlagen von Fracht wurden f\u00fcr mehr Realismus verfeinert, und der Sicherheitsoffizier vor der Br\u00fccke gr\u00fc\u00dft die Spieler, wenn sie vorbeigehen.\n\nKI (Features)\nIm letzten Monat hat das KI-Features-Team zwei wichtige K\u00e4mpfe weiterentwickelt und die Kampfanimationen f\u00fcr FPS-Begegnungen weiter verbessert. Au\u00dferdem wurden Trefferreaktionen f\u00fcr NSCs aktiviert.\n\nDas Team hat au\u00dferdem das Bewegungssystem erweitert, damit NSCs Ad-hoc-Animationen nutzen k\u00f6nnen, um in Deckung zu gehen, ohne dynamisch erstellte Pfade zu durchqueren.\n\nDas Team unterst\u00fctzte auch die anderen SQ42-Teams, indem es verschiedene Fehler untersuchte und beseitigte.\n\nKI (Tech)\nIm Februar konzentrierte sich die KI-Abteilung auf eine Reihe von Verbesserungen. Bei NSCs, die Trolleys benutzen, lag der Schwerpunkt auf der genauen Positionierung der Trolleys in der Umgebung. Jetzt kann ein NSC einen Wagen korrekt an einen Ort mit beliebiger Ausrichtung schieben. Das Team hat auch die Nutzung von Verkehrsmitteln und Aufz\u00fcgen beim Schieben von Trolleys verbessert, sodass der gesamte Spielfluss robuster und fl\u00fcssiger ist.\n\nDas Verhalten von Raumschiffen wurde ebenfalls \u00fcberarbeitet, um den Kampf zwischen Schiffen und Gesch\u00fctzen zu verbessern. Raumj\u00e4ger zielen jetzt korrekt auf einzelne Gesch\u00fctzt\u00fcrme und f\u00fchren das richtige Kampfverhalten aus.\n\nDas Apollo-Tool wurde um zahlreiche Aktualisierungen erg\u00e4nzt, z. B. um eine verbesserte R\u00fcckmeldung bei Fehlern in Missionen. Das Team hat auch die Benutzerfreundlichkeit beim Navigieren zwischen Missionsr\u00fcckrufen verbessert, so dass die Designer von mehreren Elementen der Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che zur entsprechenden Logik springen k\u00f6nnen. Eine neue Benutzeroberfl\u00e4che f\u00fcr das Subsumptionstool ist ebenfalls in Arbeit.\n\nSpeziell f\u00fcr SQ42 konzentrierte sich AI Tech auf Support und Fehlerbehebungen f\u00fcr das gesamte Projekt. So wurde zum Beispiel die Berechnung korrigiert, die Animationen verwenden, wenn NSCs in Deckung gehen, um sicherzustellen, dass sie ihr Ziel vor Augen haben.\n\nAu\u00dferdem wurde ein Problem mit Schiffsf\u00fchrersitzen behoben, das dadurch verursacht wurde, dass die KI dachte, dass nur eine bestimmte Animation beim Verlassen des Schiffs verf\u00fcgbar war.\n\nKunst (Waffen)\nIm Februar hat das Waffenteam die Abnutzungskarten f\u00fcr alle FPS-Waffen verbessert. Au\u00dferdem wurden die Visiereinrichtungen und die Bildschirmgr\u00f6\u00dfen f\u00fcr Spezialwerkzeuge und Multi-Tools \u00fcberarbeitet.\n\nDas Behring P4-AR-Gewehr wurde \u00fcberarbeitet und auch am Feuerl\u00f6scher wurden verschiedene Verbesserungen vorgenommen.\n\nGameplay Story\nDie Gameplay-Story begann im Februar mit der Aktualisierung einiger Szenen in Kapitel 16 mit dem neuen standardisierten Helm-Setup.\n\n\"Es war ein tolles Gef\u00fchl, diese Szenen fertig zu stellen und zu sehen, wie der Helm sch\u00f6n animiert ist, wenn die Charaktere ihn aufsetzen\". Gameplay Story Team\n\nDas Team erhielt auch neue Gesichtsanimationen und gemastertes Audio, so dass es mehrere bestehende Szenen vervollst\u00e4ndigen konnte. Au\u00dferdem erm\u00f6glichten die neuen Motion Capture-Aufnahmen die Aktualisierung einer Reihe von Szenen. So wurde zum Beispiel eine Zwei-Personen-Szene in Kapitel 4 neu gedreht, um einen neuen Standort und neue Startposen zu ber\u00fccksichtigen, was die Szene insgesamt deutlich verbesserte.\n\nKapitel 1 wurde poliert, und in Kapitel 14 wurde eine kleine, aber wichtige Aktualisierung an den Darstellern vorgenommen.\n\nGrafik und VFX-Programmierung\nIm Februar kamen die Grafikteams mit ihren l\u00e4ngerfristigen Aufgaben voran. Die Arbeiten an der Vereinheitlichung des Upscalings von Gaswolken und Planetenwolken stehen kurz vor dem Abschluss, allerdings m\u00fcssen noch Probleme mit animierten Lichtern in Gaswolken gel\u00f6st werden. Der Gaswolken-Verdeckungseffekt steht ebenfalls kurz vor der Fertigstellung, wodurch der Detailgrad aller Gaswolken erh\u00f6ht wird, selbst in Szenarien mit flacher Beleuchtung. Das Team hat au\u00dferdem ein langj\u00e4hriges Problem behoben, das dazu f\u00fchrte, dass 600 m von der Stelle, an der sich eine Gaswolke mit dem Nahnebelsystem vermischt, eine harte Linie erschien.\n\nDas Global Illumination Team arbeitete weiter an einem System zur Ann\u00e4herung komplexer Materialien in einer Raytracing-Ansicht der Welt. Im letzten Monat haben sie damit begonnen, die Leistung zu verbessern, bevor sie einige der komplexeren Probleme, wie das Bewegen von Objekten und Zonen, in Angriff genommen haben.\n\nDie Entwickler des Water Strike-Teams haben die Probleme, die bei der letzten \u00dcberpr\u00fcfung aufgetaucht sind, zusammen mit einigen neuen Funktionen gel\u00f6st, darunter die SDF-Interaktion f\u00fcr genaue Kollisionen, wenn Fahrzeuge auf Wasser treffen, und ein verbesserter Shader f\u00fcr die Wasser\u00fcberschneidung.\n\nDer Rest des Grafikteams konzentrierte sich auf die Verbesserung der Upscaling-Technologie. Dazu geh\u00f6rte die Fertigstellung eines neuen Mesh-Formats, das erhebliche Leistungsverbesserungen mit sich bringt.\n\nLeveldesign\nDas Social Narrative Team arbeitete weiter an den \"Fokus\"-Kapiteln, von denen die meisten Idris-Zwischensequenzen sind. Im Februar ging es darum, sicherzustellen, dass das Kapitel von Anfang bis Ende durchgespielt werden kann und dass alle erz\u00e4hlerischen und szenischen Inhalte vorhanden und korrekt sind. Zum Beispiel musste sichergestellt werden, dass der medizinische Ablauf funktioniert, Ziele und Markierungen vorhanden sind, E-Mails eingerichtet sind, der Inhalt des Schiffs-Chatrooms vorhanden ist, der Text des Missionsberichts aktualisiert ist und die Lande- und Startsequenzen korrekt sind.\n\nAu\u00dferhalb der Zwischensequenzen wurde das Feedback ber\u00fccksichtigt und das erste Kapitel sowie die Orte Fortunes Cross und Shubin Archon aufpoliert.\n\nErz\u00e4hlung\nDas Erz\u00e4hlungsteam schloss die restlichen Textanforderungen von SQ42 ab. Dazu geh\u00f6rten die Erstellung von Dialogen f\u00fcr einige Hintergrundumgebungen, die Erstellung von MobiGlas-Inhalten, das Schreiben von Inhalten f\u00fcr Filmsequenzen und die Schaffung weiterer M\u00f6glichkeiten f\u00fcr Umgebungserz\u00e4hlungen, um die Orte zu bereichern und ein Gef\u00fchl f\u00fcr die Geschichte zu vermitteln.\n\nWie im letzten Bericht erw\u00e4hnt, arbeitete das Team weiter mit den Teams f\u00fcr Gameplay und Design zusammen, um das Galactapedia-Erlebnis zu verbessern und den Ansatz zu festigen, wann und wie Artikel freigeschaltet werden. Die bestehenden Eintr\u00e4ge wurden au\u00dferdem an das Lokalisierungsteam weitergeleitet, das mit der \u00dcbersetzung begann.\n\n\"Ohne etwas zu verraten, arbeitete das Team weiterhin eng mit einem K\u00fcnstler zusammen, um einige spannende Inhalte zu erstellen. Das Team hat auch eine Geschichte f\u00fcr eine andere Gruppe von Sammelobjekten entwickelt, f\u00fcr die ebenfalls Kunstwerke ben\u00f6tigt werden. Keine Spoiler!\" Narrative Team\n\nSchlie\u00dflich \u00fcberpr\u00fcfte das Narrative Team die letzten Level per Playthrough und Video, um zu sehen, ob die Szenen wie beabsichtigt ausgel\u00f6st werden, und um das gesamte narrative Erlebnis zu verbessern.\n\nF&E\nIm Februar arbeitete das F&E-Team weiter am temporalen Rendermodus. Die Verlaufsfilterung wurde auf einen benutzerdefinierten bikubischen Filter umgestellt, um Unsch\u00e4rfen durch Diffusion und Resampling aufgrund wiederholter Verlaufsabfragen zu vermeiden. Au\u00dferdem wurde darauf geachtet, m\u00f6gliche Ringing-Artefakte bei starken Kamerabewegungen zu vermeiden.\n\nDie zeitliche Filterung der Durchl\u00e4ssigkeit wurde verbessert, um leuchtende d\u00fcnne Silhouetten um Objekte im Vordergrund zu vermeiden, hinter denen sich Wolken und die Sonne befinden. Es wurden verschiedene Verbesserungen vorgenommen, um die Details der Historie so lange wie m\u00f6glich zu erhalten (langsame Bewegung, keine signifikante Wolkenverschiebung usw.) und um schnell zu einem Bild mit voller Aufl\u00f6sung zu konvergieren, falls die Historie verworfen werden muss.\n\nTechnische Animation\nIm letzten Monat konzentrierte sich Tech Animation auf die Verfeinerung der Head-Assets und die Beseitigung der technischen Schulden bei deren Implementierung. Dies ist die Vorstufe zum Polieren der Kopf-Assets und zum Verfeinern der Augenausrichtung im Editor, um sicherzustellen, dass die Charaktere so gut wie m\u00f6glich aussehen.\n\nDar\u00fcber hinaus arbeitet ein gro\u00dfer Teil der Abteilung an der Einrichtung von Schlie\u00dff\u00e4chern. Diese werden es Spielern und NSCs erm\u00f6glichen, ihre Kleidung zu wechseln, damit sie ihren aktuellen Priorit\u00e4ten besser entspricht.\n\n\"Das h\u00f6rt sich einfach an, aber in der Praxis m\u00fcssen wir eine Vielzahl von Gegenst\u00e4nden unterst\u00fctzen, die in den Schiffen verstaut und von ihnen geborgen werden k\u00f6nnen. Es kann ziemlich viel Zeit in Anspruch nehmen, um sicherzustellen, dass alles richtig eingestellt ist.\" Tech Art\/Animation Team\n\nDas Team hat auch Initiativen gestartet, um sicherzustellen, dass der Zustand des Builds stabil bleibt, und um technische Schulden zu beseitigen, die im Laufe des Projekts entstanden sind.\n\nUI\nDas UI-Team hat im letzten Monat eng mit dem Umwelt- und dem Cinematics-Team zusammengearbeitet und mehrere UI-Elemente im Filmstil erstellt, die w\u00e4hrend der Zwischensequenzen erscheinen. Au\u00dferdem haben sie Bildschirme f\u00fcr die Levels erstellt, die das Storytelling und die Atmosph\u00e4re unterst\u00fctzen. Es wurde auch an der Verbesserung der EVA- und AR-Marker gearbeitet.\n\nVFX\nIm letzten Monat konzentrierte sich das VFX-Team neben der \u00fcblichen Unterst\u00fctzung durch Art, Cinematics und Design auf den Feinschliff und die Optimierung eines effektintensiven Szenarios im Spiel. In diesem Zusammenhang haben die K\u00fcnstlerinnen und K\u00fcnstler Bereiche untersucht, in denen sie ma\u00dfgeschneiderte Explosionstextursequenzen erstellen k\u00f6nnen, um den Spielerinnen und Spielern ein kinoreiferes, realit\u00e4tsnahes Erlebnis zu bieten.\n\nWIR SEHEN UNS N\u00c4CHSTEN MONAT...\n\/\/ ENDE DER \u00dcBERTRAGUNG","zh_CN":"Squadron 42 Monthly Report\nFebruary 2024\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 03:06:2024\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 combat encounters, vehicle collisions, and environmental storytelling.\n\nThank you for your continued support of Squadron 42.\n\nSincerely,\n\nCIG COMMUNICATIONS\n\nAI (Content)\nAI Content continued to make key enhancements and refinements, with the Idris Stanton receiving focus in February. For example, dynamic conversations were fine-tuned with updates to NPC standing positions and additional randomizations to provide a more authentic feel.\n\nUpdates were also made to the gym, including punch bags that now align perfectly and animate smoothly. They also reworked gym hours to be more balanced, so players will see the correct number of NPCs whenever they choose to visit. Plans for busier times were created too to ensure NPCs can always find a place to work out.\n\nAdditional animations were added to the bridge, including \u2018hands-on-ears,\u2019 to demonstrate cross-ship communication and add variety. Throughout the ship, NPCs will now carry a more diverse range of items too.\n\nTrolly-pushing and cargo-handling animations were refined for added realism, while the security officer outside the bridge salutes players as they walk by.\n\nAI (Features)\nLast month, the AI Features team progressed with two key fights and continued to improve combat animations for FPS encounters. Hit reactions were also enabled for NPCs.\n\nThe team also expanded the movement system to allow NPCs to use ad-hoc animations to enter cover locations without passing through dynamically created paths.\n\nThey also continued to support the other SQ42 teams by investigating and fixing various bugs.\n\nAI (Tech)\nDuring February, AI Tech focused on a variety of improvements. For NPCs using trolleys, focus was on the exact positioning of trolleys in the environment. Now, an NPC can correctly push a trolley to a location with an arbitrary orientation. The team also improved transit and elevator usage while pushing trolleys so that the overall flow is more robust and fluid.\n\nSpaceship behaviors were also iterated on to deliver better ship-vs-turret combat. Fighters will now correctly target standalone turrets and perform appropriate combat behaviors.\n\nNumerous updates were added to the Apollo tool, such as improved feedback for errors in missions. The team also increased usability when navigating between mission callbacks, allowing the designers to jump to the appropriate logic from multiple elements of the interface. A new UI for the Subsumption tool is underway too.\n\nSpecifically for SQ42, AI Tech focused on support and bug fixes across the project. For example, they fixed the calculation that animations use when NPCs enter cover to ensure they\u2019re facing their target.\n\nThey also fixed an issue with ship operator seats caused by the AI thinking that only a specific animation was available when exiting.\n\nArt (Weapons)\nFebruary saw the Weapons team improving wear maps across all FPS weapons. They also redesigned iron sights alongside the screen sizes for dedicated tools and Multi-Tools.\n\nThe Behring P4-AR rifle was reworked and various improvements were made to the fire extinguisher too.\n\nGameplay Story\nGameplay Story began February updating a number of scenes in Chapter 16 with the newly standardized helmet setup.\n\n\u201cIt felt great to get these scenes finished off and to see the helmet animating nicely as the characters put it on.\u201d Gameplay Story Team\n\nThe team also began receiving new facial animations and mastered audio, allowing them to complete several existing scenes. Alongside this, new motion capture enabled significant updates to a range of scenes. For example, a two-person scene in Chapter 4 was reshot to account for a new location and start poses, significantly improving the overall scene.\n\nPolish was done for Chapter 1, and a small but significant update was made to the cast in Chapter 14.\n\nGraphics & VFX Programming\nThroughout February, the Graphics teams progressed with their longer-term tasks. For example, work is nearing completion on the unification of gas-cloud and planet-cloud upscaling, though challenges caused by animated lights in gas clouds need to be solved. The gas-cloud occlusion effect is also nearing completion, which will increase the detail level of all gas clouds, even in flat-lit scenarios. The team also resolved a long-standing issue that caused a harsh line to appear when 600m from where a gas cloud blends with the near-fog system.\n\nThe Global Illumination team continued to work on a system to approximate complex materials within a ray-traced view of the world. Last month, they began looking into performance improvements before tackling some of the more complex issues, like moving objects and zones.\n\nDevs from the water strike team closed out the issues that came up in their final review alongside several new features, including SDF interaction for accurate collisions when vehicles hit water and an improved water-intersection shader.\n\nThe rest of the Graphics team focused on improving the upscaling tech. This involved finalizing a new mesh format that gives major performance improvements.\n\nLevel Design\nThe Social Narrative team continued to work on their \u2018focus\u2019 chapters, the majority of which are Idris interstitials. February\u2019s work involved making sure the chapter can play out from start to finish and that all narrative and scene content is present and correct. For example, ensuring that the medical flow is working, objectives and markers are in place, emails are set up, ship chatroom content is present, mission-brief text is updated, and the landing and take-off sequences are correct.\n\nOutside of interstitials, feedback was addressed and polishing was done for Chapter One and the Fortunes Cross and Shubin Archon locations.\n\nNarrative\nThe Narrative team continued to close out SQ42\u2019s remaining text needs. This included providing chatter for some of the background environments, creating mobiGlas content, writing content for cinematics, and continuing to create other opportunities for environmental storytelling to enrich the locations and provide a sense of history.\n\nAs mentioned in last month\u2019s report, the team continued to work with the Gameplay and Design teams to polish the Galactapedia experience, solidifying the approach for when and how articles unlock. The existing entries were also passed along to the Localization team to start translating.\n\n\u201cWithout spoiling anything, the team kept working closely with an artist to create some exciting content. The team also developed some lore for another set of collectibles that will require art as well. No spoilers!\u201d Narrative Team\n\nFinally, Narrative continued to review the latest levels via playthrough and video to see if scenes are triggering as intended alongside polishing the overall narrative experience.\n\nR&D\nIn February, the R&D team continued work on the temporal render mode. History filtering was switched to a custom bicubic filter to avoid diffusion and resampling blur due to repeated history look ups. Care was also taken to eliminate potential ringing artifacts during strong camera movements.\n\nThe temporal filtering of transmittance was improved to avoid glowing thin silhouettes around objects in foregrounds with clouds and the sun behind them. Various improvements were made to preserve history details for as long as possible (slow movement, no significant cloud disocclusion, etc.), and to quickly converge to a full-resolution image in case history needs to be rejected.\n\nTech Animation\nLast month, Tech Animation focused on refining head assets and cleaning up technical debt around their implementation. This comes as a precursor to polishing head assets and refining eye alignment in the editor to ensure characters look as good as possible.\n\nFurther to this, a large contingent of the department is working on asset setup for lockers. These will allow players and NPCs to change their apparel to something more appropriate to their current priorities.\n\n\u201cThis sounds simple but, in practice, we have to support a wide array of assets that can be stowed and recovered from these vessels. It can take quite some time to ensure everything is set up correctly.\u201d Tech Art\/Animation Team\n\nThe team also kicked off initiatives to ensure the health of the build remains stable and triage technical debt built up over the course of the project.\n\nUI\nThe UI team worked closely with the Environment and Cinematics teams last month, creating several pieces of \u2018movie style\u2019 UI that appear during cutscenes. They also created screens around the game levels to help with storytelling and atmosphere. Design work was done to help improve EVA and AR markers too.\n\nVFX\nLast month, as well as the usual Art, Cinematics, and Design support, the VFX team focused on polishing and optimizing an effects-intensive in-game scenario. As part of this, the artists began looking at areas where they can create bespoke explosion texture sequences to create a more cinematic, high-fidelity experience for the player.\n\nWE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...\n\/\/ END TRANSMISSION"},"links_count":0,"comment_count":0,"created_at":"2024-03-13T17:00:00+00:00","created_at_human":"2 years ago"},"meta":{"processed_at":"2026-05-07 20:45:25","valid_relations":["images","links"],"prev_id":19835,"next_id":19842}}