Star Citizen Monthly Report: August 2023
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PU Monthly Report
August 2023
As we close in on Alpha 3.20’s Live release, many teams are finalizing their work on the patch’s various new features. Beyond the patch, significant progress is being made on content coming later in the year, so read on for the latest.
AI (Features)
Last month, AI reviewed perception to fix issues where NPCs wouldn’t correctly recognize that a target had died or that they’d 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.
They also revisited cover usage, polishing various functionality and animations to ensure the feature works across a range of situations and environments.
Changes 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.
Balancing was done for AI ammunition usage while maintaining reload and ammo-finding functionality to provide realistic and emergent behaviors and gameplay situations.
The 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.
AI (Tech)
Last 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.
On the boids feature mentioned in last month’s 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’re currently looking for a low-cost solution to keep agents on terrain while moving.
For 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.
They also continued to improve navigation links. Firstly, how links connect navigation triangles from different zones, which wasn’t 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.
Finally, investigation began into performance issues relating to the navigation system and pathfinder.
Animation
In August, the animators worked through a number of behavioral lines for background ambiance and flight. They also supported Tech Animation on creature skeletons that will eventually be used in the PU.
Art (Characters)
Last month, Character Art progressed with content for various upcoming events and assets for the Headhunters gang.
Alongside this, the concept artists explored additional ideas for the Headhunters and worked on a medical outfit and handoff sheets for a new flightsuit.
Art (Ships)
Last month, Ship Art completed their work on the Tumbril Storm, though they’re currently focussing on ongoing issues with the treads and how they appear. Two new variants of an existing vehicle were completed too.
An all-new ship progressed through whitebox, revealing various areas that require updating from the concept, including an increase to the interior space.
The Aopoa San'tok.yāi is almost LOD0-complete; final updates are underway, including polishing the pilot compartment. The damage pass is also in progress while the rest of the LOD0 tasks are closed out. Once complete, the team will move on to paints.
The Origin X1 is currently awaiting whitebox review, though significant changes to item locations have already been made to maximize space. Modeling of the greybox geometry began too.
Community
August saw the return of Ship Showdown, an annual month-long event where the community champions their favorite vehicles by sharing original creations on the Community Hub and social media. The Community team hosted two contests in support of the event, rewarding the top 10 submissions from the Community Hub and the top three most creative videos on the official TikTok channel. After daily head-to-head battles between the top 16 ships, the Drake Corsair was crowned the Ultimate Champion of Ship Showdown 2953. Community also supported the Free Fly event, posted updates on the New Player Guide, and curated media on the Welcome Hub.
Early August saw the conclusion of the Arlington Gang Screenshot contest, where players submitted screenshots following the launch of the Mission Spotlight series.
The Community team then supported Tobii’s 22nd anniversary alongside numerous community-driven events, including the Intergalactic Industry & Trade Fair, and the ATMO esports Fight or Flight tournament, which will conclude live at CitizenCon 2953.
With CitizenCon 2953 approaching, much of August was also spent ramping up preparations, with a focus on finalizing the details of the various presentations, venue layout and design, Cosplay Contest, Community Booths, and much more.
“It's been four long years since we've had a physical CitizenCon, so whether you're joining us in Los Angeles or watching from home, we can't wait to celebrate our shared universe with you on October 21 and 22! Keep your eyes peeled, as we’re finalizing some details and will share more information with you very soon!” Community Team
The team continued to support dozens of evergreen publishes (such as this Monthly Report, the postmortem, etc.) alongside planning for a variety of future in and out-of-game engagements to come.
Lastly, the team attended Gamescom and a trio of Bar Citizen events in Cologne, Germany.
“The turnout was unbelievable, eclipsing our Gamescom events in the past. We were so happy to meet so many of you, veteran backers and fresh pilots alike. We hope to see you all again soon!”
Economy
The new Economy team planned their upcoming goals, including rebalancing cargo and the related experience. They also began building a tool to investigate the current state of cargo, which could be expanded to other areas of the in-game economy.
Features (Arena Commander)
The Arena Commander Feature team polished and supported Alpha 3.20 while beginning stage two of the Arena Commander revitalization plan.
Alongside patch work, the Engineering team supported the new top heads-up display, which will feature in all game modes from Alpha 3.20.
They also assisted the ongoing investigation into the return of Theaters of War. This involved identifying the steps needed to update the new spawning module with several unique Theaters of War features (such as spawn locations and multicrew) and bring them into other game modes.
Work continued on the new Custom Lobbies feature (previously Private Matches), with several successful tests conducted. The team are currently focussing on finalizing the UI design and hooking up the various interactions. Engineering began restoring the Spectator Module too, which will allow players to spectate matches in Custom Lobbies and other modes. For example, spectating a player who has lost all their respawns in a PvE game mode.
Design enhanced several outlines for upcoming updates and scouted locations from the PU and beyond for use in Arena Commander. They also began investigating the Theaters of War location Crossroads of Crime to help estimate restoration efforts.
The team also addressed a large collection of feedback from the Evocati and PTU regarding the frontend and game modes. The frontend game mode selection now shows which modes are new, which have REC multipliers, and which have achievements associated with them. Design also progressed with the spawn-screen UI for in-game vehicle selection, which began internal testing.
Finally, the team helped create several new game modes requested by other teams, including a 2v2 mode that will host Fight or Flight at CitizenCon.
Features (Characters & Weapons)
August saw the Characters & Weapons Feature team working on weapon poses. Currently, when a player approaches a collision surface, their equipped weapon is raised to avoid clipping through the geometry. The team explored alternatives where the weapon is lowered, moved to the bottom of the first-person view, and rotated toward the body so that it lies diagonally across the abdomen. This is more natural in certain situations, limits clipping, and ensures the majority of the player's view is unobscured, particularly when interacting with screens in the environment.
Procedural recoil also progressed last month. To ensure that the feel of each weapon can be tweaked to make it feel unique, a large number of curves were exposed to the content creators.
“These curves allow multiple layers of subtle movement and rotation to be overlaid to create a wide range of interesting results. It is a bit of a manual process and requires significant attention to detail, but it can add a lot to the personality of a weapon.” Features Team
Features (Gameplay)
Gameplay Features continued their ongoing work on the vehicle tractor beam feature, readying it for testing by QA. They also progressed with the Resource Network mentioned in last month’s report and supported the upcoming patch release.
Features (Mission)
The Mission Feature team spent the month working through their upcoming deliverables and bug fixing for Alpha 3.20.
Away from the upcoming patch, Siege of Orison received various improvements ahead of a future release, with the main focus being keeping players together. Development of Blockade Runner (which will replace Nine Tails Lockdown) continued too, with various technical issues considered and planned for.
Significant improvements were made to the existing Destroy Drug Stash missions to ensure mission-critical items are spawned when the player arrives. They also made great progress in modularizing the New Player Experience so that it can be used in any landing zone with the correct markup.
The Steal Evidence at Kareah and Retrieve Consignment missions entered the polish phase, with reputation being hooked up. Work also began on ship-restoration missions, which will require players to restore ships to a saleable condition. Data Heist passed another gate review and will enter internal playtesting to ensure the objectives are clear.
“The Ship Cargo Steal/Recover Hauling mission has been taken as far as it can until further cargo features are developed. In the meantime, we will make a ‘courier’ version in which small items are the objective.” Mission Feature Team
The team progressed with reputation-based hostility, devising a mission that allows players to work for the Nine Tails gang. Once completed, they’ll convert most of the nameless criminal missions to Nine Tails until further gangs are added.
Code work was completed on the highlighting and filtering of mission-critical items in the inventory. This was handed to UI for their pass. Finally, tasks for Ship Trespass progressed, with ‘nested trespassing’ being the main thing holding it back.
Features (Vehicle)
Last month, the team assisted with bug fixing and stability for Alpha 3.20 and beyond, including getting the MISC Hull C ready for release and completing smaller feature work for upcoming ship releases.
The designers then tuned how racing ships perform in-atmosphere to bring them closer together and converted more ground vehicles to the new physics model, which allows for more realistic behavior than before.
The mass of Size 1, 2, and 3 items were rebalanced for better consistency across ship loadouts and to improve the tractor beam gameplay of removing and replacing items. Smaller vehicle and weapon balance tweaks were also made.
Graphics, VFX Programming & Planet Tech
In August, improvements were made to the internal implementation of Temporal Super Resolution.
Further 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.
The 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.
On 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.
The 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.
The VFX Programming team implemented smoke spawning on fire along with various other quality improvements to bring the feature to a visually complete and “rather impressive” state.
Finally, further improvements to lightning effects were made, which will be used in the future within gas clouds.
In-Game Branding
The In-Game Branding team continued to progress with the underground facility exteriors. They’re also working closely with EU Locations 2 on an upcoming event and progressed with some event-related add-ons.
Interactables
Last month saw the Interactables team create new assets for Pyro’s rundown station alongside various Flair items.
Lighting
The Lighting team continued to contribute to Pyro, working on tasks for the colonialism outposts and rundown station. They also worked on an upcoming event.
Live Tools
In August, the Live Tools team released a new version of the crash-handling pipeline, which is now in the maintenance phase.
For Hex’s Network Operation Center, they worked on general navigation to improve the quality of life for its main users; this included redesigning elements of the discipline module and Entity Graph.
Locations (EU)
The Locations team progressed across various areas last month, including the rundown station and colonialism outposts for Pyro. They also worked on signage and dioramas for an upcoming event.
The Organics team continued to build Pyro’s planets, including foliage, while the Sandbox team moved the new underground facilities through greybox.
Narrative
The Narrative team continued to focus on Pyro, writing multiple missions and crafting strings to populate new locations with everything from signage to food items. In Stanton, several new mission types were worked on and improvements were made to existing content.
Alongside the evergreen tasks of naming and describing various in-game items and wearables, Narrative worked with Interactables on interesting ideas for future additions.
The Narrative Design team worked on NPC behaviors for Pyro and continued to explore how to make NPC behaviors feel unique across the various landing zones.
On the website, several interesting pieces of lore were published, including an excerpt from “Life/Labor: The Secret History of Hurston Dynamics,” a “Whitley’s Guide to the Constellation Phoenix,” and several new Galactapedia entries.
The Narrative team will have a new installment of Loremaker’s Community Questions coming up soon, so don’t hesitate to ask your questions in the team’s dedicated Spectrum channel.
Online Services
In August, the Online Service team worked toward finalizing the design and approach for updating several legacy backend social services to gRPC.
As a quality-of-life update, the team added new Social menu options, with players now able to enable or disable friend requests and friend-request notifications, and choose who they receive party invite notifications and currency transfers from.
Updates were also made to the discipline service, which is necessary for future anti-cheat enforcement and sanction updates.
R&D
In August, work on the temporal render mode for atmosphere and volumetric clouds continued; various methods to rectify or reject frame history were experimented with.
Furthermore, a new disocclusion detection system to reject history was implemented that, in spirit, is similar to the general up-sampling solution.
Additionally, various code was updated to work with recent Gen12 improvements.
UI
As part of the development of Pyro, the UI team created fluff screens and converted flash animations into fluff screens. They also supported Mission Features on Data Heist by uplifting the screen style.
VFX
Last month, the VFX team continued working on various Pyro locations, including some with animated machinery.
August 2023
As we close in on Alpha 3.20’s Live release, many teams are finalizing their work on the patch’s various new features. Beyond the patch, significant progress is being made on content coming later in the year, so read on for the latest.
AI (Features)
Last month, AI reviewed perception to fix issues where NPCs wouldn’t correctly recognize that a target had died or that they’d 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.
They also revisited cover usage, polishing various functionality and animations to ensure the feature works across a range of situations and environments.
Changes 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.
Balancing was done for AI ammunition usage while maintaining reload and ammo-finding functionality to provide realistic and emergent behaviors and gameplay situations.
The 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.
AI (Tech)
Last 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.
On the boids feature mentioned in last month’s 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’re currently looking for a low-cost solution to keep agents on terrain while moving.
For 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.
They also continued to improve navigation links. Firstly, how links connect navigation triangles from different zones, which wasn’t 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.
Finally, investigation began into performance issues relating to the navigation system and pathfinder.
Animation
In August, the animators worked through a number of behavioral lines for background ambiance and flight. They also supported Tech Animation on creature skeletons that will eventually be used in the PU.
Art (Characters)
Last month, Character Art progressed with content for various upcoming events and assets for the Headhunters gang.
Alongside this, the concept artists explored additional ideas for the Headhunters and worked on a medical outfit and handoff sheets for a new flightsuit.
Art (Ships)
Last month, Ship Art completed their work on the Tumbril Storm, though they’re currently focussing on ongoing issues with the treads and how they appear. Two new variants of an existing vehicle were completed too.
An all-new ship progressed through whitebox, revealing various areas that require updating from the concept, including an increase to the interior space.
The Aopoa San'tok.yāi is almost LOD0-complete; final updates are underway, including polishing the pilot compartment. The damage pass is also in progress while the rest of the LOD0 tasks are closed out. Once complete, the team will move on to paints.
The Origin X1 is currently awaiting whitebox review, though significant changes to item locations have already been made to maximize space. Modeling of the greybox geometry began too.
Community
August saw the return of Ship Showdown, an annual month-long event where the community champions their favorite vehicles by sharing original creations on the Community Hub and social media. The Community team hosted two contests in support of the event, rewarding the top 10 submissions from the Community Hub and the top three most creative videos on the official TikTok channel. After daily head-to-head battles between the top 16 ships, the Drake Corsair was crowned the Ultimate Champion of Ship Showdown 2953. Community also supported the Free Fly event, posted updates on the New Player Guide, and curated media on the Welcome Hub.
Early August saw the conclusion of the Arlington Gang Screenshot contest, where players submitted screenshots following the launch of the Mission Spotlight series.
The Community team then supported Tobii’s 22nd anniversary alongside numerous community-driven events, including the Intergalactic Industry & Trade Fair, and the ATMO esports Fight or Flight tournament, which will conclude live at CitizenCon 2953.
With CitizenCon 2953 approaching, much of August was also spent ramping up preparations, with a focus on finalizing the details of the various presentations, venue layout and design, Cosplay Contest, Community Booths, and much more.
“It's been four long years since we've had a physical CitizenCon, so whether you're joining us in Los Angeles or watching from home, we can't wait to celebrate our shared universe with you on October 21 and 22! Keep your eyes peeled, as we’re finalizing some details and will share more information with you very soon!” Community Team
The team continued to support dozens of evergreen publishes (such as this Monthly Report, the postmortem, etc.) alongside planning for a variety of future in and out-of-game engagements to come.
Lastly, the team attended Gamescom and a trio of Bar Citizen events in Cologne, Germany.
“The turnout was unbelievable, eclipsing our Gamescom events in the past. We were so happy to meet so many of you, veteran backers and fresh pilots alike. We hope to see you all again soon!”
Economy
The new Economy team planned their upcoming goals, including rebalancing cargo and the related experience. They also began building a tool to investigate the current state of cargo, which could be expanded to other areas of the in-game economy.
Features (Arena Commander)
The Arena Commander Feature team polished and supported Alpha 3.20 while beginning stage two of the Arena Commander revitalization plan.
Alongside patch work, the Engineering team supported the new top heads-up display, which will feature in all game modes from Alpha 3.20.
They also assisted the ongoing investigation into the return of Theaters of War. This involved identifying the steps needed to update the new spawning module with several unique Theaters of War features (such as spawn locations and multicrew) and bring them into other game modes.
Work continued on the new Custom Lobbies feature (previously Private Matches), with several successful tests conducted. The team are currently focussing on finalizing the UI design and hooking up the various interactions. Engineering began restoring the Spectator Module too, which will allow players to spectate matches in Custom Lobbies and other modes. For example, spectating a player who has lost all their respawns in a PvE game mode.
Design enhanced several outlines for upcoming updates and scouted locations from the PU and beyond for use in Arena Commander. They also began investigating the Theaters of War location Crossroads of Crime to help estimate restoration efforts.
The team also addressed a large collection of feedback from the Evocati and PTU regarding the frontend and game modes. The frontend game mode selection now shows which modes are new, which have REC multipliers, and which have achievements associated with them. Design also progressed with the spawn-screen UI for in-game vehicle selection, which began internal testing.
Finally, the team helped create several new game modes requested by other teams, including a 2v2 mode that will host Fight or Flight at CitizenCon.
Features (Characters & Weapons)
August saw the Characters & Weapons Feature team working on weapon poses. Currently, when a player approaches a collision surface, their equipped weapon is raised to avoid clipping through the geometry. The team explored alternatives where the weapon is lowered, moved to the bottom of the first-person view, and rotated toward the body so that it lies diagonally across the abdomen. This is more natural in certain situations, limits clipping, and ensures the majority of the player's view is unobscured, particularly when interacting with screens in the environment.
Procedural recoil also progressed last month. To ensure that the feel of each weapon can be tweaked to make it feel unique, a large number of curves were exposed to the content creators.
“These curves allow multiple layers of subtle movement and rotation to be overlaid to create a wide range of interesting results. It is a bit of a manual process and requires significant attention to detail, but it can add a lot to the personality of a weapon.” Features Team
Features (Gameplay)
Gameplay Features continued their ongoing work on the vehicle tractor beam feature, readying it for testing by QA. They also progressed with the Resource Network mentioned in last month’s report and supported the upcoming patch release.
Features (Mission)
The Mission Feature team spent the month working through their upcoming deliverables and bug fixing for Alpha 3.20.
Away from the upcoming patch, Siege of Orison received various improvements ahead of a future release, with the main focus being keeping players together. Development of Blockade Runner (which will replace Nine Tails Lockdown) continued too, with various technical issues considered and planned for.
Significant improvements were made to the existing Destroy Drug Stash missions to ensure mission-critical items are spawned when the player arrives. They also made great progress in modularizing the New Player Experience so that it can be used in any landing zone with the correct markup.
The Steal Evidence at Kareah and Retrieve Consignment missions entered the polish phase, with reputation being hooked up. Work also began on ship-restoration missions, which will require players to restore ships to a saleable condition. Data Heist passed another gate review and will enter internal playtesting to ensure the objectives are clear.
“The Ship Cargo Steal/Recover Hauling mission has been taken as far as it can until further cargo features are developed. In the meantime, we will make a ‘courier’ version in which small items are the objective.” Mission Feature Team
The team progressed with reputation-based hostility, devising a mission that allows players to work for the Nine Tails gang. Once completed, they’ll convert most of the nameless criminal missions to Nine Tails until further gangs are added.
Code work was completed on the highlighting and filtering of mission-critical items in the inventory. This was handed to UI for their pass. Finally, tasks for Ship Trespass progressed, with ‘nested trespassing’ being the main thing holding it back.
Features (Vehicle)
Last month, the team assisted with bug fixing and stability for Alpha 3.20 and beyond, including getting the MISC Hull C ready for release and completing smaller feature work for upcoming ship releases.
The designers then tuned how racing ships perform in-atmosphere to bring them closer together and converted more ground vehicles to the new physics model, which allows for more realistic behavior than before.
The mass of Size 1, 2, and 3 items were rebalanced for better consistency across ship loadouts and to improve the tractor beam gameplay of removing and replacing items. Smaller vehicle and weapon balance tweaks were also made.
Graphics, VFX Programming & Planet Tech
In August, improvements were made to the internal implementation of Temporal Super Resolution.
Further 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.
The 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.
On 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.
The 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.
The VFX Programming team implemented smoke spawning on fire along with various other quality improvements to bring the feature to a visually complete and “rather impressive” state.
Finally, further improvements to lightning effects were made, which will be used in the future within gas clouds.
In-Game Branding
The In-Game Branding team continued to progress with the underground facility exteriors. They’re also working closely with EU Locations 2 on an upcoming event and progressed with some event-related add-ons.
Interactables
Last month saw the Interactables team create new assets for Pyro’s rundown station alongside various Flair items.
Lighting
The Lighting team continued to contribute to Pyro, working on tasks for the colonialism outposts and rundown station. They also worked on an upcoming event.
Live Tools
In August, the Live Tools team released a new version of the crash-handling pipeline, which is now in the maintenance phase.
For Hex’s Network Operation Center, they worked on general navigation to improve the quality of life for its main users; this included redesigning elements of the discipline module and Entity Graph.
Locations (EU)
The Locations team progressed across various areas last month, including the rundown station and colonialism outposts for Pyro. They also worked on signage and dioramas for an upcoming event.
The Organics team continued to build Pyro’s planets, including foliage, while the Sandbox team moved the new underground facilities through greybox.
Narrative
The Narrative team continued to focus on Pyro, writing multiple missions and crafting strings to populate new locations with everything from signage to food items. In Stanton, several new mission types were worked on and improvements were made to existing content.
Alongside the evergreen tasks of naming and describing various in-game items and wearables, Narrative worked with Interactables on interesting ideas for future additions.
The Narrative Design team worked on NPC behaviors for Pyro and continued to explore how to make NPC behaviors feel unique across the various landing zones.
On the website, several interesting pieces of lore were published, including an excerpt from “Life/Labor: The Secret History of Hurston Dynamics,” a “Whitley’s Guide to the Constellation Phoenix,” and several new Galactapedia entries.
The Narrative team will have a new installment of Loremaker’s Community Questions coming up soon, so don’t hesitate to ask your questions in the team’s dedicated Spectrum channel.
Online Services
In August, the Online Service team worked toward finalizing the design and approach for updating several legacy backend social services to gRPC.
As a quality-of-life update, the team added new Social menu options, with players now able to enable or disable friend requests and friend-request notifications, and choose who they receive party invite notifications and currency transfers from.
Updates were also made to the discipline service, which is necessary for future anti-cheat enforcement and sanction updates.
R&D
In August, work on the temporal render mode for atmosphere and volumetric clouds continued; various methods to rectify or reject frame history were experimented with.
Furthermore, a new disocclusion detection system to reject history was implemented that, in spirit, is similar to the general up-sampling solution.
Additionally, various code was updated to work with recent Gen12 improvements.
UI
As part of the development of Pyro, the UI team created fluff screens and converted flash animations into fluff screens. They also supported Mission Features on Data Heist by uplifting the screen style.
VFX
Last month, the VFX team continued working on various Pyro locations, including some with animated machinery.
PU-Monatsbericht
August 2023
Während wir uns dem Live-Release von Alpha 3.20 nähern, schließen viele Teams ihre Arbeit an den verschiedenen neuen Funktionen des Patches ab. Neben dem Patch gibt es auch große Fortschritte bei den Inhalten, die im Laufe des Jahres kommen werden, also lies weiter für die neuesten Informationen.
KI (Features)
Im letzten Monat wurde die Wahrnehmung der KI überprüft, 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 führten zu verschiedenen Fehlern, z. B. dass die KI ständig nach Sanitätern rief oder im Kampf blieb, nachdem dieser bereits beendet war.
Außerdem wurde die Nutzung der Deckung überarbeitet und verschiedene Funktionen und Animationen verbessert, um sicherzustellen, dass die Funktion in verschiedenen Situationen und Umgebungen funktioniert.
Auch am taktischen Punktesystem, das die Bewegungen der KI bestimmt, wurden Änderungen und Korrekturen vorgenommen. So lässt sich leichter erkennen, was angepasst werden muss, wenn man den Kampf an neuen Orten überprüft.
Der Munitionsverbrauch der KI wurde angepasst, wobei die Nachlade- und Munitionsfindungsfunktionen beibehalten wurden, um realistisches und neues Verhalten und neue Spielsituationen zu ermöglichen.
Das Team überprüfte, überarbeitete und polierte die Kämpfe weiter, einschließlich der Nachladeanimationen für verschiedene Waffen in niedriger und hoher Deckung und der Animationen für Frauen, die aus den männlichen Assets umgewandelt wurden. Sie begannen auch mit der Entwicklung von Animationen für die Handsignale der Marinesoldaten, um Gruppenbewegungen und Kämpfe zu verkaufen.
KI (Tech)
Letzten Monat hat AI Tech das Apollo Subsumption Tool um eine Undo-and-Redo-Funktion erweitert. Außerdem wurde die Validierung der Subsumption-Daten verbessert, um eine bessere Darstellung und deutlichere Validierungsfehler zu erreichen. Dadurch können die Designer bei der Erstellung oder Anpassung von Missionen und Verhaltensweisen schneller iterieren.
Für das im letzten Bericht erwähnte Boids-Feature hat AI Tech die Implementierung der Basisfunktionalität fortgesetzt, die es Agenten (Ratten, Vögeln usw.) ermöglicht, verschiedene Zustände einzunehmen, z. B. wandern, faulenzen oder fliehen, und zwischen diesen zu wechseln. Derzeit wird nach einer kostengünstigen Lösung gesucht, um die Agenten auf dem Boden zu halten, während sie sich bewegen.
Für die Audiowahrnehmung der NSCs hat das Team neue Funktionen für die Weitergabe von Audiostimuli implementiert. Dabei werden das Raumsystem und die Art, wie Räume miteinander verbunden sind, genutzt, um zu bestimmen, ob ein Audio-Ereignis gehört werden soll.
Außerdem 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.
Schließlich wurden Leistungsprobleme im Zusammenhang mit dem Navigationssystem und dem Pfadfinder untersucht.
Animation
Im August arbeiteten die Animatoren an einer Reihe von Verhaltenslinien für die Hintergrundatmosphäre und den Flug. Außerdem unterstützten sie Tech Animation bei der Erstellung von Kreaturenskeletten, die später in der PU verwendet werden sollen.
Kunst (Charaktere)
Im letzten Monat wurden im Bereich Character Art Inhalte für verschiedene bevorstehende Events und Assets für die Headhunters-Gang erstellt.
Außerdem haben die Konzeptkünstler zusätzliche Ideen für die Headhunters erforscht und an einem medizinischen Outfit und Übergabebögen für einen neuen Fluganzug gearbeitet.
Kunst (Schiffe)
Im letzten Monat haben die Schiffskünstler ihre Arbeit am Tumbril Storm abgeschlossen, obwohl sie sich derzeit auf Probleme mit den Trittflächen und deren Aussehen konzentrieren. Außerdem wurden zwei neue Varianten eines bestehenden Fahrzeugs fertiggestellt.
Ein komplett neues Schiff hat die Whitebox durchlaufen und dabei verschiedene Bereiche aufgedeckt, die gegenüber dem Konzept aktualisiert werden müssen, darunter eine Vergrößerung des Innenraums.
Die Aopoa San'tok.yāi ist fast LOD0-komplett; letzte Aktualisierungen sind im Gange, darunter das Polieren des Pilotenraums. Der Schadenspass ist ebenfalls in Arbeit, während der Rest der LOD0-Aufgaben abgeschlossen wird. Sobald dies abgeschlossen ist, wird das Team zu den Lackierungen übergehen.
Die Origin X1 wartet derzeit auf die Überprüfung der Whitebox, obwohl bereits erhebliche Änderungen an den Positionen der Gegenstände vorgenommen wurden, um den Platz zu maximieren. Auch die Modellierung der Greybox-Geometrie hat begonnen.
Community
Im August fand wieder der Ship Showdown statt, ein jährliches, einmonatiges Event, bei dem die Community ihre Lieblingsfahrzeuge vorstellt, indem sie originelle Kreationen im Community Hub und in den sozialen Medien teilt. Das Community-Team veranstaltete zur Unterstützung des Events zwei Wettbewerbe, bei denen die 10 besten Einsendungen im Community Hub und die drei kreativsten Videos auf dem offiziellen TikTok-Kanal belohnt wurden. Nach täglichen Kopf-an-Kopf-Schlachten zwischen den 16 besten Schiffen wurde die Drake Corsair zum ultimativen Champion des Ship Showdown 2953 gekrönt. Die Community unterstützte auch das Free Fly Event, veröffentlichte Updates im New Player Guide und kuratierte Medien im Welcome Hub.
Anfang August fand der Screenshot-Wettbewerb der Arlington Gang statt, bei dem Spieler/innen nach dem Start der Mission Spotlight-Serie Screenshots einreichten.
Das Community-Team unterstützte das 22-jährige Jubiläum von Tobii sowie zahlreiche von der Community organisierte Events, darunter die Intergalaktische Industrie- und Handelsmesse und das ATMO esports Fight or Flight-Turnier, das auf der CitizenCon 2953 live zu sehen sein wird.
Im August wurden die Vorbereitungen für die CitizenCon 2953 vorangetrieben, um die Details der verschiedenen Präsentationen, das Layout und Design des Veranstaltungsortes, den Cosplay-Wettbewerb, die Community-Stände und vieles mehr festzulegen.
"Es ist vier lange Jahre her, dass wir eine CitizenCon veranstaltet haben. Egal, ob du in Los Angeles dabei bist oder von zu Hause aus zuschaust, wir können es kaum erwarten, am 21. und 22. Oktober mit dir unser gemeinsames Universum zu feiern! Haltet die Augen offen, denn wir arbeiten noch an einigen Details und werden bald mehr Informationen mit euch teilen!" Community-Team
Das Team unterstützte weiterhin Dutzende von immergrünen Veröffentlichungen (wie diesen Monatsbericht, den Postmortem usw.) und plante eine Vielzahl von zukünftigen In- und Out-of-Game-Engagements.
Außerdem nahm das Team an der Gamescom und drei Bar Citizen-Events in Köln teil.
"Der Andrang war unglaublich und hat unsere bisherigen Gamescom-Events in den Schatten gestellt. Wir haben uns sehr gefreut, so viele von euch zu treffen, sowohl altgediente Unterstützer als auch neue Piloten. Wir hoffen, euch alle bald wiederzusehen!"
Wirtschaft
Das neue Wirtschaftsteam plante seine nächsten Ziele, darunter die Neuausrichtung der Fracht und die damit verbundene Erfahrung. Außerdem begannen sie mit der Entwicklung eines Tools zur Untersuchung des aktuellen Zustands der Fracht, das auf andere Bereiche der Wirtschaft im Spiel ausgeweitet werden könnte.
Features (Arena Commander)
Das Team für die Arena-Befehlshaber-Features polierte und unterstützte die Alpha 3.20 und begann mit der zweiten Phase des Plans zur Wiederbelebung des Arena-Befehlshabers.
Neben den Patch-Arbeiten unterstützte das Technik-Team auch das neue Top-Heads-up-Display, das ab Alpha 3.20 in allen Spielmodi zu sehen sein wird.
Außerdem unterstützten sie die laufende Untersuchung zur Rückkehr der Kriegsschauplätze. Dabei ging es darum, die notwendigen Schritte zu identifizieren, um das neue Spawning-Modul mit mehreren einzigartigen Theaters of War-Features (wie Spawn-Orte und Multicrew) zu aktualisieren und in andere Spielmodi zu bringen.
Die Arbeit an der neuen Funktion "Benutzerdefinierte Lobbys" (früher "Private Matches") wurde fortgesetzt, und es wurden mehrere erfolgreiche Tests durchgeführt. Das Team konzentriert sich derzeit auf die Fertigstellung des UI-Designs und die Verknüpfung der verschiedenen Interaktionen. Die Entwickler haben auch mit der Wiederherstellung des Zuschauermoduls begonnen, mit dem Spieler/innen Spiele in benutzerdefinierten Lobbys und anderen Modi verfolgen können. Zum Beispiel können sie einem Spieler zuschauen, der in einem PvE-Spielmodus alle Respawns verloren hat.
Das Design hat mehrere Entwürfe für kommende Updates verbessert und Schauplätze in der PU und darüber hinaus für die Verwendung in Arena Commander ausgekundschaftet. Außerdem begannen sie mit der Erkundung des Kriegsschauplatzes "Kreuzweg des Verbrechens", um die Wiederherstellungsarbeiten einzuschätzen.
Das Team hat außerdem eine große Anzahl von Rückmeldungen der Evocati und PTU zum Frontend und den Spielmodi bearbeitet. Die Spielmodusauswahl im Frontend zeigt nun an, welche Modi neu sind, welche REC-Multiplikatoren haben und welche Erfolge mit ihnen verbunden sind. Die Entwicklung der Spawn-Bildschirm-Oberfläche für die Fahrzeugauswahl im Spiel wurde ebenfalls vorangetrieben und intern getestet.
Schließlich half das Team bei der Entwicklung mehrerer neuer Spielmodi, die von anderen Teams angefordert wurden, darunter ein 2v2-Modus, der auf der CitizenCon für Fight or Flight genutzt wird.
Features (Charaktere & Waffen)
Im August arbeitete das Team für Charaktere und Waffen an den Waffenposen. Wenn sich ein Spieler einer Kollisionsfläche nähert, wird die ausgerüstete Waffe angehoben, damit sie nicht durch die Geometrie schneidet. Das Team untersuchte Alternativen, bei denen die Waffe gesenkt, an den unteren Rand der Ego-Perspektive verschoben und in Richtung des Körpers gedreht wird, so dass sie diagonal über dem Bauch liegt. Das ist in bestimmten Situationen natürlicher, schränkt die Beschneidung ein und sorgt dafür, dass der Großteil der Sicht des Spielers frei bleibt, vor allem wenn er mit Bildschirmen in der Umgebung interagiert.
Auch der prozedurale Rückstoß wurde im letzten Monat weiterentwickelt. Um sicherzustellen, dass sich jede Waffe einzigartig anfühlt, wurde eine große Anzahl von Kurven an die Inhaltsersteller/innen weitergegeben.
"Diese Kurven ermöglichen es, mehrere Ebenen subtiler Bewegung und Drehung zu überlagern, um eine Vielzahl interessanter Ergebnisse zu erzielen. Es ist ein manueller Prozess, der viel Liebe zum Detail erfordert, aber er kann die Persönlichkeit einer Waffe stark beeinflussen." Eigenschaften Team
Features (Gameplay)
Das Team Gameplay Features hat seine Arbeit am Fahrzeug-Traktorstrahl fortgesetzt und ihn für die Tests der QA vorbereitet. Außerdem haben sie das im letzten Bericht erwähnte Ressourcennetzwerk weiterentwickelt und den bevorstehenden Patch-Release unterstützt.
Features (Mission)
Das Missions-Feature-Team hat den Monat damit verbracht, die anstehenden Aufgaben und Fehlerbehebungen für Alpha 3.20 zu erledigen.
Abseits des kommenden Patches wurden an der Belagerung von Orison verschiedene Verbesserungen vorgenommen, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf dem Zusammenhalt der Spieler lag. Die Entwicklung von Blockade Runner (das Nine Tails Lockdown ersetzen wird) wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt, wobei verschiedene technische Probleme berücksichtigt und geplant wurden.
Die bestehenden Missionen "Zerstöre das Drogenlager" wurden erheblich verbessert, um sicherzustellen, dass missionskritische Gegenstände bei der Ankunft der Spieler/innen gespawnt werden. Außerdem wurden große Fortschritte bei der Modularisierung der New Player Experience gemacht, so dass sie in jeder Landezone mit dem richtigen Markup verwendet werden kann.
Die Missionen "Beweise stehlen in Kareah" und "Sendung zurückholen" gingen in die Feinschliff-Phase, in der der Ruf aufpoliert wurde. Außerdem wurde mit der Arbeit an den Schiffsrestaurierungsmissionen begonnen, bei denen die Spieler/innen Schiffe in einen verkaufsfähigen Zustand versetzen müssen. Data Heist hat ein weiteres Gate Review bestanden und wird nun intern getestet, um sicherzustellen, dass die Ziele klar sind.
"Die Mission Schiffsladungsdiebstahl/Schiffswiederbeschaffung wurde so weit wie möglich vorangetrieben, bis weitere Frachtfunktionen entwickelt werden. In der Zwischenzeit werden wir eine 'Kurier'-Version erstellen, in der kleine Gegenstände das Ziel sind." Mission Feature Team
Das Team ist mit der rufbasierten Feindseligkeit vorangekommen und hat eine Mission entwickelt, in der die Spieler/innen für die Nine Tails Gang arbeiten können. Sobald sie fertiggestellt sind, werden sie die meisten namenlosen kriminellen Missionen in Nine Tails umwandeln, bis weitere Banden hinzugefügt werden.
Der Code für die Hervorhebung und Filterung von missionskritischen Gegenständen im Inventar wurde fertiggestellt. Dies wurde an UI zur Freigabe übergeben. Schließlich wurden die Arbeiten an Ship Trespass vorangetrieben, wobei das "verschachtelte Eindringen" das größte Hindernis darstellte.
Funktionen (Fahrzeug)
Im letzten Monat hat das Team an der Fehlerbehebung und Stabilität für Alpha 3.20 und darüber hinaus gearbeitet, u. a. an der Fertigstellung der MISC-Hülle C und an kleineren Features für kommende Schiffsversionen.
Dann haben die Designer das Verhalten von Rennschiffen in der Atmosphäre angepasst, um sie näher zusammenzubringen, und mehr Bodenfahrzeuge auf das neue Physikmodell umgestellt, das ein realistischeres Verhalten als bisher ermöglicht.
Die Masse von Gegenständen der Größen 1, 2 und 3 wurde neu ausbalanciert, um die Konsistenz der Schiffsausrüstungen zu verbessern und das Traktorstrahl-Gameplay beim Entfernen und Ersetzen von Gegenständen zu optimieren. Außerdem wurden kleinere Änderungen an der Fahrzeug- und Waffenbalance vorgenommen.
Grafik, VFX-Programmierung und Planetentechnologie
Im August wurden Verbesserungen an der internen Implementierung von Temporal Super Resolution vorgenommen.
Weitere Fortschritte wurden beim Wasser gemacht, indem der Shader eine verbesserte Beleuchtung und Schaum erhielt. Auch die Arbeit an der Simulation wurde fortgesetzt, wobei die Schaumausbreitung und die Unterstützung von Geschosseinschlägen hinzugefügt wurden.
Der Prototyp des Glint-Shading-Modells wurde fertiggestellt und liegt in drei Versionen mit unterschiedlichen Leistungsmerkmalen vor. Das Team prüft nun, ob es eine davon in die Produktion übernehmen kann. Entfernte Lichter werden jetzt als winzige helle Glühwürmchen gezeichnet, die das bestehende Post-Effekt-System durchlaufen, mit dem Ziel, das traditionellere "Composite Flare"-System zu ersetzen, das keine Post-Effekte unterstützen kann.
Auf 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 ermöglicht nun eine feinere Kontrolle darüber, wie animierte Meshes importiert werden.
Das Vulkan-Subteam fügte 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 für Vulkan verfügbar ist.
Das VFX-Programmierungsteam hat das Spawnen von Rauch bei Feuer zusammen mit verschiedenen anderen Qualitätsverbesserungen implementiert, um das Feature auf einen visuell vollständigen und "ziemlich beeindruckenden" Stand zu bringen.
Schließlich wurden weitere Verbesserungen an den Blitzeffekten vorgenommen, die in Zukunft in Gaswolken zum Einsatz kommen werden.
In-Game Branding
Das In-Game Branding-Team arbeitete weiter an den Außenbereichen der unterirdischen Anlagen. Außerdem arbeiten sie eng mit EU Locations 2 an einem bevorstehenden Event zusammen und haben einige Event-bezogene Add-ons entwickelt.
Interactables
Im letzten Monat hat das Interactables-Team neue Assets für Pyros heruntergekommenen Bahnhof und verschiedene Flair-Gegenstände erstellt.
Beleuchtung
Das Beleuchtungsteam hat weiter an Pyro gearbeitet und Aufgaben für die Kolonialismus-Außenposten und die heruntergekommene Station übernommen. Außerdem arbeiteten sie an einem bevorstehenden Event.
Live Tools
Im August veröffentlichte das Live-Tools-Team eine neue Version der Crash-Handling-Pipeline, die sich jetzt in der Wartungsphase befindet.
Für das Network Operation Center von Hex arbeiteten sie an der allgemeinen Navigation, um die Lebensqualität der Hauptnutzer zu verbessern; dazu gehörte die Neugestaltung von Elementen des Disziplin-Moduls und des Entity Graph.
Standorte (EU)
Das Locations-Team hat im letzten Monat in verschiedenen Bereichen Fortschritte gemacht, darunter der heruntergekommene Bahnhof und die Kolonialismus-Außenposten für Pyro. Außerdem arbeiteten sie an der Beschilderung und den Dioramen für ein bevorstehendes Event.
Das Organics-Team baute weiter an den Planeten von Pyro, einschließlich des Laubes, während das Sandbox-Team die neuen unterirdischen Anlagen in die Greybox brachte.
Narrative
Das Narrative-Team konzentrierte sich weiterhin auf Pyro, schrieb mehrere Missionen und bastelte Strings, um neue Orte mit allem Möglichen zu bestücken, von Schildern bis hin zu Lebensmitteln. In Stanton wurde an mehreren neuen Missionstypen gearbeitet und bestehende Inhalte wurden verbessert.
Neben der immer wiederkehrenden Aufgabe, verschiedene Gegenstände und Kleidungsstücke im Spiel zu benennen und zu beschreiben, arbeitete Narrative mit Interactables an interessanten Ideen für zukünftige Erweiterungen.
Das Narrative Design Team arbeitete an den NSC-Verhaltensweisen für Pyro und untersuchte weiter, wie man das Verhalten der NSCs in den verschiedenen Landezonen einzigartig gestalten kann.
Auf der Website wurden mehrere interessante Informationen veröffentlicht, darunter ein Auszug aus "Life/Labor: The Secret History of Hurston Dynamics", einen "Whitley's Guide to the Constellation Phoenix" und mehrere neue Galactapedia-Einträge.
Das Narrative Team wird in Kürze eine neue Folge der Loremaker's Community Questions veröffentlichen, also zögere nicht, deine Fragen im speziellen Spectrum-Kanal des Teams zu stellen.
Online-Dienste
Im August hat das Team der Online-Dienste daran gearbeitet, das Design und die Vorgehensweise für die Aktualisierung mehrerer alter Backend-Sozialdienste auf gRPC abzuschließen.
Als Qualitätsverbesserung fügte das Team neue Optionen für das Sozialmenü hinzu. Spieler/innen können nun Freundschaftsanfragen und Benachrichtigungen über Freundschaftsanfragen aktivieren oder deaktivieren und auswählen, von wem sie Benachrichtigungen über Partyeinladungen und Währungstransfers erhalten.
Außerdem wurde der Disziplinierungsdienst aktualisiert, der für zukünftige Anti-Cheat- und Sanktions-Updates benötigt wird.
F&E
Im August wurde die Arbeit am temporalen Rendermodus für Atmosphäre und volumetrische Wolken fortgesetzt; es wurden verschiedene Methoden zur Korrektur oder Ablehnung des Frameverlaufs ausprobiert.
Außerdem wurde ein neues System zur Erkennung von Ausschlüssen implementiert, das im Prinzip der allgemeinen Up-Sampling-Lösung ähnelt.
Außerdem wurden verschiedene Codes aktualisiert, damit sie mit den jüngsten Verbesserungen von Gen12 funktionieren.
UI
Im Rahmen der Entwicklung von Pyro hat das UI-Team Fluff-Screens erstellt und Flash-Animationen in Fluff-Screens umgewandelt. Außerdem unterstützten sie die Missionsfunktionen bei Data Heist, indem sie den Bildschirmstil verbesserten.
VFX
Im letzten Monat hat das VFX-Team die Arbeit an verschiedenen Orten in Pyro fortgesetzt, darunter auch einige mit animierten Maschinen.
August 2023
Während wir uns dem Live-Release von Alpha 3.20 nähern, schließen viele Teams ihre Arbeit an den verschiedenen neuen Funktionen des Patches ab. Neben dem Patch gibt es auch große Fortschritte bei den Inhalten, die im Laufe des Jahres kommen werden, also lies weiter für die neuesten Informationen.
KI (Features)
Im letzten Monat wurde die Wahrnehmung der KI überprüft, 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 führten zu verschiedenen Fehlern, z. B. dass die KI ständig nach Sanitätern rief oder im Kampf blieb, nachdem dieser bereits beendet war.
Außerdem wurde die Nutzung der Deckung überarbeitet und verschiedene Funktionen und Animationen verbessert, um sicherzustellen, dass die Funktion in verschiedenen Situationen und Umgebungen funktioniert.
Auch am taktischen Punktesystem, das die Bewegungen der KI bestimmt, wurden Änderungen und Korrekturen vorgenommen. So lässt sich leichter erkennen, was angepasst werden muss, wenn man den Kampf an neuen Orten überprüft.
Der Munitionsverbrauch der KI wurde angepasst, wobei die Nachlade- und Munitionsfindungsfunktionen beibehalten wurden, um realistisches und neues Verhalten und neue Spielsituationen zu ermöglichen.
Das Team überprüfte, überarbeitete und polierte die Kämpfe weiter, einschließlich der Nachladeanimationen für verschiedene Waffen in niedriger und hoher Deckung und der Animationen für Frauen, die aus den männlichen Assets umgewandelt wurden. Sie begannen auch mit der Entwicklung von Animationen für die Handsignale der Marinesoldaten, um Gruppenbewegungen und Kämpfe zu verkaufen.
KI (Tech)
Letzten Monat hat AI Tech das Apollo Subsumption Tool um eine Undo-and-Redo-Funktion erweitert. Außerdem wurde die Validierung der Subsumption-Daten verbessert, um eine bessere Darstellung und deutlichere Validierungsfehler zu erreichen. Dadurch können die Designer bei der Erstellung oder Anpassung von Missionen und Verhaltensweisen schneller iterieren.
Für das im letzten Bericht erwähnte Boids-Feature hat AI Tech die Implementierung der Basisfunktionalität fortgesetzt, die es Agenten (Ratten, Vögeln usw.) ermöglicht, verschiedene Zustände einzunehmen, z. B. wandern, faulenzen oder fliehen, und zwischen diesen zu wechseln. Derzeit wird nach einer kostengünstigen Lösung gesucht, um die Agenten auf dem Boden zu halten, während sie sich bewegen.
Für die Audiowahrnehmung der NSCs hat das Team neue Funktionen für die Weitergabe von Audiostimuli implementiert. Dabei werden das Raumsystem und die Art, wie Räume miteinander verbunden sind, genutzt, um zu bestimmen, ob ein Audio-Ereignis gehört werden soll.
Außerdem 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.
Schließlich wurden Leistungsprobleme im Zusammenhang mit dem Navigationssystem und dem Pfadfinder untersucht.
Animation
Im August arbeiteten die Animatoren an einer Reihe von Verhaltenslinien für die Hintergrundatmosphäre und den Flug. Außerdem unterstützten sie Tech Animation bei der Erstellung von Kreaturenskeletten, die später in der PU verwendet werden sollen.
Kunst (Charaktere)
Im letzten Monat wurden im Bereich Character Art Inhalte für verschiedene bevorstehende Events und Assets für die Headhunters-Gang erstellt.
Außerdem haben die Konzeptkünstler zusätzliche Ideen für die Headhunters erforscht und an einem medizinischen Outfit und Übergabebögen für einen neuen Fluganzug gearbeitet.
Kunst (Schiffe)
Im letzten Monat haben die Schiffskünstler ihre Arbeit am Tumbril Storm abgeschlossen, obwohl sie sich derzeit auf Probleme mit den Trittflächen und deren Aussehen konzentrieren. Außerdem wurden zwei neue Varianten eines bestehenden Fahrzeugs fertiggestellt.
Ein komplett neues Schiff hat die Whitebox durchlaufen und dabei verschiedene Bereiche aufgedeckt, die gegenüber dem Konzept aktualisiert werden müssen, darunter eine Vergrößerung des Innenraums.
Die Aopoa San'tok.yāi ist fast LOD0-komplett; letzte Aktualisierungen sind im Gange, darunter das Polieren des Pilotenraums. Der Schadenspass ist ebenfalls in Arbeit, während der Rest der LOD0-Aufgaben abgeschlossen wird. Sobald dies abgeschlossen ist, wird das Team zu den Lackierungen übergehen.
Die Origin X1 wartet derzeit auf die Überprüfung der Whitebox, obwohl bereits erhebliche Änderungen an den Positionen der Gegenstände vorgenommen wurden, um den Platz zu maximieren. Auch die Modellierung der Greybox-Geometrie hat begonnen.
Community
Im August fand wieder der Ship Showdown statt, ein jährliches, einmonatiges Event, bei dem die Community ihre Lieblingsfahrzeuge vorstellt, indem sie originelle Kreationen im Community Hub und in den sozialen Medien teilt. Das Community-Team veranstaltete zur Unterstützung des Events zwei Wettbewerbe, bei denen die 10 besten Einsendungen im Community Hub und die drei kreativsten Videos auf dem offiziellen TikTok-Kanal belohnt wurden. Nach täglichen Kopf-an-Kopf-Schlachten zwischen den 16 besten Schiffen wurde die Drake Corsair zum ultimativen Champion des Ship Showdown 2953 gekrönt. Die Community unterstützte auch das Free Fly Event, veröffentlichte Updates im New Player Guide und kuratierte Medien im Welcome Hub.
Anfang August fand der Screenshot-Wettbewerb der Arlington Gang statt, bei dem Spieler/innen nach dem Start der Mission Spotlight-Serie Screenshots einreichten.
Das Community-Team unterstützte das 22-jährige Jubiläum von Tobii sowie zahlreiche von der Community organisierte Events, darunter die Intergalaktische Industrie- und Handelsmesse und das ATMO esports Fight or Flight-Turnier, das auf der CitizenCon 2953 live zu sehen sein wird.
Im August wurden die Vorbereitungen für die CitizenCon 2953 vorangetrieben, um die Details der verschiedenen Präsentationen, das Layout und Design des Veranstaltungsortes, den Cosplay-Wettbewerb, die Community-Stände und vieles mehr festzulegen.
"Es ist vier lange Jahre her, dass wir eine CitizenCon veranstaltet haben. Egal, ob du in Los Angeles dabei bist oder von zu Hause aus zuschaust, wir können es kaum erwarten, am 21. und 22. Oktober mit dir unser gemeinsames Universum zu feiern! Haltet die Augen offen, denn wir arbeiten noch an einigen Details und werden bald mehr Informationen mit euch teilen!" Community-Team
Das Team unterstützte weiterhin Dutzende von immergrünen Veröffentlichungen (wie diesen Monatsbericht, den Postmortem usw.) und plante eine Vielzahl von zukünftigen In- und Out-of-Game-Engagements.
Außerdem nahm das Team an der Gamescom und drei Bar Citizen-Events in Köln teil.
"Der Andrang war unglaublich und hat unsere bisherigen Gamescom-Events in den Schatten gestellt. Wir haben uns sehr gefreut, so viele von euch zu treffen, sowohl altgediente Unterstützer als auch neue Piloten. Wir hoffen, euch alle bald wiederzusehen!"
Wirtschaft
Das neue Wirtschaftsteam plante seine nächsten Ziele, darunter die Neuausrichtung der Fracht und die damit verbundene Erfahrung. Außerdem begannen sie mit der Entwicklung eines Tools zur Untersuchung des aktuellen Zustands der Fracht, das auf andere Bereiche der Wirtschaft im Spiel ausgeweitet werden könnte.
Features (Arena Commander)
Das Team für die Arena-Befehlshaber-Features polierte und unterstützte die Alpha 3.20 und begann mit der zweiten Phase des Plans zur Wiederbelebung des Arena-Befehlshabers.
Neben den Patch-Arbeiten unterstützte das Technik-Team auch das neue Top-Heads-up-Display, das ab Alpha 3.20 in allen Spielmodi zu sehen sein wird.
Außerdem unterstützten sie die laufende Untersuchung zur Rückkehr der Kriegsschauplätze. Dabei ging es darum, die notwendigen Schritte zu identifizieren, um das neue Spawning-Modul mit mehreren einzigartigen Theaters of War-Features (wie Spawn-Orte und Multicrew) zu aktualisieren und in andere Spielmodi zu bringen.
Die Arbeit an der neuen Funktion "Benutzerdefinierte Lobbys" (früher "Private Matches") wurde fortgesetzt, und es wurden mehrere erfolgreiche Tests durchgeführt. Das Team konzentriert sich derzeit auf die Fertigstellung des UI-Designs und die Verknüpfung der verschiedenen Interaktionen. Die Entwickler haben auch mit der Wiederherstellung des Zuschauermoduls begonnen, mit dem Spieler/innen Spiele in benutzerdefinierten Lobbys und anderen Modi verfolgen können. Zum Beispiel können sie einem Spieler zuschauen, der in einem PvE-Spielmodus alle Respawns verloren hat.
Das Design hat mehrere Entwürfe für kommende Updates verbessert und Schauplätze in der PU und darüber hinaus für die Verwendung in Arena Commander ausgekundschaftet. Außerdem begannen sie mit der Erkundung des Kriegsschauplatzes "Kreuzweg des Verbrechens", um die Wiederherstellungsarbeiten einzuschätzen.
Das Team hat außerdem eine große Anzahl von Rückmeldungen der Evocati und PTU zum Frontend und den Spielmodi bearbeitet. Die Spielmodusauswahl im Frontend zeigt nun an, welche Modi neu sind, welche REC-Multiplikatoren haben und welche Erfolge mit ihnen verbunden sind. Die Entwicklung der Spawn-Bildschirm-Oberfläche für die Fahrzeugauswahl im Spiel wurde ebenfalls vorangetrieben und intern getestet.
Schließlich half das Team bei der Entwicklung mehrerer neuer Spielmodi, die von anderen Teams angefordert wurden, darunter ein 2v2-Modus, der auf der CitizenCon für Fight or Flight genutzt wird.
Features (Charaktere & Waffen)
Im August arbeitete das Team für Charaktere und Waffen an den Waffenposen. Wenn sich ein Spieler einer Kollisionsfläche nähert, wird die ausgerüstete Waffe angehoben, damit sie nicht durch die Geometrie schneidet. Das Team untersuchte Alternativen, bei denen die Waffe gesenkt, an den unteren Rand der Ego-Perspektive verschoben und in Richtung des Körpers gedreht wird, so dass sie diagonal über dem Bauch liegt. Das ist in bestimmten Situationen natürlicher, schränkt die Beschneidung ein und sorgt dafür, dass der Großteil der Sicht des Spielers frei bleibt, vor allem wenn er mit Bildschirmen in der Umgebung interagiert.
Auch der prozedurale Rückstoß wurde im letzten Monat weiterentwickelt. Um sicherzustellen, dass sich jede Waffe einzigartig anfühlt, wurde eine große Anzahl von Kurven an die Inhaltsersteller/innen weitergegeben.
"Diese Kurven ermöglichen es, mehrere Ebenen subtiler Bewegung und Drehung zu überlagern, um eine Vielzahl interessanter Ergebnisse zu erzielen. Es ist ein manueller Prozess, der viel Liebe zum Detail erfordert, aber er kann die Persönlichkeit einer Waffe stark beeinflussen." Eigenschaften Team
Features (Gameplay)
Das Team Gameplay Features hat seine Arbeit am Fahrzeug-Traktorstrahl fortgesetzt und ihn für die Tests der QA vorbereitet. Außerdem haben sie das im letzten Bericht erwähnte Ressourcennetzwerk weiterentwickelt und den bevorstehenden Patch-Release unterstützt.
Features (Mission)
Das Missions-Feature-Team hat den Monat damit verbracht, die anstehenden Aufgaben und Fehlerbehebungen für Alpha 3.20 zu erledigen.
Abseits des kommenden Patches wurden an der Belagerung von Orison verschiedene Verbesserungen vorgenommen, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf dem Zusammenhalt der Spieler lag. Die Entwicklung von Blockade Runner (das Nine Tails Lockdown ersetzen wird) wurde ebenfalls fortgesetzt, wobei verschiedene technische Probleme berücksichtigt und geplant wurden.
Die bestehenden Missionen "Zerstöre das Drogenlager" wurden erheblich verbessert, um sicherzustellen, dass missionskritische Gegenstände bei der Ankunft der Spieler/innen gespawnt werden. Außerdem wurden große Fortschritte bei der Modularisierung der New Player Experience gemacht, so dass sie in jeder Landezone mit dem richtigen Markup verwendet werden kann.
Die Missionen "Beweise stehlen in Kareah" und "Sendung zurückholen" gingen in die Feinschliff-Phase, in der der Ruf aufpoliert wurde. Außerdem wurde mit der Arbeit an den Schiffsrestaurierungsmissionen begonnen, bei denen die Spieler/innen Schiffe in einen verkaufsfähigen Zustand versetzen müssen. Data Heist hat ein weiteres Gate Review bestanden und wird nun intern getestet, um sicherzustellen, dass die Ziele klar sind.
"Die Mission Schiffsladungsdiebstahl/Schiffswiederbeschaffung wurde so weit wie möglich vorangetrieben, bis weitere Frachtfunktionen entwickelt werden. In der Zwischenzeit werden wir eine 'Kurier'-Version erstellen, in der kleine Gegenstände das Ziel sind." Mission Feature Team
Das Team ist mit der rufbasierten Feindseligkeit vorangekommen und hat eine Mission entwickelt, in der die Spieler/innen für die Nine Tails Gang arbeiten können. Sobald sie fertiggestellt sind, werden sie die meisten namenlosen kriminellen Missionen in Nine Tails umwandeln, bis weitere Banden hinzugefügt werden.
Der Code für die Hervorhebung und Filterung von missionskritischen Gegenständen im Inventar wurde fertiggestellt. Dies wurde an UI zur Freigabe übergeben. Schließlich wurden die Arbeiten an Ship Trespass vorangetrieben, wobei das "verschachtelte Eindringen" das größte Hindernis darstellte.
Funktionen (Fahrzeug)
Im letzten Monat hat das Team an der Fehlerbehebung und Stabilität für Alpha 3.20 und darüber hinaus gearbeitet, u. a. an der Fertigstellung der MISC-Hülle C und an kleineren Features für kommende Schiffsversionen.
Dann haben die Designer das Verhalten von Rennschiffen in der Atmosphäre angepasst, um sie näher zusammenzubringen, und mehr Bodenfahrzeuge auf das neue Physikmodell umgestellt, das ein realistischeres Verhalten als bisher ermöglicht.
Die Masse von Gegenständen der Größen 1, 2 und 3 wurde neu ausbalanciert, um die Konsistenz der Schiffsausrüstungen zu verbessern und das Traktorstrahl-Gameplay beim Entfernen und Ersetzen von Gegenständen zu optimieren. Außerdem wurden kleinere Änderungen an der Fahrzeug- und Waffenbalance vorgenommen.
Grafik, VFX-Programmierung und Planetentechnologie
Im August wurden Verbesserungen an der internen Implementierung von Temporal Super Resolution vorgenommen.
Weitere Fortschritte wurden beim Wasser gemacht, indem der Shader eine verbesserte Beleuchtung und Schaum erhielt. Auch die Arbeit an der Simulation wurde fortgesetzt, wobei die Schaumausbreitung und die Unterstützung von Geschosseinschlägen hinzugefügt wurden.
Der Prototyp des Glint-Shading-Modells wurde fertiggestellt und liegt in drei Versionen mit unterschiedlichen Leistungsmerkmalen vor. Das Team prüft nun, ob es eine davon in die Produktion übernehmen kann. Entfernte Lichter werden jetzt als winzige helle Glühwürmchen gezeichnet, die das bestehende Post-Effekt-System durchlaufen, mit dem Ziel, das traditionellere "Composite Flare"-System zu ersetzen, das keine Post-Effekte unterstützen kann.
Auf 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 ermöglicht nun eine feinere Kontrolle darüber, wie animierte Meshes importiert werden.
Das Vulkan-Subteam fügte 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 für Vulkan verfügbar ist.
Das VFX-Programmierungsteam hat das Spawnen von Rauch bei Feuer zusammen mit verschiedenen anderen Qualitätsverbesserungen implementiert, um das Feature auf einen visuell vollständigen und "ziemlich beeindruckenden" Stand zu bringen.
Schließlich wurden weitere Verbesserungen an den Blitzeffekten vorgenommen, die in Zukunft in Gaswolken zum Einsatz kommen werden.
In-Game Branding
Das In-Game Branding-Team arbeitete weiter an den Außenbereichen der unterirdischen Anlagen. Außerdem arbeiten sie eng mit EU Locations 2 an einem bevorstehenden Event zusammen und haben einige Event-bezogene Add-ons entwickelt.
Interactables
Im letzten Monat hat das Interactables-Team neue Assets für Pyros heruntergekommenen Bahnhof und verschiedene Flair-Gegenstände erstellt.
Beleuchtung
Das Beleuchtungsteam hat weiter an Pyro gearbeitet und Aufgaben für die Kolonialismus-Außenposten und die heruntergekommene Station übernommen. Außerdem arbeiteten sie an einem bevorstehenden Event.
Live Tools
Im August veröffentlichte das Live-Tools-Team eine neue Version der Crash-Handling-Pipeline, die sich jetzt in der Wartungsphase befindet.
Für das Network Operation Center von Hex arbeiteten sie an der allgemeinen Navigation, um die Lebensqualität der Hauptnutzer zu verbessern; dazu gehörte die Neugestaltung von Elementen des Disziplin-Moduls und des Entity Graph.
Standorte (EU)
Das Locations-Team hat im letzten Monat in verschiedenen Bereichen Fortschritte gemacht, darunter der heruntergekommene Bahnhof und die Kolonialismus-Außenposten für Pyro. Außerdem arbeiteten sie an der Beschilderung und den Dioramen für ein bevorstehendes Event.
Das Organics-Team baute weiter an den Planeten von Pyro, einschließlich des Laubes, während das Sandbox-Team die neuen unterirdischen Anlagen in die Greybox brachte.
Narrative
Das Narrative-Team konzentrierte sich weiterhin auf Pyro, schrieb mehrere Missionen und bastelte Strings, um neue Orte mit allem Möglichen zu bestücken, von Schildern bis hin zu Lebensmitteln. In Stanton wurde an mehreren neuen Missionstypen gearbeitet und bestehende Inhalte wurden verbessert.
Neben der immer wiederkehrenden Aufgabe, verschiedene Gegenstände und Kleidungsstücke im Spiel zu benennen und zu beschreiben, arbeitete Narrative mit Interactables an interessanten Ideen für zukünftige Erweiterungen.
Das Narrative Design Team arbeitete an den NSC-Verhaltensweisen für Pyro und untersuchte weiter, wie man das Verhalten der NSCs in den verschiedenen Landezonen einzigartig gestalten kann.
Auf der Website wurden mehrere interessante Informationen veröffentlicht, darunter ein Auszug aus "Life/Labor: The Secret History of Hurston Dynamics", einen "Whitley's Guide to the Constellation Phoenix" und mehrere neue Galactapedia-Einträge.
Das Narrative Team wird in Kürze eine neue Folge der Loremaker's Community Questions veröffentlichen, also zögere nicht, deine Fragen im speziellen Spectrum-Kanal des Teams zu stellen.
Online-Dienste
Im August hat das Team der Online-Dienste daran gearbeitet, das Design und die Vorgehensweise für die Aktualisierung mehrerer alter Backend-Sozialdienste auf gRPC abzuschließen.
Als Qualitätsverbesserung fügte das Team neue Optionen für das Sozialmenü hinzu. Spieler/innen können nun Freundschaftsanfragen und Benachrichtigungen über Freundschaftsanfragen aktivieren oder deaktivieren und auswählen, von wem sie Benachrichtigungen über Partyeinladungen und Währungstransfers erhalten.
Außerdem wurde der Disziplinierungsdienst aktualisiert, der für zukünftige Anti-Cheat- und Sanktions-Updates benötigt wird.
F&E
Im August wurde die Arbeit am temporalen Rendermodus für Atmosphäre und volumetrische Wolken fortgesetzt; es wurden verschiedene Methoden zur Korrektur oder Ablehnung des Frameverlaufs ausprobiert.
Außerdem wurde ein neues System zur Erkennung von Ausschlüssen implementiert, das im Prinzip der allgemeinen Up-Sampling-Lösung ähnelt.
Außerdem wurden verschiedene Codes aktualisiert, damit sie mit den jüngsten Verbesserungen von Gen12 funktionieren.
UI
Im Rahmen der Entwicklung von Pyro hat das UI-Team Fluff-Screens erstellt und Flash-Animationen in Fluff-Screens umgewandelt. Außerdem unterstützten sie die Missionsfunktionen bei Data Heist, indem sie den Bildschirmstil verbesserten.
VFX
Im letzten Monat hat das VFX-Team die Arbeit an verschiedenen Orten in Pyro fortgesetzt, darunter auch einige mit animierten Maschinen.
PU Monthly Report
August 2023
As we close in on Alpha 3.20’s Live release, many teams are finalizing their work on the patch’s various new features. Beyond the patch, significant progress is being made on content coming later in the year, so read on for the latest.
AI (Features)
Last month, AI reviewed perception to fix issues where NPCs wouldn’t correctly recognize that a target had died or that they’d 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.
They also revisited cover usage, polishing various functionality and animations to ensure the feature works across a range of situations and environments.
Changes 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.
Balancing was done for AI ammunition usage while maintaining reload and ammo-finding functionality to provide realistic and emergent behaviors and gameplay situations.
The 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.
AI (Tech)
Last 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.
On the boids feature mentioned in last month’s 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’re currently looking for a low-cost solution to keep agents on terrain while moving.
For 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.
They also continued to improve navigation links. Firstly, how links connect navigation triangles from different zones, which wasn’t 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.
Finally, investigation began into performance issues relating to the navigation system and pathfinder.
Animation
In August, the animators worked through a number of behavioral lines for background ambiance and flight. They also supported Tech Animation on creature skeletons that will eventually be used in the PU.
Art (Characters)
Last month, Character Art progressed with content for various upcoming events and assets for the Headhunters gang.
Alongside this, the concept artists explored additional ideas for the Headhunters and worked on a medical outfit and handoff sheets for a new flightsuit.
Art (Ships)
Last month, Ship Art completed their work on the Tumbril Storm, though they’re currently focussing on ongoing issues with the treads and how they appear. Two new variants of an existing vehicle were completed too.
An all-new ship progressed through whitebox, revealing various areas that require updating from the concept, including an increase to the interior space.
The Aopoa San'tok.yāi is almost LOD0-complete; final updates are underway, including polishing the pilot compartment. The damage pass is also in progress while the rest of the LOD0 tasks are closed out. Once complete, the team will move on to paints.
The Origin X1 is currently awaiting whitebox review, though significant changes to item locations have already been made to maximize space. Modeling of the greybox geometry began too.
Community
August saw the return of Ship Showdown, an annual month-long event where the community champions their favorite vehicles by sharing original creations on the Community Hub and social media. The Community team hosted two contests in support of the event, rewarding the top 10 submissions from the Community Hub and the top three most creative videos on the official TikTok channel. After daily head-to-head battles between the top 16 ships, the Drake Corsair was crowned the Ultimate Champion of Ship Showdown 2953. Community also supported the Free Fly event, posted updates on the New Player Guide, and curated media on the Welcome Hub.
Early August saw the conclusion of the Arlington Gang Screenshot contest, where players submitted screenshots following the launch of the Mission Spotlight series.
The Community team then supported Tobii’s 22nd anniversary alongside numerous community-driven events, including the Intergalactic Industry & Trade Fair, and the ATMO esports Fight or Flight tournament, which will conclude live at CitizenCon 2953.
With CitizenCon 2953 approaching, much of August was also spent ramping up preparations, with a focus on finalizing the details of the various presentations, venue layout and design, Cosplay Contest, Community Booths, and much more.
“It's been four long years since we've had a physical CitizenCon, so whether you're joining us in Los Angeles or watching from home, we can't wait to celebrate our shared universe with you on October 21 and 22! Keep your eyes peeled, as we’re finalizing some details and will share more information with you very soon!” Community Team
The team continued to support dozens of evergreen publishes (such as this Monthly Report, the postmortem, etc.) alongside planning for a variety of future in and out-of-game engagements to come.
Lastly, the team attended Gamescom and a trio of Bar Citizen events in Cologne, Germany.
“The turnout was unbelievable, eclipsing our Gamescom events in the past. We were so happy to meet so many of you, veteran backers and fresh pilots alike. We hope to see you all again soon!”
Economy
The new Economy team planned their upcoming goals, including rebalancing cargo and the related experience. They also began building a tool to investigate the current state of cargo, which could be expanded to other areas of the in-game economy.
Features (Arena Commander)
The Arena Commander Feature team polished and supported Alpha 3.20 while beginning stage two of the Arena Commander revitalization plan.
Alongside patch work, the Engineering team supported the new top heads-up display, which will feature in all game modes from Alpha 3.20.
They also assisted the ongoing investigation into the return of Theaters of War. This involved identifying the steps needed to update the new spawning module with several unique Theaters of War features (such as spawn locations and multicrew) and bring them into other game modes.
Work continued on the new Custom Lobbies feature (previously Private Matches), with several successful tests conducted. The team are currently focussing on finalizing the UI design and hooking up the various interactions. Engineering began restoring the Spectator Module too, which will allow players to spectate matches in Custom Lobbies and other modes. For example, spectating a player who has lost all their respawns in a PvE game mode.
Design enhanced several outlines for upcoming updates and scouted locations from the PU and beyond for use in Arena Commander. They also began investigating the Theaters of War location Crossroads of Crime to help estimate restoration efforts.
The team also addressed a large collection of feedback from the Evocati and PTU regarding the frontend and game modes. The frontend game mode selection now shows which modes are new, which have REC multipliers, and which have achievements associated with them. Design also progressed with the spawn-screen UI for in-game vehicle selection, which began internal testing.
Finally, the team helped create several new game modes requested by other teams, including a 2v2 mode that will host Fight or Flight at CitizenCon.
Features (Characters & Weapons)
August saw the Characters & Weapons Feature team working on weapon poses. Currently, when a player approaches a collision surface, their equipped weapon is raised to avoid clipping through the geometry. The team explored alternatives where the weapon is lowered, moved to the bottom of the first-person view, and rotated toward the body so that it lies diagonally across the abdomen. This is more natural in certain situations, limits clipping, and ensures the majority of the player's view is unobscured, particularly when interacting with screens in the environment.
Procedural recoil also progressed last month. To ensure that the feel of each weapon can be tweaked to make it feel unique, a large number of curves were exposed to the content creators.
“These curves allow multiple layers of subtle movement and rotation to be overlaid to create a wide range of interesting results. It is a bit of a manual process and requires significant attention to detail, but it can add a lot to the personality of a weapon.” Features Team
Features (Gameplay)
Gameplay Features continued their ongoing work on the vehicle tractor beam feature, readying it for testing by QA. They also progressed with the Resource Network mentioned in last month’s report and supported the upcoming patch release.
Features (Mission)
The Mission Feature team spent the month working through their upcoming deliverables and bug fixing for Alpha 3.20.
Away from the upcoming patch, Siege of Orison received various improvements ahead of a future release, with the main focus being keeping players together. Development of Blockade Runner (which will replace Nine Tails Lockdown) continued too, with various technical issues considered and planned for.
Significant improvements were made to the existing Destroy Drug Stash missions to ensure mission-critical items are spawned when the player arrives. They also made great progress in modularizing the New Player Experience so that it can be used in any landing zone with the correct markup.
The Steal Evidence at Kareah and Retrieve Consignment missions entered the polish phase, with reputation being hooked up. Work also began on ship-restoration missions, which will require players to restore ships to a saleable condition. Data Heist passed another gate review and will enter internal playtesting to ensure the objectives are clear.
“The Ship Cargo Steal/Recover Hauling mission has been taken as far as it can until further cargo features are developed. In the meantime, we will make a ‘courier’ version in which small items are the objective.” Mission Feature Team
The team progressed with reputation-based hostility, devising a mission that allows players to work for the Nine Tails gang. Once completed, they’ll convert most of the nameless criminal missions to Nine Tails until further gangs are added.
Code work was completed on the highlighting and filtering of mission-critical items in the inventory. This was handed to UI for their pass. Finally, tasks for Ship Trespass progressed, with ‘nested trespassing’ being the main thing holding it back.
Features (Vehicle)
Last month, the team assisted with bug fixing and stability for Alpha 3.20 and beyond, including getting the MISC Hull C ready for release and completing smaller feature work for upcoming ship releases.
The designers then tuned how racing ships perform in-atmosphere to bring them closer together and converted more ground vehicles to the new physics model, which allows for more realistic behavior than before.
The mass of Size 1, 2, and 3 items were rebalanced for better consistency across ship loadouts and to improve the tractor beam gameplay of removing and replacing items. Smaller vehicle and weapon balance tweaks were also made.
Graphics, VFX Programming & Planet Tech
In August, improvements were made to the internal implementation of Temporal Super Resolution.
Further 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.
The 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.
On 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.
The 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.
The VFX Programming team implemented smoke spawning on fire along with various other quality improvements to bring the feature to a visually complete and “rather impressive” state.
Finally, further improvements to lightning effects were made, which will be used in the future within gas clouds.
In-Game Branding
The In-Game Branding team continued to progress with the underground facility exteriors. They’re also working closely with EU Locations 2 on an upcoming event and progressed with some event-related add-ons.
Interactables
Last month saw the Interactables team create new assets for Pyro’s rundown station alongside various Flair items.
Lighting
The Lighting team continued to contribute to Pyro, working on tasks for the colonialism outposts and rundown station. They also worked on an upcoming event.
Live Tools
In August, the Live Tools team released a new version of the crash-handling pipeline, which is now in the maintenance phase.
For Hex’s Network Operation Center, they worked on general navigation to improve the quality of life for its main users; this included redesigning elements of the discipline module and Entity Graph.
Locations (EU)
The Locations team progressed across various areas last month, including the rundown station and colonialism outposts for Pyro. They also worked on signage and dioramas for an upcoming event.
The Organics team continued to build Pyro’s planets, including foliage, while the Sandbox team moved the new underground facilities through greybox.
Narrative
The Narrative team continued to focus on Pyro, writing multiple missions and crafting strings to populate new locations with everything from signage to food items. In Stanton, several new mission types were worked on and improvements were made to existing content.
Alongside the evergreen tasks of naming and describing various in-game items and wearables, Narrative worked with Interactables on interesting ideas for future additions.
The Narrative Design team worked on NPC behaviors for Pyro and continued to explore how to make NPC behaviors feel unique across the various landing zones.
On the website, several interesting pieces of lore were published, including an excerpt from “Life/Labor: The Secret History of Hurston Dynamics,” a “Whitley’s Guide to the Constellation Phoenix,” and several new Galactapedia entries.
The Narrative team will have a new installment of Loremaker’s Community Questions coming up soon, so don’t hesitate to ask your questions in the team’s dedicated Spectrum channel.
Online Services
In August, the Online Service team worked toward finalizing the design and approach for updating several legacy backend social services to gRPC.
As a quality-of-life update, the team added new Social menu options, with players now able to enable or disable friend requests and friend-request notifications, and choose who they receive party invite notifications and currency transfers from.
Updates were also made to the discipline service, which is necessary for future anti-cheat enforcement and sanction updates.
R&D
In August, work on the temporal render mode for atmosphere and volumetric clouds continued; various methods to rectify or reject frame history were experimented with.
Furthermore, a new disocclusion detection system to reject history was implemented that, in spirit, is similar to the general up-sampling solution.
Additionally, various code was updated to work with recent Gen12 improvements.
UI
As part of the development of Pyro, the UI team created fluff screens and converted flash animations into fluff screens. They also supported Mission Features on Data Heist by uplifting the screen style.
VFX
Last month, the VFX team continued working on various Pyro locations, including some with animated machinery.
August 2023
As we close in on Alpha 3.20’s Live release, many teams are finalizing their work on the patch’s various new features. Beyond the patch, significant progress is being made on content coming later in the year, so read on for the latest.
AI (Features)
Last month, AI reviewed perception to fix issues where NPCs wouldn’t correctly recognize that a target had died or that they’d 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.
They also revisited cover usage, polishing various functionality and animations to ensure the feature works across a range of situations and environments.
Changes 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.
Balancing was done for AI ammunition usage while maintaining reload and ammo-finding functionality to provide realistic and emergent behaviors and gameplay situations.
The 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.
AI (Tech)
Last 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.
On the boids feature mentioned in last month’s 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’re currently looking for a low-cost solution to keep agents on terrain while moving.
For 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.
They also continued to improve navigation links. Firstly, how links connect navigation triangles from different zones, which wasn’t 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.
Finally, investigation began into performance issues relating to the navigation system and pathfinder.
Animation
In August, the animators worked through a number of behavioral lines for background ambiance and flight. They also supported Tech Animation on creature skeletons that will eventually be used in the PU.
Art (Characters)
Last month, Character Art progressed with content for various upcoming events and assets for the Headhunters gang.
Alongside this, the concept artists explored additional ideas for the Headhunters and worked on a medical outfit and handoff sheets for a new flightsuit.
Art (Ships)
Last month, Ship Art completed their work on the Tumbril Storm, though they’re currently focussing on ongoing issues with the treads and how they appear. Two new variants of an existing vehicle were completed too.
An all-new ship progressed through whitebox, revealing various areas that require updating from the concept, including an increase to the interior space.
The Aopoa San'tok.yāi is almost LOD0-complete; final updates are underway, including polishing the pilot compartment. The damage pass is also in progress while the rest of the LOD0 tasks are closed out. Once complete, the team will move on to paints.
The Origin X1 is currently awaiting whitebox review, though significant changes to item locations have already been made to maximize space. Modeling of the greybox geometry began too.
Community
August saw the return of Ship Showdown, an annual month-long event where the community champions their favorite vehicles by sharing original creations on the Community Hub and social media. The Community team hosted two contests in support of the event, rewarding the top 10 submissions from the Community Hub and the top three most creative videos on the official TikTok channel. After daily head-to-head battles between the top 16 ships, the Drake Corsair was crowned the Ultimate Champion of Ship Showdown 2953. Community also supported the Free Fly event, posted updates on the New Player Guide, and curated media on the Welcome Hub.
Early August saw the conclusion of the Arlington Gang Screenshot contest, where players submitted screenshots following the launch of the Mission Spotlight series.
The Community team then supported Tobii’s 22nd anniversary alongside numerous community-driven events, including the Intergalactic Industry & Trade Fair, and the ATMO esports Fight or Flight tournament, which will conclude live at CitizenCon 2953.
With CitizenCon 2953 approaching, much of August was also spent ramping up preparations, with a focus on finalizing the details of the various presentations, venue layout and design, Cosplay Contest, Community Booths, and much more.
“It's been four long years since we've had a physical CitizenCon, so whether you're joining us in Los Angeles or watching from home, we can't wait to celebrate our shared universe with you on October 21 and 22! Keep your eyes peeled, as we’re finalizing some details and will share more information with you very soon!” Community Team
The team continued to support dozens of evergreen publishes (such as this Monthly Report, the postmortem, etc.) alongside planning for a variety of future in and out-of-game engagements to come.
Lastly, the team attended Gamescom and a trio of Bar Citizen events in Cologne, Germany.
“The turnout was unbelievable, eclipsing our Gamescom events in the past. We were so happy to meet so many of you, veteran backers and fresh pilots alike. We hope to see you all again soon!”
Economy
The new Economy team planned their upcoming goals, including rebalancing cargo and the related experience. They also began building a tool to investigate the current state of cargo, which could be expanded to other areas of the in-game economy.
Features (Arena Commander)
The Arena Commander Feature team polished and supported Alpha 3.20 while beginning stage two of the Arena Commander revitalization plan.
Alongside patch work, the Engineering team supported the new top heads-up display, which will feature in all game modes from Alpha 3.20.
They also assisted the ongoing investigation into the return of Theaters of War. This involved identifying the steps needed to update the new spawning module with several unique Theaters of War features (such as spawn locations and multicrew) and bring them into other game modes.
Work continued on the new Custom Lobbies feature (previously Private Matches), with several successful tests conducted. The team are currently focussing on finalizing the UI design and hooking up the various interactions. Engineering began restoring the Spectator Module too, which will allow players to spectate matches in Custom Lobbies and other modes. For example, spectating a player who has lost all their respawns in a PvE game mode.
Design enhanced several outlines for upcoming updates and scouted locations from the PU and beyond for use in Arena Commander. They also began investigating the Theaters of War location Crossroads of Crime to help estimate restoration efforts.
The team also addressed a large collection of feedback from the Evocati and PTU regarding the frontend and game modes. The frontend game mode selection now shows which modes are new, which have REC multipliers, and which have achievements associated with them. Design also progressed with the spawn-screen UI for in-game vehicle selection, which began internal testing.
Finally, the team helped create several new game modes requested by other teams, including a 2v2 mode that will host Fight or Flight at CitizenCon.
Features (Characters & Weapons)
August saw the Characters & Weapons Feature team working on weapon poses. Currently, when a player approaches a collision surface, their equipped weapon is raised to avoid clipping through the geometry. The team explored alternatives where the weapon is lowered, moved to the bottom of the first-person view, and rotated toward the body so that it lies diagonally across the abdomen. This is more natural in certain situations, limits clipping, and ensures the majority of the player's view is unobscured, particularly when interacting with screens in the environment.
Procedural recoil also progressed last month. To ensure that the feel of each weapon can be tweaked to make it feel unique, a large number of curves were exposed to the content creators.
“These curves allow multiple layers of subtle movement and rotation to be overlaid to create a wide range of interesting results. It is a bit of a manual process and requires significant attention to detail, but it can add a lot to the personality of a weapon.” Features Team
Features (Gameplay)
Gameplay Features continued their ongoing work on the vehicle tractor beam feature, readying it for testing by QA. They also progressed with the Resource Network mentioned in last month’s report and supported the upcoming patch release.
Features (Mission)
The Mission Feature team spent the month working through their upcoming deliverables and bug fixing for Alpha 3.20.
Away from the upcoming patch, Siege of Orison received various improvements ahead of a future release, with the main focus being keeping players together. Development of Blockade Runner (which will replace Nine Tails Lockdown) continued too, with various technical issues considered and planned for.
Significant improvements were made to the existing Destroy Drug Stash missions to ensure mission-critical items are spawned when the player arrives. They also made great progress in modularizing the New Player Experience so that it can be used in any landing zone with the correct markup.
The Steal Evidence at Kareah and Retrieve Consignment missions entered the polish phase, with reputation being hooked up. Work also began on ship-restoration missions, which will require players to restore ships to a saleable condition. Data Heist passed another gate review and will enter internal playtesting to ensure the objectives are clear.
“The Ship Cargo Steal/Recover Hauling mission has been taken as far as it can until further cargo features are developed. In the meantime, we will make a ‘courier’ version in which small items are the objective.” Mission Feature Team
The team progressed with reputation-based hostility, devising a mission that allows players to work for the Nine Tails gang. Once completed, they’ll convert most of the nameless criminal missions to Nine Tails until further gangs are added.
Code work was completed on the highlighting and filtering of mission-critical items in the inventory. This was handed to UI for their pass. Finally, tasks for Ship Trespass progressed, with ‘nested trespassing’ being the main thing holding it back.
Features (Vehicle)
Last month, the team assisted with bug fixing and stability for Alpha 3.20 and beyond, including getting the MISC Hull C ready for release and completing smaller feature work for upcoming ship releases.
The designers then tuned how racing ships perform in-atmosphere to bring them closer together and converted more ground vehicles to the new physics model, which allows for more realistic behavior than before.
The mass of Size 1, 2, and 3 items were rebalanced for better consistency across ship loadouts and to improve the tractor beam gameplay of removing and replacing items. Smaller vehicle and weapon balance tweaks were also made.
Graphics, VFX Programming & Planet Tech
In August, improvements were made to the internal implementation of Temporal Super Resolution.
Further 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.
The 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.
On 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.
The 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.
The VFX Programming team implemented smoke spawning on fire along with various other quality improvements to bring the feature to a visually complete and “rather impressive” state.
Finally, further improvements to lightning effects were made, which will be used in the future within gas clouds.
In-Game Branding
The In-Game Branding team continued to progress with the underground facility exteriors. They’re also working closely with EU Locations 2 on an upcoming event and progressed with some event-related add-ons.
Interactables
Last month saw the Interactables team create new assets for Pyro’s rundown station alongside various Flair items.
Lighting
The Lighting team continued to contribute to Pyro, working on tasks for the colonialism outposts and rundown station. They also worked on an upcoming event.
Live Tools
In August, the Live Tools team released a new version of the crash-handling pipeline, which is now in the maintenance phase.
For Hex’s Network Operation Center, they worked on general navigation to improve the quality of life for its main users; this included redesigning elements of the discipline module and Entity Graph.
Locations (EU)
The Locations team progressed across various areas last month, including the rundown station and colonialism outposts for Pyro. They also worked on signage and dioramas for an upcoming event.
The Organics team continued to build Pyro’s planets, including foliage, while the Sandbox team moved the new underground facilities through greybox.
Narrative
The Narrative team continued to focus on Pyro, writing multiple missions and crafting strings to populate new locations with everything from signage to food items. In Stanton, several new mission types were worked on and improvements were made to existing content.
Alongside the evergreen tasks of naming and describing various in-game items and wearables, Narrative worked with Interactables on interesting ideas for future additions.
The Narrative Design team worked on NPC behaviors for Pyro and continued to explore how to make NPC behaviors feel unique across the various landing zones.
On the website, several interesting pieces of lore were published, including an excerpt from “Life/Labor: The Secret History of Hurston Dynamics,” a “Whitley’s Guide to the Constellation Phoenix,” and several new Galactapedia entries.
The Narrative team will have a new installment of Loremaker’s Community Questions coming up soon, so don’t hesitate to ask your questions in the team’s dedicated Spectrum channel.
Online Services
In August, the Online Service team worked toward finalizing the design and approach for updating several legacy backend social services to gRPC.
As a quality-of-life update, the team added new Social menu options, with players now able to enable or disable friend requests and friend-request notifications, and choose who they receive party invite notifications and currency transfers from.
Updates were also made to the discipline service, which is necessary for future anti-cheat enforcement and sanction updates.
R&D
In August, work on the temporal render mode for atmosphere and volumetric clouds continued; various methods to rectify or reject frame history were experimented with.
Furthermore, a new disocclusion detection system to reject history was implemented that, in spirit, is similar to the general up-sampling solution.
Additionally, various code was updated to work with recent Gen12 improvements.
UI
As part of the development of Pyro, the UI team created fluff screens and converted flash animations into fluff screens. They also supported Mission Features on Data Heist by uplifting the screen style.
VFX
Last month, the VFX team continued working on various Pyro locations, including some with animated machinery.
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Metadata
- CIG ID
- 19460
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- Undefined
- Category
- Undefined
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- Published
- 2 years ago (2023-09-13T22:00:00+00:00)