Squadron 42 Monthly Report: January 2019
Undefined Undefined Monthly ReportsContent
English
This is a cross-post of the report that was recently sent out via the monthly Squadron 42 newsletter. We’re publishing this a second time as a Comm-Link to make it easier for the community to reference back to, and plan on following this process for future Squadron 42 Monthly Reports.
Attention Recruits,
What you are about to read is the latest information on the continuing development of Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).
Read on for classified details from every corner of the planet, collected over the course of the last month, concerning Squadron 42-related work. The information contained in this communication is extremely sensitive and it is of paramount importance that it does not fall into the wrong hands. Purge all records after reading.
Over and out,
UEE Naval High Command
AI
The AI Team worked on the perception system, which was expanded to handle damage stimuli. AI characters now have proper perception of damage, so they can figure out the location of the source and will behave accordingly by tracking enemies and updating the knowledge they have about them. Progress was made on the Usable Builder, a tool that’s used to create and debug all usables. It allows the team to easily visualize usables, edit their properties, and test the different use channels. For the mission system, they exposed several new functionalities to the designers, such as a variety of task nodes, new variable types, and new core functionalities. A ‘group’ variable was introduced that can automatically be filled, for example, when spawning AI characters so that designers can easily track the dynamic elements they’re interested in. They’re currently implementing global callbacks to help designers track environmental events specific to the data they’re interested in without the need to explicitly create variables for each entity.
Characters
The new year began with Character Art supporting the SQ42 iteration of the DNA feature, which allows players to create their own unique avatar to play through the game as. They also began modeling various other characters and clothing, including the Basilisk Advocacy Agent armor. The character artists continue to create new outfits and update old ones to tie into specific in-game events.
Cinematics
The Cinematics Team completed a master and subsequence workflow for Track View sequences, which had become a necessity due to how the game is structured around object containers. They can now work on both master and multiple subsequence scenes at the same time. The groundwork was laid for the most crucial step in the cross-object-container cinematic pipeline: accessibility of interior sequences and their entity nodes from an exterior master level. This means the team is still able to work on interior scenes (e.g. a Bengal carrier’s bridge) while the ship is flying around in battle and banking on a navigation spline. This is crucial for camera movement as lighting and exterior vistas play a huge role in how bridge scenes appear. It also makes it easier to adjust the timing on a master sequence that brings together interior and exterior subsequences. A key sequence was brought into the current Shubin Coil pocket, as the placement of asteroids and clouds had changed due to the evolution of gas cloud tech, so there was a need to adjust framing and lighting. Time was spent working on fire track improvements with the engineers, as weapons were overheating during heavy scene work and back and forth timeline scrubbing. This was addressed, and the team can now endlessly fire the Idris’ turrets at targets without any issues. Another change allows them to adjust the weapon fire-rate, so cinematics can be independent of whatever design changes may come in the future. Some scenes were adjusted in the Shubin Foundry, Gainey base, and other places across the game. Camera passes for other key scenes were completed, including one involving the Vanduul. Priority planning was also finished for scenes scheduled to finish in the first quarter of 2019.
Engineering
The US Engine Team made improvements to crash handling, including various thread safety improvements to enable more robust handling of obscure crashes, and the addition of extra information into minidumps to allow the better debugging of fibers. In the UK, the Actor Feature Team started work on a new visual tool for setting up carriable items. Similar to the usables editor tool, it’s designed to lessen the time it takes to add new items to the game and make it easier to debug when testing picking, carrying, and inspecting. They also improved the vault and mantling mechanic by making it work better with different height obstacles and angles, automatically detecting whether to vault or mantle, and enabling mantle when crouched. Video comm calls can now be triggered by the track view editor, which allows video comms with NPC characters to be easily implemented within larger cinematic sequences. Because track view gives control over things like the camera, lighting, and particle effects, it offers much more control over how comms are presented. Another feature implemented for the track-view-triggered video comms was to allow pre-rendered video to be played in place of any animation. Primarily, this is used for development, so the team can see placeholder video while waiting for final character animations to be supplied, but it can also be used as part of the game if a complicated video would be prohibitive to render dynamically. On the AI side, the team adapted the ship’s AI to work with the New Flight Model and in the process took advantage of the changed handling to allow closer and more rewarding dogfighting.
Environment Art
Lighting work continued on the Javelin, with the first takes done for several of the states the ship cycles through as the story progresses. The blend shader is now fully up and running and rolled out to the team, giving them far more opportunity to texture large assets while maintaining pixel density. Two key areas seen within the campaign are now approaching greybox completion and are in the final weeks of ‘soft-gate’ review (playable and traversable spaces with close-to-final geometry). They’ll then roll into ‘hard-gate’ review once all feedback is accounted for. As mentioned before the holidays, significant effort has been put into destructible and deformable objects that will be placed around every area of the campaign. This work is currently being rolled out into a single ‘hero’ area to give the team a better idea of the overall costs involved and to help them establish a visual language understood by the player (e.g. allowing the player to easily recognize which items can be destroyed, deformed, or moved). Work continues on Archon Station. With its exterior ‘watertight’, the team is now tying up loose ends where sections of the exterior may intersect with the interior. While easy to hide things like this, the entire station is being constructed with correct interior and exterior dimensions as the ships are. Transport systems are being placed into Archon Station, with final art for each section currently being worked on.
Graphics
The Graphics Team’s SQ42 focus has been predominately on performance: This included fixing various multi-CPU issues which were limiting the performance by sometimes forcing a CPU to wait for the other due to the way they accessed specific areas of memory. The CPU-intensive technique used to clip volumetric fog to interior rooms has been completely replaced with a GPU compute shader which frees up further CPU time. The final improvement was to re-write how they merge drawcalls, with the aim to increase efficiency and support multi-threading. This will take load from the CPU used for the submission of GPU work and move it to the graphics driver. On top of the performance work, the team made various improvements to the gas cloud tech, such as unifying the gas cloud and standard lighting systems. They also finalized the signed-distance-field tech to allow the game code to efficiently query the shape of the gas cloud to simulate pressure, turbulence, and procedurally spawn natural-looking lightning.
Level Design
To streamline communication between the numerous feature teams, the Design Team has been split into four: One is responsible for the FPS-heavy chapters and will work closely with the actor and AI feature teams. A spaceflight team will work with the Ship AI and New Flight Model/QT team, and a dedicated social team will focus on all social AI, usables, and NPC activity. Lastly, the tech team will work alongside the gameplay story and cinematic teams to prepare motion-capture and conversations. This change has not altered the chapter responsibilities as each still has a design owner but has improved communication and allows for more-focused meetings and less wasted time. This new format is the best way to facilitate the new feature work coming in from sprint work that now has direct SQ42 use cases.
Narrative
The Narrative Team returned from the holidays and jumped straight into planning for the first quarter of the year. They also started work on a handful of additional lines and story points. The team is also excited to welcome a new producer to the group; not only will he help keep the team organized, he’ll also act as the point of contact for other teams to partner with.
Props
The SQ42 Props Team has been working towards finalizing item sub-sets while continuing to assist the Gameplay Story Team by creating props used in motion capture shoots and generally making assets animation-friendly.
QA
QA testers built tools to help test multiple aspects of expansive levels more effectively. The AI feature tester performed regular checks on the various AI in the SQ42 chapters, focused on Cinematic scenes and delivered additional debug info for any reported issues.
System Design
System Design worked with the SQ42 Mission Team to explore the specific needs of FPS AI for the campaign, and research was done on how to improve the overall accuracy of FPS AI. Gunship behavior was modified to enable ships to circle targets and bring the maximum number of turrets to bear. Fighter behaviors were also modified to get the most out of the New Flight Model.
Tech Animation
Tech Animation supported the various teams working on female animations with tool development, asset conversion, and batch processes. The team also created new head assets for mission givers while refining current ones. The team’s currently refining head assets at the foundation of player face customization. Additionally, they created a raft of new tools to help skinning assets. This is a ground-up rework of the rudimentary tools already available in the authoring packages and will provide greater speed and flexibility to the Technical Art Team in their daily workload. New weapon attachments are starting to make an appearance internally and have required the authoring of a new set of weapon systems and a tools base that can support attachments in the animation packages.
Tech Art
Tech Art made steps to finalize the implementation and pipeline of the new facial customization tech, which was previewed at CitizenCon 2018. They switched the system’s source data format from the CDF-based system (which was used during R&D) to the newer component-based loadout currently used throughout the game. This system allows players’ customized faces to be stored persistently in the database and the corresponding data packets to transfer efficiently over the network and be applied to the correct avatar at runtime. Likewise, it allows all NPCs (every shopkeeper, security guard, civilian and eventually mission givers) to have a unique face built internally by our designers. While R&D on the new ‘DNA’ system was done using male faces, the ‘face pool’ for female characters is being populated and is planned to come online at the same time. Tech Art also supported the Weapons Team with animation debugging, weapon rigging, in-engine setup, and debugging multiple render and resource compiler issues. They added a new system for weapons in Maya to allow animators to quickly attach different attachments, making it easier for them to author specific animations. They also updated the underlying metasystem in the weapon rigs to help the animators export weapons without double transforms on the root or magazine controls. Tech Art also supported the Cinematic Animation Team with various new tools and helped them debug several issues with animations in Maya and the engine. They continued to implement animations into Mannequin to make them available for the designers. They also updated the way cinematic animations are listed for different skeletons to support female players.
Vehicle Features
The Vehicle Team spent time with SQ42 Design to implement various Subsumption callbacks for mission-specific requirements. They also completed modifications to the vehicle targeting system so that external items, such as ship engines, can be specifically targeted. Improvements to ship combat systems continued via automated gimbals, HUD improvements to support Ping & Scanning, and the vehicle ‘XML to DataForge’ migration began. Also, a vehicle gimbal aim assist feature is nearing completion.
VFX
VFX starting to focus on quality-of-life enhancements to their toolset. For example, a simple interface change with the option to reset an emitter strength curve with the click of a button, instead of having to manually delete each key. Although seemingly a minor thing, it makes a huge difference to productivity in the long run. They continued to work on gas cloud tech, working even more closely with the art and design teams to make sure it provides them with everything they need to build something as incredible (and huge) as The Coil! This also included continued iteration on lightning effects, making use of the new lightning editor which speeds up the workflow compared to the previous XML set up. They also began their first pass on the Xi’an ballistic rocket launcher because the trickiest part of this weapon is getting the balance right between traditional ballistic effects and the overtly-sci-fi Xi’an effects.
Weapons
The Weapon Art Team worked on the Multi-Tool rework, Kastak Arms Ravager-212, and the level 2 and 3 upgrades for the Hurston Dynamics Laser Repeaters. They also made minor adjustments to iron sights on a handful of weapons to improve the sight picture and make them more user-friendly. They completed work on the Behring Sawbuck repeaters and kicked off work on Gemini S71 assault rifle and Kastak Arms Coda pistol.
Covert Intel
WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH…
Attention Recruits,
What you are about to read is the latest information on the continuing development of Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).
Read on for classified details from every corner of the planet, collected over the course of the last month, concerning Squadron 42-related work. The information contained in this communication is extremely sensitive and it is of paramount importance that it does not fall into the wrong hands. Purge all records after reading.
Over and out,
UEE Naval High Command
AI
The AI Team worked on the perception system, which was expanded to handle damage stimuli. AI characters now have proper perception of damage, so they can figure out the location of the source and will behave accordingly by tracking enemies and updating the knowledge they have about them. Progress was made on the Usable Builder, a tool that’s used to create and debug all usables. It allows the team to easily visualize usables, edit their properties, and test the different use channels. For the mission system, they exposed several new functionalities to the designers, such as a variety of task nodes, new variable types, and new core functionalities. A ‘group’ variable was introduced that can automatically be filled, for example, when spawning AI characters so that designers can easily track the dynamic elements they’re interested in. They’re currently implementing global callbacks to help designers track environmental events specific to the data they’re interested in without the need to explicitly create variables for each entity.
Characters
The new year began with Character Art supporting the SQ42 iteration of the DNA feature, which allows players to create their own unique avatar to play through the game as. They also began modeling various other characters and clothing, including the Basilisk Advocacy Agent armor. The character artists continue to create new outfits and update old ones to tie into specific in-game events.
Cinematics
The Cinematics Team completed a master and subsequence workflow for Track View sequences, which had become a necessity due to how the game is structured around object containers. They can now work on both master and multiple subsequence scenes at the same time. The groundwork was laid for the most crucial step in the cross-object-container cinematic pipeline: accessibility of interior sequences and their entity nodes from an exterior master level. This means the team is still able to work on interior scenes (e.g. a Bengal carrier’s bridge) while the ship is flying around in battle and banking on a navigation spline. This is crucial for camera movement as lighting and exterior vistas play a huge role in how bridge scenes appear. It also makes it easier to adjust the timing on a master sequence that brings together interior and exterior subsequences. A key sequence was brought into the current Shubin Coil pocket, as the placement of asteroids and clouds had changed due to the evolution of gas cloud tech, so there was a need to adjust framing and lighting. Time was spent working on fire track improvements with the engineers, as weapons were overheating during heavy scene work and back and forth timeline scrubbing. This was addressed, and the team can now endlessly fire the Idris’ turrets at targets without any issues. Another change allows them to adjust the weapon fire-rate, so cinematics can be independent of whatever design changes may come in the future. Some scenes were adjusted in the Shubin Foundry, Gainey base, and other places across the game. Camera passes for other key scenes were completed, including one involving the Vanduul. Priority planning was also finished for scenes scheduled to finish in the first quarter of 2019.
Engineering
The US Engine Team made improvements to crash handling, including various thread safety improvements to enable more robust handling of obscure crashes, and the addition of extra information into minidumps to allow the better debugging of fibers. In the UK, the Actor Feature Team started work on a new visual tool for setting up carriable items. Similar to the usables editor tool, it’s designed to lessen the time it takes to add new items to the game and make it easier to debug when testing picking, carrying, and inspecting. They also improved the vault and mantling mechanic by making it work better with different height obstacles and angles, automatically detecting whether to vault or mantle, and enabling mantle when crouched. Video comm calls can now be triggered by the track view editor, which allows video comms with NPC characters to be easily implemented within larger cinematic sequences. Because track view gives control over things like the camera, lighting, and particle effects, it offers much more control over how comms are presented. Another feature implemented for the track-view-triggered video comms was to allow pre-rendered video to be played in place of any animation. Primarily, this is used for development, so the team can see placeholder video while waiting for final character animations to be supplied, but it can also be used as part of the game if a complicated video would be prohibitive to render dynamically. On the AI side, the team adapted the ship’s AI to work with the New Flight Model and in the process took advantage of the changed handling to allow closer and more rewarding dogfighting.
Environment Art
Lighting work continued on the Javelin, with the first takes done for several of the states the ship cycles through as the story progresses. The blend shader is now fully up and running and rolled out to the team, giving them far more opportunity to texture large assets while maintaining pixel density. Two key areas seen within the campaign are now approaching greybox completion and are in the final weeks of ‘soft-gate’ review (playable and traversable spaces with close-to-final geometry). They’ll then roll into ‘hard-gate’ review once all feedback is accounted for. As mentioned before the holidays, significant effort has been put into destructible and deformable objects that will be placed around every area of the campaign. This work is currently being rolled out into a single ‘hero’ area to give the team a better idea of the overall costs involved and to help them establish a visual language understood by the player (e.g. allowing the player to easily recognize which items can be destroyed, deformed, or moved). Work continues on Archon Station. With its exterior ‘watertight’, the team is now tying up loose ends where sections of the exterior may intersect with the interior. While easy to hide things like this, the entire station is being constructed with correct interior and exterior dimensions as the ships are. Transport systems are being placed into Archon Station, with final art for each section currently being worked on.
Graphics
The Graphics Team’s SQ42 focus has been predominately on performance: This included fixing various multi-CPU issues which were limiting the performance by sometimes forcing a CPU to wait for the other due to the way they accessed specific areas of memory. The CPU-intensive technique used to clip volumetric fog to interior rooms has been completely replaced with a GPU compute shader which frees up further CPU time. The final improvement was to re-write how they merge drawcalls, with the aim to increase efficiency and support multi-threading. This will take load from the CPU used for the submission of GPU work and move it to the graphics driver. On top of the performance work, the team made various improvements to the gas cloud tech, such as unifying the gas cloud and standard lighting systems. They also finalized the signed-distance-field tech to allow the game code to efficiently query the shape of the gas cloud to simulate pressure, turbulence, and procedurally spawn natural-looking lightning.
Level Design
To streamline communication between the numerous feature teams, the Design Team has been split into four: One is responsible for the FPS-heavy chapters and will work closely with the actor and AI feature teams. A spaceflight team will work with the Ship AI and New Flight Model/QT team, and a dedicated social team will focus on all social AI, usables, and NPC activity. Lastly, the tech team will work alongside the gameplay story and cinematic teams to prepare motion-capture and conversations. This change has not altered the chapter responsibilities as each still has a design owner but has improved communication and allows for more-focused meetings and less wasted time. This new format is the best way to facilitate the new feature work coming in from sprint work that now has direct SQ42 use cases.
Narrative
The Narrative Team returned from the holidays and jumped straight into planning for the first quarter of the year. They also started work on a handful of additional lines and story points. The team is also excited to welcome a new producer to the group; not only will he help keep the team organized, he’ll also act as the point of contact for other teams to partner with.
Props
The SQ42 Props Team has been working towards finalizing item sub-sets while continuing to assist the Gameplay Story Team by creating props used in motion capture shoots and generally making assets animation-friendly.
QA
QA testers built tools to help test multiple aspects of expansive levels more effectively. The AI feature tester performed regular checks on the various AI in the SQ42 chapters, focused on Cinematic scenes and delivered additional debug info for any reported issues.
System Design
System Design worked with the SQ42 Mission Team to explore the specific needs of FPS AI for the campaign, and research was done on how to improve the overall accuracy of FPS AI. Gunship behavior was modified to enable ships to circle targets and bring the maximum number of turrets to bear. Fighter behaviors were also modified to get the most out of the New Flight Model.
Tech Animation
Tech Animation supported the various teams working on female animations with tool development, asset conversion, and batch processes. The team also created new head assets for mission givers while refining current ones. The team’s currently refining head assets at the foundation of player face customization. Additionally, they created a raft of new tools to help skinning assets. This is a ground-up rework of the rudimentary tools already available in the authoring packages and will provide greater speed and flexibility to the Technical Art Team in their daily workload. New weapon attachments are starting to make an appearance internally and have required the authoring of a new set of weapon systems and a tools base that can support attachments in the animation packages.
Tech Art
Tech Art made steps to finalize the implementation and pipeline of the new facial customization tech, which was previewed at CitizenCon 2018. They switched the system’s source data format from the CDF-based system (which was used during R&D) to the newer component-based loadout currently used throughout the game. This system allows players’ customized faces to be stored persistently in the database and the corresponding data packets to transfer efficiently over the network and be applied to the correct avatar at runtime. Likewise, it allows all NPCs (every shopkeeper, security guard, civilian and eventually mission givers) to have a unique face built internally by our designers. While R&D on the new ‘DNA’ system was done using male faces, the ‘face pool’ for female characters is being populated and is planned to come online at the same time. Tech Art also supported the Weapons Team with animation debugging, weapon rigging, in-engine setup, and debugging multiple render and resource compiler issues. They added a new system for weapons in Maya to allow animators to quickly attach different attachments, making it easier for them to author specific animations. They also updated the underlying metasystem in the weapon rigs to help the animators export weapons without double transforms on the root or magazine controls. Tech Art also supported the Cinematic Animation Team with various new tools and helped them debug several issues with animations in Maya and the engine. They continued to implement animations into Mannequin to make them available for the designers. They also updated the way cinematic animations are listed for different skeletons to support female players.
Vehicle Features
The Vehicle Team spent time with SQ42 Design to implement various Subsumption callbacks for mission-specific requirements. They also completed modifications to the vehicle targeting system so that external items, such as ship engines, can be specifically targeted. Improvements to ship combat systems continued via automated gimbals, HUD improvements to support Ping & Scanning, and the vehicle ‘XML to DataForge’ migration began. Also, a vehicle gimbal aim assist feature is nearing completion.
VFX
VFX starting to focus on quality-of-life enhancements to their toolset. For example, a simple interface change with the option to reset an emitter strength curve with the click of a button, instead of having to manually delete each key. Although seemingly a minor thing, it makes a huge difference to productivity in the long run. They continued to work on gas cloud tech, working even more closely with the art and design teams to make sure it provides them with everything they need to build something as incredible (and huge) as The Coil! This also included continued iteration on lightning effects, making use of the new lightning editor which speeds up the workflow compared to the previous XML set up. They also began their first pass on the Xi’an ballistic rocket launcher because the trickiest part of this weapon is getting the balance right between traditional ballistic effects and the overtly-sci-fi Xi’an effects.
Weapons
The Weapon Art Team worked on the Multi-Tool rework, Kastak Arms Ravager-212, and the level 2 and 3 upgrades for the Hurston Dynamics Laser Repeaters. They also made minor adjustments to iron sights on a handful of weapons to improve the sight picture and make them more user-friendly. They completed work on the Behring Sawbuck repeaters and kicked off work on Gemini S71 assault rifle and Kastak Arms Coda pistol.
Covert Intel
WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH…
German
Dies ist ein Querverweis auf den Bericht, der kürzlich über den monatlichen Squadron 42 Newsletter verschickt wurde. Wir veröffentlichen dies ein zweites Mal als Comm-Link, um es der Community zu erleichtern, auf diesen Prozess für zukünftige Squadron 42 Monatsberichte zurückzugreifen und ihn zu verfolgen.
Achtung Rekruten,
Was Sie hier lesen werden, sind die neuesten Informationen über die Weiterentwicklung der Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).
Lesen Sie weiter, um geheime Details aus allen Ecken des Planeten zu erfahren, die im Laufe des letzten Monats gesammelt wurden und die sich auf die Arbeit der Staffel 42 beziehen. Die in dieser Mitteilung enthaltenen Informationen sind äußerst sensibel, und es ist von größter Bedeutung, dass sie nicht in die falschen Hände geraten. Alle Datensätze nach dem Lesen löschen.
Ende und Ende,
UEE Naval Oberkommando
KI
Das KI-Team arbeitete an dem Wahrnehmungssystem, das um Schadensreize erweitert wurde. KI-Charaktere haben jetzt eine angemessene Schadenswahrnehmung, so dass sie den Standort der Quelle herausfinden und sich entsprechend verhalten können, indem sie Feinde verfolgen und ihr Wissen über sie aktualisieren. Fortschritte wurden mit dem Usable Builder erzielt, einem Werkzeug, mit dem alle Usables erstellt und debuggt werden können. Es ermöglicht dem Team, Benutzeroberflächen einfach zu visualisieren, ihre Eigenschaften zu bearbeiten und die verschiedenen Nutzungskanäle zu testen. Für das Missionssystem stellten sie den Designern mehrere neue Funktionalitäten zur Verfügung, wie beispielsweise eine Vielzahl von Aufgabenknoten, neue Variablentypen und neue Kernfunktionalitäten. Es wurde eine Variable "Gruppe" eingeführt, die automatisch gefüllt werden kann, z.B. beim Erzeugen von KI-Zeichen, so dass Designer die dynamischen Elemente, an denen sie interessiert sind, leicht verfolgen können. Sie implementieren derzeit globale Rückrufaktionen, um Designern zu helfen, Umweltereignisse zu verfolgen, die spezifisch für die Daten sind, für die sie sich interessieren, ohne dass sie explizit Variablen für jede Entität erstellen müssen.
Charaktere
Das neue Jahr begann mit Character Art, das die SQ42-Iteration des DNA-Features unterstützt, das es Spielern ermöglicht, ihren eigenen einzigartigen Avatar zu erstellen, um das Spiel als. Sie begannen auch, verschiedene andere Charaktere und Kleidung zu modellieren, einschließlich der Basilisk Advocacy Agent Rüstung. Die Charakter-Künstler kreieren weiterhin neue Outfits und aktualisieren alte, um sie an bestimmte Ereignisse im Spiel anzupassen.
Kinematiken
Das Cinematics-Team fertigte einen Master- und Teil-Workflow für Track-View-Sequenzen, der aufgrund der Struktur des Spiels um Objektcontainer unerlässlich geworden war. Sie können nun sowohl an Master- als auch an mehreren Teilsequenzen gleichzeitig arbeiten. Die Grundlagen für den wichtigsten Schritt in der objektübergreifenden, containerübergreifenden Kinopipeline wurden gelegt: die Zugänglichkeit der inneren Abläufe und ihrer Entitätsknoten von einer äußeren Masterebene aus. Das bedeutet, dass das Team weiterhin an Innenaufnahmen (z.B. einer bengalischen Trägerbrücke) arbeiten kann, während das Schiff im Kampf umherfliegt und auf einen Navigationsspline setzt. Dies ist entscheidend für die Kamerabewegung, da Beleuchtung und Außenansichten eine große Rolle bei der Darstellung von Brückenszenen spielen. Es erleichtert auch die Anpassung des Timings an einer Mastersequenz, die innere und äußere Teilsequenzen zusammenführt. Eine Schlüsselsequenz wurde in die aktuelle Shubin Coil Tasche gebracht, da sich die Platzierung von Asteroiden und Wolken durch die Evolution der Gaswolkentechnik verändert hatte, so dass es notwendig war, Rahmen und Beleuchtung anzupassen. Die Zeit wurde damit verbracht, mit den Ingenieuren an der Verbesserung der Feuerbahn zu arbeiten, da die Waffen bei Arbeiten in schweren Szenen und beim hin und her Schrubben in der Zeitachse überhitzten. Dies wurde behoben, und das Team kann nun endlos die Türme der Idris ohne Probleme auf Ziele abfeuern. Eine weitere Änderung ermöglicht es ihnen, die Waffenschussrate anzupassen, so dass die Filmkunst unabhängig von zukünftigen Konstruktionsänderungen sein kann. Einige Szenen wurden in der Shubin Foundry, der Gainey-Basis und an anderen Orten im Spiel angepasst. Kameradurchgänge für andere Schlüsselszenen wurden fertiggestellt, darunter eine mit der Vanduul. Die Prioritätenplanung für die Szenen, die im ersten Quartal 2019 enden sollen, wurde ebenfalls abgeschlossen.
Ingenieurwesen
Das US-Engine-Team verbesserte das Crash-Handling, einschließlich verschiedener Verbesserungen bei der Thread-Sicherheit, um eine robustere Handhabung von obskuren Crashs zu ermöglichen, und das Hinzufügen zusätzlicher Informationen in Minidumps, um ein besseres Debugging von Fasern zu ermöglichen. In Großbritannien begann das Actor Feature Team mit der Arbeit an einem neuen visuellen Werkzeug zum Einrichten von tragbaren Gegenständen. Ähnlich wie das Tool zum Editieren von Gebrauchsgütern wurde es entwickelt, um die Zeit zu verkürzen, die benötigt wird, um neue Elemente zum Spiel hinzuzufügen, und um das Debuggen beim Testen von Kommissionierung, Transport und Inspektion zu erleichtern. Sie verbesserten auch die Gewölbe- und Mantelmechanik, indem sie sie bei verschiedenen Höhenhindernissen und Winkeln besser funktionieren ließen, indem sie automatisch erkannten, ob sie gewölbt oder verkleidet werden sollten, und den Mantel in der Hocke aktivierten. Videokommandos können nun über den Track View Editor ausgelöst werden, der es ermöglicht, Videokommandos mit NSC-Zeichen einfach in größeren Kinosequenzen zu implementieren. Da die Track View die Kontrolle über Dinge wie Kamera-, Beleuchtungs- und Partikeleffekte gibt, bietet sie viel mehr Kontrolle darüber, wie Kommunikationen dargestellt werden. Eine weitere Funktion, die für die von der Track-Ansicht getriggerten Videokommandos implementiert wurde, war die Möglichkeit, vorab gerenderte Videos anstelle von Animationen wiederzugeben. In erster Linie wird dies für die Entwicklung verwendet, so dass das Team Platzhalter-Videos sehen kann, während es darauf wartet, dass endgültige Charakteranimationen geliefert werden, aber es kann auch als Teil des Spiels verwendet werden, wenn ein kompliziertes Video nicht dynamisch gerendert werden kann. Auf der KI-Seite passte das Team die KI des Schiffes an die Arbeit mit dem neuen Flugmodell an und nutzte dabei die Vorteile des geänderten Handlings, um einen engeren und lohnenderen Luftkampf zu ermöglichen.
Umwelt Kunst
Die Beleuchtungsarbeiten an der Javelin wurden fortgesetzt, wobei die ersten Aufnahmen für mehrere der Zustände gemacht wurden, die das Schiff im Laufe der Geschichte durchläuft. Der Blend-Shader ist nun voll funktionsfähig und wird dem Team zur Verfügung gestellt, so dass es viel mehr Möglichkeiten hat, große Objekte zu texturieren und gleichzeitig die Pixeldichte zu erhalten. Zwei Schlüsselbereiche der Kampagne nähern sich nun der Fertigstellung der Greybox und befinden sich in den letzten Wochen der "Soft-Gate-Bewertung" (spielbare und überfahrbare Räume mit nahezu finaler Geometrie). Sie werden dann in die "Hard-Gate"-Review aufgenommen, sobald alle Rückmeldungen berücksichtigt sind. Wie bereits vor den Feiertagen erwähnt, wurden erhebliche Anstrengungen in zerstörbare und verformbare Objekte unternommen, die in jedem Bereich der Kampagne platziert werden. Diese Arbeit wird derzeit in einem einzigen Heldenbereich ausgeweitet, um dem Team eine bessere Vorstellung von den Gesamtkosten zu geben und eine für den Spieler verständliche Bildsprache zu etablieren (z.B. damit der Spieler leicht erkennen kann, welche Gegenstände zerstört, verformt oder bewegt werden können). Die Arbeiten an der Archon Station werden fortgesetzt. Mit seiner äußeren "Wasserdichtigkeit" verbindet das Team nun lose Enden, an denen sich Teile der Außenseite mit dem Inneren überschneiden können. Obwohl sich solche Dinge leicht verbergen lassen, wird die gesamte Station wie die Schiffe mit den richtigen Innen- und Außenmaßen gebaut. Die Transportsysteme werden in der Archon Station platziert, wobei für jeden Abschnitt, an dem derzeit gearbeitet wird, die endgültige Ausführung erfolgt.
Grafiken
Der Schwerpunkt des SQ42 des Grafikteams lag vor allem auf der Leistung: Dies beinhaltete die Behebung verschiedener Multi-CPU-Probleme, die die Leistung einschränkten, indem sie manchmal eine CPU zwangen, auf die andere zu warten, da sie auf bestimmte Bereiche des Speichers zugriffen. Die CPU-intensive Technik zum Schneiden von volumetrischem Nebel in Innenräumen wurde vollständig durch einen GPU-Compute-Shader ersetzt, der weitere CPU-Zeit freisetzt. Die letzte Verbesserung bestand darin, die Art und Weise, wie sie Drawcalls zusammenführen, neu zu schreiben, mit dem Ziel, die Effizienz zu steigern und Multi-Threading zu unterstützen. Dies entlastet die CPU, die für die Übertragung von GPU-Arbeiten verwendet wird, und verschiebt sie in den Grafiktreiber. Zusätzlich zu den Leistungsarbeiten hat das Team verschiedene Verbesserungen an der Gaswolkentechnik vorgenommen, wie z.B. die Vereinheitlichung der Gaswolke und der Standardbeleuchtungssysteme. Sie finalisierten auch die signierte Distanzfeldtechnologie, damit der Spielcode die Form der Gaswolke effizient abfragen kann, um Druck, Turbulenzen und verfahrenstechnisch erzeugte natürlich aussehende Blitze zu simulieren.
Leveldesign
Um die Kommunikation zwischen den zahlreichen Funktionsteams zu optimieren, wurde das Designteam in vier Teams aufgeteilt: Einer ist verantwortlich für die FPS-lastigen Kapitel und wird eng mit den Darsteller- und KI-Feature-Teams zusammenarbeiten. Ein Raumflugteam wird mit dem Ship AI and New Flight Model/QT Team zusammenarbeiten, und ein engagiertes Sozialteam wird sich auf alle sozialen KI-, Nutz- und NPC-Aktivitäten konzentrieren. Schließlich wird das Technik-Team neben der Gameplay-Geschichte und den Filmteams zusammenarbeiten, um Filmaufnahmen und Gespräche vorzubereiten. Diese Änderung hat die Verantwortlichkeiten des Kapitels nicht verändert, da jeder noch einen Designeigentümer hat, aber die Kommunikation verbessert und ermöglicht mehr fokussierte Meetings und weniger Zeitverlust. Dieses neue Format ist der beste Weg, um die Arbeit mit neuen Funktionen aus der Sprint-Welt zu erleichtern, die jetzt über direkte SQ42-Anwendungsfälle verfügt.
Narrativ
Das Narrative Team kehrte aus den Ferien zurück und sprang direkt in die Planung für das erste Quartal des Jahres. Sie begannen auch mit der Arbeit an einer Handvoll zusätzlicher Linien und Story Points. Das Team freut sich auch, einen neuen Produzenten in der Gruppe willkommen zu heißen; er wird nicht nur helfen, das Team zu organisieren, sondern auch als Ansprechpartner für andere Teams fungieren, mit denen er zusammenarbeiten kann.
Requisiten
Das SQ42 Requisiten-Team hat an der Finalisierung von Item-Subsets gearbeitet und unterstützt das Gameplay Story Team weiterhin, indem es Requisiten für Motion-Capture-Aufnahmen erstellt und die Animation von Assets allgemein benutzerfreundlich gestaltet hat.
QA
QA-Tester bauten Werkzeuge, um mehrere Aspekte von expansiven Levels effektiver zu testen. Der KI-Feature-Tester führte regelmäßige Überprüfungen der verschiedenen KI in den SQ42-Kapiteln durch, konzentrierte sich auf Filmszenen und lieferte zusätzliche Debug-Informationen zu allen gemeldeten Problemen.
Systemdesign
System Design arbeitete mit dem SQ42 Mission Team zusammen, um die spezifischen Bedürfnisse der FPS KI für die Kampagne zu erforschen, und es wurde untersucht, wie die Gesamtgenauigkeit der FPS KI verbessert werden kann. Das Verhalten von Kanonenschiffen wurde geändert, um es Schiffen zu ermöglichen, Ziele zu kreisen und die maximale Anzahl von Geschütztürmen zu nutzen. Das Verhalten von Kämpfern wurde ebenfalls geändert, um das Neue Flugmodell optimal zu nutzen.
Technische Animation
Tech Animation unterstützte die verschiedenen Teams, die an weiblichen Animationen arbeiten, bei der Werkzeugentwicklung, der Konvertierung von Assets und bei Batch-Prozessen. Das Team schuf auch neue Head Assets für Missionsgeber und verfeinerte bestehende. Die derzeit vom Team verfeinerten Head Assets auf der Grundlage der Player Face Customization. Darüber hinaus schufen sie eine Reihe neuer Tools, um das Häuten von Assets zu erleichtern. Dies ist eine grundlegende Überarbeitung der rudimentären Werkzeuge, die bereits in den Authoring-Paketen verfügbar sind, und wird dem Technical Art Team mehr Geschwindigkeit und Flexibilität bei der täglichen Arbeit bieten. Neue Waffenanbauten beginnen intern Einzug zu halten und erfordern die Erstellung eines neuen Satzes von Waffensystemen und einer Werkzeugbasis, die Anhänge in den Animationspaketen unterstützen kann.
Technische Kunst
Tech Art unternahm Schritte, um die Implementierung und Pipeline der neuen Gesichtsanpassungstechnologie abzuschließen, die auf der CitizenCon 2018 vorgestellt wurde. Sie wechselten das Quelldatenformat des Systems von dem CDF-basierten System (das während der F&E verwendet wurde) auf das neuere komponentenbasierte Loadout, das derzeit im gesamten Spiel verwendet wird. Dieses System ermöglicht es, die individuellen Gesichter der Spieler dauerhaft in der Datenbank zu speichern und die entsprechenden Datenpakete effizient über das Netzwerk zu übertragen und zur Laufzeit auf den richtigen Avatar anzuwenden. Ebenso ermöglicht es allen NSCs (jedem Ladenbesitzer, Sicherheitsbeamten, Zivilisten und schließlich Missionsgebern), ein einzigartiges Gesicht zu haben, das von unseren Designern intern entworfen wurde. Während die Forschung und Entwicklung am neuen DNA-System mit männlichen Gesichtern durchgeführt wurde, wird der "Gesichtspool" für weibliche Charaktere ausgefüllt und soll gleichzeitig online gehen. Tech Art unterstützte das Waffenteam auch beim Animations-Debugging, beim Waffen-Rigging, beim In-Engine-Setup und beim Debuggen mehrerer Render- und Ressourcen-Compiler-Probleme. Sie haben in Maya ein neues System für Waffen hinzugefügt, mit dem Animatoren schnell verschiedene Anhänge anhängen können, was es ihnen erleichtert, spezifische Animationen zu erstellen. Sie aktualisierten auch das zugrundeliegende Metasystem in den Waffenrigs, um den Animatoren zu helfen, Waffen zu exportieren, ohne doppelte Transformationen bei den Wurzel- oder Magazinkontrollen. Tech Art unterstützte das Cinematic Animation Team auch mit verschiedenen neuen Tools und half ihnen, mehrere Probleme mit Animationen in Maya und der Engine zu lösen. Sie implementierten weiterhin Animationen in Mannequin, um sie den Designern zur Verfügung zu stellen. Sie aktualisierten auch die Art und Weise, wie filmische Animationen für verschiedene Skelette aufgelistet werden, um weibliche Spieler zu unterstützen.
Fahrzeugmerkmale
Das Fahrzeugteam verbrachte Zeit mit SQ42 Design, um verschiedene Subsumption Callbacks für missionsspezifische Anforderungen zu implementieren. Sie haben auch Modifikationen am Fahrzeugzielsystem vorgenommen, um externe Elemente, wie beispielsweise Schiffsmotoren, gezielt anzusprechen. Die Verbesserungen an Schiffskampfsystemen wurden über automatisierte Kardanringe fortgesetzt, HUD-Verbesserungen zur Unterstützung von Ping & Scanning und die Migration des Fahrzeugs "XML zu DataForge" begann. Außerdem steht eine Fahrzeug-Kardangelenk-Zielhilfe kurz vor der Fertigstellung.
VFX
VFX beginnt, sich auf die Verbesserung der Lebensqualität seines Toolsets zu konzentrieren. Zum Beispiel eine einfache Schnittstellenänderung mit der Option, eine Emitterstärkekurve per Knopfdruck zurückzusetzen, anstatt jede Taste manuell löschen zu müssen. Obwohl es scheinbar eine Kleinigkeit ist, macht es auf lange Sicht einen großen Unterschied in der Produktivität. Sie arbeiteten weiter an der Gas Cloud-Technologie und arbeiteten noch enger mit den Kunst- und Designteams zusammen, um sicherzustellen, dass sie alles bekommen, was sie brauchen, um etwas so Unglaubliches (und Riesiges) wie The Coil! zu bauen. Dazu gehörte auch die fortgesetzte Iteration von Blitzeffekten, wobei der neue Blitzeditor verwendet wurde, der den Workflow im Vergleich zum vorherigen XML-Setup beschleunigt. Sie begannen auch ihren ersten Durchgang mit dem ballistischen Raketenwerfer Xi'an, denn der kniffligste Teil dieser Waffe ist es, das richtige Gleichgewicht zwischen traditionellen ballistischen Effekten und den offen-sci-fi Xi'an-Effekten herzustellen.
Waffen
Das Weapon Art Team arbeitete an der Überarbeitung des Multi-Tool, Kastak Arms Ravager-212, und den Upgrades der Level 2 und 3 für die Hurston Dynamics Laser Repeater. Sie haben auch kleine Anpassungen an den Eisenvisieren einer Handvoll Waffen vorgenommen, um das Sichtbild zu verbessern und benutzerfreundlicher zu gestalten. Sie schlossen die Arbeiten an den Behring Sawbuck Repetierern ab und begannen mit den Arbeiten an Gemini S71 Sturmgewehr und Kastak Arms Coda Pistole.
Verdeckte Intel
WIR SEHEN UNS NÄCHSTEN MONAT.....
Achtung Rekruten,
Was Sie hier lesen werden, sind die neuesten Informationen über die Weiterentwicklung der Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).
Lesen Sie weiter, um geheime Details aus allen Ecken des Planeten zu erfahren, die im Laufe des letzten Monats gesammelt wurden und die sich auf die Arbeit der Staffel 42 beziehen. Die in dieser Mitteilung enthaltenen Informationen sind äußerst sensibel, und es ist von größter Bedeutung, dass sie nicht in die falschen Hände geraten. Alle Datensätze nach dem Lesen löschen.
Ende und Ende,
UEE Naval Oberkommando
KI
Das KI-Team arbeitete an dem Wahrnehmungssystem, das um Schadensreize erweitert wurde. KI-Charaktere haben jetzt eine angemessene Schadenswahrnehmung, so dass sie den Standort der Quelle herausfinden und sich entsprechend verhalten können, indem sie Feinde verfolgen und ihr Wissen über sie aktualisieren. Fortschritte wurden mit dem Usable Builder erzielt, einem Werkzeug, mit dem alle Usables erstellt und debuggt werden können. Es ermöglicht dem Team, Benutzeroberflächen einfach zu visualisieren, ihre Eigenschaften zu bearbeiten und die verschiedenen Nutzungskanäle zu testen. Für das Missionssystem stellten sie den Designern mehrere neue Funktionalitäten zur Verfügung, wie beispielsweise eine Vielzahl von Aufgabenknoten, neue Variablentypen und neue Kernfunktionalitäten. Es wurde eine Variable "Gruppe" eingeführt, die automatisch gefüllt werden kann, z.B. beim Erzeugen von KI-Zeichen, so dass Designer die dynamischen Elemente, an denen sie interessiert sind, leicht verfolgen können. Sie implementieren derzeit globale Rückrufaktionen, um Designern zu helfen, Umweltereignisse zu verfolgen, die spezifisch für die Daten sind, für die sie sich interessieren, ohne dass sie explizit Variablen für jede Entität erstellen müssen.
Charaktere
Das neue Jahr begann mit Character Art, das die SQ42-Iteration des DNA-Features unterstützt, das es Spielern ermöglicht, ihren eigenen einzigartigen Avatar zu erstellen, um das Spiel als. Sie begannen auch, verschiedene andere Charaktere und Kleidung zu modellieren, einschließlich der Basilisk Advocacy Agent Rüstung. Die Charakter-Künstler kreieren weiterhin neue Outfits und aktualisieren alte, um sie an bestimmte Ereignisse im Spiel anzupassen.
Kinematiken
Das Cinematics-Team fertigte einen Master- und Teil-Workflow für Track-View-Sequenzen, der aufgrund der Struktur des Spiels um Objektcontainer unerlässlich geworden war. Sie können nun sowohl an Master- als auch an mehreren Teilsequenzen gleichzeitig arbeiten. Die Grundlagen für den wichtigsten Schritt in der objektübergreifenden, containerübergreifenden Kinopipeline wurden gelegt: die Zugänglichkeit der inneren Abläufe und ihrer Entitätsknoten von einer äußeren Masterebene aus. Das bedeutet, dass das Team weiterhin an Innenaufnahmen (z.B. einer bengalischen Trägerbrücke) arbeiten kann, während das Schiff im Kampf umherfliegt und auf einen Navigationsspline setzt. Dies ist entscheidend für die Kamerabewegung, da Beleuchtung und Außenansichten eine große Rolle bei der Darstellung von Brückenszenen spielen. Es erleichtert auch die Anpassung des Timings an einer Mastersequenz, die innere und äußere Teilsequenzen zusammenführt. Eine Schlüsselsequenz wurde in die aktuelle Shubin Coil Tasche gebracht, da sich die Platzierung von Asteroiden und Wolken durch die Evolution der Gaswolkentechnik verändert hatte, so dass es notwendig war, Rahmen und Beleuchtung anzupassen. Die Zeit wurde damit verbracht, mit den Ingenieuren an der Verbesserung der Feuerbahn zu arbeiten, da die Waffen bei Arbeiten in schweren Szenen und beim hin und her Schrubben in der Zeitachse überhitzten. Dies wurde behoben, und das Team kann nun endlos die Türme der Idris ohne Probleme auf Ziele abfeuern. Eine weitere Änderung ermöglicht es ihnen, die Waffenschussrate anzupassen, so dass die Filmkunst unabhängig von zukünftigen Konstruktionsänderungen sein kann. Einige Szenen wurden in der Shubin Foundry, der Gainey-Basis und an anderen Orten im Spiel angepasst. Kameradurchgänge für andere Schlüsselszenen wurden fertiggestellt, darunter eine mit der Vanduul. Die Prioritätenplanung für die Szenen, die im ersten Quartal 2019 enden sollen, wurde ebenfalls abgeschlossen.
Ingenieurwesen
Das US-Engine-Team verbesserte das Crash-Handling, einschließlich verschiedener Verbesserungen bei der Thread-Sicherheit, um eine robustere Handhabung von obskuren Crashs zu ermöglichen, und das Hinzufügen zusätzlicher Informationen in Minidumps, um ein besseres Debugging von Fasern zu ermöglichen. In Großbritannien begann das Actor Feature Team mit der Arbeit an einem neuen visuellen Werkzeug zum Einrichten von tragbaren Gegenständen. Ähnlich wie das Tool zum Editieren von Gebrauchsgütern wurde es entwickelt, um die Zeit zu verkürzen, die benötigt wird, um neue Elemente zum Spiel hinzuzufügen, und um das Debuggen beim Testen von Kommissionierung, Transport und Inspektion zu erleichtern. Sie verbesserten auch die Gewölbe- und Mantelmechanik, indem sie sie bei verschiedenen Höhenhindernissen und Winkeln besser funktionieren ließen, indem sie automatisch erkannten, ob sie gewölbt oder verkleidet werden sollten, und den Mantel in der Hocke aktivierten. Videokommandos können nun über den Track View Editor ausgelöst werden, der es ermöglicht, Videokommandos mit NSC-Zeichen einfach in größeren Kinosequenzen zu implementieren. Da die Track View die Kontrolle über Dinge wie Kamera-, Beleuchtungs- und Partikeleffekte gibt, bietet sie viel mehr Kontrolle darüber, wie Kommunikationen dargestellt werden. Eine weitere Funktion, die für die von der Track-Ansicht getriggerten Videokommandos implementiert wurde, war die Möglichkeit, vorab gerenderte Videos anstelle von Animationen wiederzugeben. In erster Linie wird dies für die Entwicklung verwendet, so dass das Team Platzhalter-Videos sehen kann, während es darauf wartet, dass endgültige Charakteranimationen geliefert werden, aber es kann auch als Teil des Spiels verwendet werden, wenn ein kompliziertes Video nicht dynamisch gerendert werden kann. Auf der KI-Seite passte das Team die KI des Schiffes an die Arbeit mit dem neuen Flugmodell an und nutzte dabei die Vorteile des geänderten Handlings, um einen engeren und lohnenderen Luftkampf zu ermöglichen.
Umwelt Kunst
Die Beleuchtungsarbeiten an der Javelin wurden fortgesetzt, wobei die ersten Aufnahmen für mehrere der Zustände gemacht wurden, die das Schiff im Laufe der Geschichte durchläuft. Der Blend-Shader ist nun voll funktionsfähig und wird dem Team zur Verfügung gestellt, so dass es viel mehr Möglichkeiten hat, große Objekte zu texturieren und gleichzeitig die Pixeldichte zu erhalten. Zwei Schlüsselbereiche der Kampagne nähern sich nun der Fertigstellung der Greybox und befinden sich in den letzten Wochen der "Soft-Gate-Bewertung" (spielbare und überfahrbare Räume mit nahezu finaler Geometrie). Sie werden dann in die "Hard-Gate"-Review aufgenommen, sobald alle Rückmeldungen berücksichtigt sind. Wie bereits vor den Feiertagen erwähnt, wurden erhebliche Anstrengungen in zerstörbare und verformbare Objekte unternommen, die in jedem Bereich der Kampagne platziert werden. Diese Arbeit wird derzeit in einem einzigen Heldenbereich ausgeweitet, um dem Team eine bessere Vorstellung von den Gesamtkosten zu geben und eine für den Spieler verständliche Bildsprache zu etablieren (z.B. damit der Spieler leicht erkennen kann, welche Gegenstände zerstört, verformt oder bewegt werden können). Die Arbeiten an der Archon Station werden fortgesetzt. Mit seiner äußeren "Wasserdichtigkeit" verbindet das Team nun lose Enden, an denen sich Teile der Außenseite mit dem Inneren überschneiden können. Obwohl sich solche Dinge leicht verbergen lassen, wird die gesamte Station wie die Schiffe mit den richtigen Innen- und Außenmaßen gebaut. Die Transportsysteme werden in der Archon Station platziert, wobei für jeden Abschnitt, an dem derzeit gearbeitet wird, die endgültige Ausführung erfolgt.
Grafiken
Der Schwerpunkt des SQ42 des Grafikteams lag vor allem auf der Leistung: Dies beinhaltete die Behebung verschiedener Multi-CPU-Probleme, die die Leistung einschränkten, indem sie manchmal eine CPU zwangen, auf die andere zu warten, da sie auf bestimmte Bereiche des Speichers zugriffen. Die CPU-intensive Technik zum Schneiden von volumetrischem Nebel in Innenräumen wurde vollständig durch einen GPU-Compute-Shader ersetzt, der weitere CPU-Zeit freisetzt. Die letzte Verbesserung bestand darin, die Art und Weise, wie sie Drawcalls zusammenführen, neu zu schreiben, mit dem Ziel, die Effizienz zu steigern und Multi-Threading zu unterstützen. Dies entlastet die CPU, die für die Übertragung von GPU-Arbeiten verwendet wird, und verschiebt sie in den Grafiktreiber. Zusätzlich zu den Leistungsarbeiten hat das Team verschiedene Verbesserungen an der Gaswolkentechnik vorgenommen, wie z.B. die Vereinheitlichung der Gaswolke und der Standardbeleuchtungssysteme. Sie finalisierten auch die signierte Distanzfeldtechnologie, damit der Spielcode die Form der Gaswolke effizient abfragen kann, um Druck, Turbulenzen und verfahrenstechnisch erzeugte natürlich aussehende Blitze zu simulieren.
Leveldesign
Um die Kommunikation zwischen den zahlreichen Funktionsteams zu optimieren, wurde das Designteam in vier Teams aufgeteilt: Einer ist verantwortlich für die FPS-lastigen Kapitel und wird eng mit den Darsteller- und KI-Feature-Teams zusammenarbeiten. Ein Raumflugteam wird mit dem Ship AI and New Flight Model/QT Team zusammenarbeiten, und ein engagiertes Sozialteam wird sich auf alle sozialen KI-, Nutz- und NPC-Aktivitäten konzentrieren. Schließlich wird das Technik-Team neben der Gameplay-Geschichte und den Filmteams zusammenarbeiten, um Filmaufnahmen und Gespräche vorzubereiten. Diese Änderung hat die Verantwortlichkeiten des Kapitels nicht verändert, da jeder noch einen Designeigentümer hat, aber die Kommunikation verbessert und ermöglicht mehr fokussierte Meetings und weniger Zeitverlust. Dieses neue Format ist der beste Weg, um die Arbeit mit neuen Funktionen aus der Sprint-Welt zu erleichtern, die jetzt über direkte SQ42-Anwendungsfälle verfügt.
Narrativ
Das Narrative Team kehrte aus den Ferien zurück und sprang direkt in die Planung für das erste Quartal des Jahres. Sie begannen auch mit der Arbeit an einer Handvoll zusätzlicher Linien und Story Points. Das Team freut sich auch, einen neuen Produzenten in der Gruppe willkommen zu heißen; er wird nicht nur helfen, das Team zu organisieren, sondern auch als Ansprechpartner für andere Teams fungieren, mit denen er zusammenarbeiten kann.
Requisiten
Das SQ42 Requisiten-Team hat an der Finalisierung von Item-Subsets gearbeitet und unterstützt das Gameplay Story Team weiterhin, indem es Requisiten für Motion-Capture-Aufnahmen erstellt und die Animation von Assets allgemein benutzerfreundlich gestaltet hat.
QA
QA-Tester bauten Werkzeuge, um mehrere Aspekte von expansiven Levels effektiver zu testen. Der KI-Feature-Tester führte regelmäßige Überprüfungen der verschiedenen KI in den SQ42-Kapiteln durch, konzentrierte sich auf Filmszenen und lieferte zusätzliche Debug-Informationen zu allen gemeldeten Problemen.
Systemdesign
System Design arbeitete mit dem SQ42 Mission Team zusammen, um die spezifischen Bedürfnisse der FPS KI für die Kampagne zu erforschen, und es wurde untersucht, wie die Gesamtgenauigkeit der FPS KI verbessert werden kann. Das Verhalten von Kanonenschiffen wurde geändert, um es Schiffen zu ermöglichen, Ziele zu kreisen und die maximale Anzahl von Geschütztürmen zu nutzen. Das Verhalten von Kämpfern wurde ebenfalls geändert, um das Neue Flugmodell optimal zu nutzen.
Technische Animation
Tech Animation unterstützte die verschiedenen Teams, die an weiblichen Animationen arbeiten, bei der Werkzeugentwicklung, der Konvertierung von Assets und bei Batch-Prozessen. Das Team schuf auch neue Head Assets für Missionsgeber und verfeinerte bestehende. Die derzeit vom Team verfeinerten Head Assets auf der Grundlage der Player Face Customization. Darüber hinaus schufen sie eine Reihe neuer Tools, um das Häuten von Assets zu erleichtern. Dies ist eine grundlegende Überarbeitung der rudimentären Werkzeuge, die bereits in den Authoring-Paketen verfügbar sind, und wird dem Technical Art Team mehr Geschwindigkeit und Flexibilität bei der täglichen Arbeit bieten. Neue Waffenanbauten beginnen intern Einzug zu halten und erfordern die Erstellung eines neuen Satzes von Waffensystemen und einer Werkzeugbasis, die Anhänge in den Animationspaketen unterstützen kann.
Technische Kunst
Tech Art unternahm Schritte, um die Implementierung und Pipeline der neuen Gesichtsanpassungstechnologie abzuschließen, die auf der CitizenCon 2018 vorgestellt wurde. Sie wechselten das Quelldatenformat des Systems von dem CDF-basierten System (das während der F&E verwendet wurde) auf das neuere komponentenbasierte Loadout, das derzeit im gesamten Spiel verwendet wird. Dieses System ermöglicht es, die individuellen Gesichter der Spieler dauerhaft in der Datenbank zu speichern und die entsprechenden Datenpakete effizient über das Netzwerk zu übertragen und zur Laufzeit auf den richtigen Avatar anzuwenden. Ebenso ermöglicht es allen NSCs (jedem Ladenbesitzer, Sicherheitsbeamten, Zivilisten und schließlich Missionsgebern), ein einzigartiges Gesicht zu haben, das von unseren Designern intern entworfen wurde. Während die Forschung und Entwicklung am neuen DNA-System mit männlichen Gesichtern durchgeführt wurde, wird der "Gesichtspool" für weibliche Charaktere ausgefüllt und soll gleichzeitig online gehen. Tech Art unterstützte das Waffenteam auch beim Animations-Debugging, beim Waffen-Rigging, beim In-Engine-Setup und beim Debuggen mehrerer Render- und Ressourcen-Compiler-Probleme. Sie haben in Maya ein neues System für Waffen hinzugefügt, mit dem Animatoren schnell verschiedene Anhänge anhängen können, was es ihnen erleichtert, spezifische Animationen zu erstellen. Sie aktualisierten auch das zugrundeliegende Metasystem in den Waffenrigs, um den Animatoren zu helfen, Waffen zu exportieren, ohne doppelte Transformationen bei den Wurzel- oder Magazinkontrollen. Tech Art unterstützte das Cinematic Animation Team auch mit verschiedenen neuen Tools und half ihnen, mehrere Probleme mit Animationen in Maya und der Engine zu lösen. Sie implementierten weiterhin Animationen in Mannequin, um sie den Designern zur Verfügung zu stellen. Sie aktualisierten auch die Art und Weise, wie filmische Animationen für verschiedene Skelette aufgelistet werden, um weibliche Spieler zu unterstützen.
Fahrzeugmerkmale
Das Fahrzeugteam verbrachte Zeit mit SQ42 Design, um verschiedene Subsumption Callbacks für missionsspezifische Anforderungen zu implementieren. Sie haben auch Modifikationen am Fahrzeugzielsystem vorgenommen, um externe Elemente, wie beispielsweise Schiffsmotoren, gezielt anzusprechen. Die Verbesserungen an Schiffskampfsystemen wurden über automatisierte Kardanringe fortgesetzt, HUD-Verbesserungen zur Unterstützung von Ping & Scanning und die Migration des Fahrzeugs "XML zu DataForge" begann. Außerdem steht eine Fahrzeug-Kardangelenk-Zielhilfe kurz vor der Fertigstellung.
VFX
VFX beginnt, sich auf die Verbesserung der Lebensqualität seines Toolsets zu konzentrieren. Zum Beispiel eine einfache Schnittstellenänderung mit der Option, eine Emitterstärkekurve per Knopfdruck zurückzusetzen, anstatt jede Taste manuell löschen zu müssen. Obwohl es scheinbar eine Kleinigkeit ist, macht es auf lange Sicht einen großen Unterschied in der Produktivität. Sie arbeiteten weiter an der Gas Cloud-Technologie und arbeiteten noch enger mit den Kunst- und Designteams zusammen, um sicherzustellen, dass sie alles bekommen, was sie brauchen, um etwas so Unglaubliches (und Riesiges) wie The Coil! zu bauen. Dazu gehörte auch die fortgesetzte Iteration von Blitzeffekten, wobei der neue Blitzeditor verwendet wurde, der den Workflow im Vergleich zum vorherigen XML-Setup beschleunigt. Sie begannen auch ihren ersten Durchgang mit dem ballistischen Raketenwerfer Xi'an, denn der kniffligste Teil dieser Waffe ist es, das richtige Gleichgewicht zwischen traditionellen ballistischen Effekten und den offen-sci-fi Xi'an-Effekten herzustellen.
Waffen
Das Weapon Art Team arbeitete an der Überarbeitung des Multi-Tool, Kastak Arms Ravager-212, und den Upgrades der Level 2 und 3 für die Hurston Dynamics Laser Repeater. Sie haben auch kleine Anpassungen an den Eisenvisieren einer Handvoll Waffen vorgenommen, um das Sichtbild zu verbessern und benutzerfreundlicher zu gestalten. Sie schlossen die Arbeiten an den Behring Sawbuck Repetierern ab und begannen mit den Arbeiten an Gemini S71 Sturmgewehr und Kastak Arms Coda Pistole.
Verdeckte Intel
WIR SEHEN UNS NÄCHSTEN MONAT.....
Chinese
This is a cross-post of the report that was recently sent out via the monthly Squadron 42 newsletter. We’re publishing this a second time as a Comm-Link to make it easier for the community to reference back to, and plan on following this process for future Squadron 42 Monthly Reports.
Attention Recruits,
What you are about to read is the latest information on the continuing development of Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).
Read on for classified details from every corner of the planet, collected over the course of the last month, concerning Squadron 42-related work. The information contained in this communication is extremely sensitive and it is of paramount importance that it does not fall into the wrong hands. Purge all records after reading.
Over and out,
UEE Naval High Command
AI
The AI Team worked on the perception system, which was expanded to handle damage stimuli. AI characters now have proper perception of damage, so they can figure out the location of the source and will behave accordingly by tracking enemies and updating the knowledge they have about them. Progress was made on the Usable Builder, a tool that’s used to create and debug all usables. It allows the team to easily visualize usables, edit their properties, and test the different use channels. For the mission system, they exposed several new functionalities to the designers, such as a variety of task nodes, new variable types, and new core functionalities. A ‘group’ variable was introduced that can automatically be filled, for example, when spawning AI characters so that designers can easily track the dynamic elements they’re interested in. They’re currently implementing global callbacks to help designers track environmental events specific to the data they’re interested in without the need to explicitly create variables for each entity.
Characters
The new year began with Character Art supporting the SQ42 iteration of the DNA feature, which allows players to create their own unique avatar to play through the game as. They also began modeling various other characters and clothing, including the Basilisk Advocacy Agent armor. The character artists continue to create new outfits and update old ones to tie into specific in-game events.
Cinematics
The Cinematics Team completed a master and subsequence workflow for Track View sequences, which had become a necessity due to how the game is structured around object containers. They can now work on both master and multiple subsequence scenes at the same time. The groundwork was laid for the most crucial step in the cross-object-container cinematic pipeline: accessibility of interior sequences and their entity nodes from an exterior master level. This means the team is still able to work on interior scenes (e.g. a Bengal carrier’s bridge) while the ship is flying around in battle and banking on a navigation spline. This is crucial for camera movement as lighting and exterior vistas play a huge role in how bridge scenes appear. It also makes it easier to adjust the timing on a master sequence that brings together interior and exterior subsequences. A key sequence was brought into the current Shubin Coil pocket, as the placement of asteroids and clouds had changed due to the evolution of gas cloud tech, so there was a need to adjust framing and lighting. Time was spent working on fire track improvements with the engineers, as weapons were overheating during heavy scene work and back and forth timeline scrubbing. This was addressed, and the team can now endlessly fire the Idris’ turrets at targets without any issues. Another change allows them to adjust the weapon fire-rate, so cinematics can be independent of whatever design changes may come in the future. Some scenes were adjusted in the Shubin Foundry, Gainey base, and other places across the game. Camera passes for other key scenes were completed, including one involving the Vanduul. Priority planning was also finished for scenes scheduled to finish in the first quarter of 2019.
Engineering
The US Engine Team made improvements to crash handling, including various thread safety improvements to enable more robust handling of obscure crashes, and the addition of extra information into minidumps to allow the better debugging of fibers. In the UK, the Actor Feature Team started work on a new visual tool for setting up carriable items. Similar to the usables editor tool, it’s designed to lessen the time it takes to add new items to the game and make it easier to debug when testing picking, carrying, and inspecting. They also improved the vault and mantling mechanic by making it work better with different height obstacles and angles, automatically detecting whether to vault or mantle, and enabling mantle when crouched. Video comm calls can now be triggered by the track view editor, which allows video comms with NPC characters to be easily implemented within larger cinematic sequences. Because track view gives control over things like the camera, lighting, and particle effects, it offers much more control over how comms are presented. Another feature implemented for the track-view-triggered video comms was to allow pre-rendered video to be played in place of any animation. Primarily, this is used for development, so the team can see placeholder video while waiting for final character animations to be supplied, but it can also be used as part of the game if a complicated video would be prohibitive to render dynamically. On the AI side, the team adapted the ship’s AI to work with the New Flight Model and in the process took advantage of the changed handling to allow closer and more rewarding dogfighting.
Environment Art
Lighting work continued on the Javelin, with the first takes done for several of the states the ship cycles through as the story progresses. The blend shader is now fully up and running and rolled out to the team, giving them far more opportunity to texture large assets while maintaining pixel density. Two key areas seen within the campaign are now approaching greybox completion and are in the final weeks of ‘soft-gate’ review (playable and traversable spaces with close-to-final geometry). They’ll then roll into ‘hard-gate’ review once all feedback is accounted for. As mentioned before the holidays, significant effort has been put into destructible and deformable objects that will be placed around every area of the campaign. This work is currently being rolled out into a single ‘hero’ area to give the team a better idea of the overall costs involved and to help them establish a visual language understood by the player (e.g. allowing the player to easily recognize which items can be destroyed, deformed, or moved). Work continues on Archon Station. With its exterior ‘watertight’, the team is now tying up loose ends where sections of the exterior may intersect with the interior. While easy to hide things like this, the entire station is being constructed with correct interior and exterior dimensions as the ships are. Transport systems are being placed into Archon Station, with final art for each section currently being worked on.
Graphics
The Graphics Team’s SQ42 focus has been predominately on performance: This included fixing various multi-CPU issues which were limiting the performance by sometimes forcing a CPU to wait for the other due to the way they accessed specific areas of memory. The CPU-intensive technique used to clip volumetric fog to interior rooms has been completely replaced with a GPU compute shader which frees up further CPU time. The final improvement was to re-write how they merge drawcalls, with the aim to increase efficiency and support multi-threading. This will take load from the CPU used for the submission of GPU work and move it to the graphics driver. On top of the performance work, the team made various improvements to the gas cloud tech, such as unifying the gas cloud and standard lighting systems. They also finalized the signed-distance-field tech to allow the game code to efficiently query the shape of the gas cloud to simulate pressure, turbulence, and procedurally spawn natural-looking lightning.
Level Design
To streamline communication between the numerous feature teams, the Design Team has been split into four: One is responsible for the FPS-heavy chapters and will work closely with the actor and AI feature teams. A spaceflight team will work with the Ship AI and New Flight Model/QT team, and a dedicated social team will focus on all social AI, usables, and NPC activity. Lastly, the tech team will work alongside the gameplay story and cinematic teams to prepare motion-capture and conversations. This change has not altered the chapter responsibilities as each still has a design owner but has improved communication and allows for more-focused meetings and less wasted time. This new format is the best way to facilitate the new feature work coming in from sprint work that now has direct SQ42 use cases.
Narrative
The Narrative Team returned from the holidays and jumped straight into planning for the first quarter of the year. They also started work on a handful of additional lines and story points. The team is also excited to welcome a new producer to the group; not only will he help keep the team organized, he’ll also act as the point of contact for other teams to partner with.
Props
The SQ42 Props Team has been working towards finalizing item sub-sets while continuing to assist the Gameplay Story Team by creating props used in motion capture shoots and generally making assets animation-friendly.
QA
QA testers built tools to help test multiple aspects of expansive levels more effectively. The AI feature tester performed regular checks on the various AI in the SQ42 chapters, focused on Cinematic scenes and delivered additional debug info for any reported issues.
System Design
System Design worked with the SQ42 Mission Team to explore the specific needs of FPS AI for the campaign, and research was done on how to improve the overall accuracy of FPS AI. Gunship behavior was modified to enable ships to circle targets and bring the maximum number of turrets to bear. Fighter behaviors were also modified to get the most out of the New Flight Model.
Tech Animation
Tech Animation supported the various teams working on female animations with tool development, asset conversion, and batch processes. The team also created new head assets for mission givers while refining current ones. The team’s currently refining head assets at the foundation of player face customization. Additionally, they created a raft of new tools to help skinning assets. This is a ground-up rework of the rudimentary tools already available in the authoring packages and will provide greater speed and flexibility to the Technical Art Team in their daily workload. New weapon attachments are starting to make an appearance internally and have required the authoring of a new set of weapon systems and a tools base that can support attachments in the animation packages.
Tech Art
Tech Art made steps to finalize the implementation and pipeline of the new facial customization tech, which was previewed at CitizenCon 2018. They switched the system’s source data format from the CDF-based system (which was used during R&D) to the newer component-based loadout currently used throughout the game. This system allows players’ customized faces to be stored persistently in the database and the corresponding data packets to transfer efficiently over the network and be applied to the correct avatar at runtime. Likewise, it allows all NPCs (every shopkeeper, security guard, civilian and eventually mission givers) to have a unique face built internally by our designers. While R&D on the new ‘DNA’ system was done using male faces, the ‘face pool’ for female characters is being populated and is planned to come online at the same time. Tech Art also supported the Weapons Team with animation debugging, weapon rigging, in-engine setup, and debugging multiple render and resource compiler issues. They added a new system for weapons in Maya to allow animators to quickly attach different attachments, making it easier for them to author specific animations. They also updated the underlying metasystem in the weapon rigs to help the animators export weapons without double transforms on the root or magazine controls. Tech Art also supported the Cinematic Animation Team with various new tools and helped them debug several issues with animations in Maya and the engine. They continued to implement animations into Mannequin to make them available for the designers. They also updated the way cinematic animations are listed for different skeletons to support female players.
Vehicle Features
The Vehicle Team spent time with SQ42 Design to implement various Subsumption callbacks for mission-specific requirements. They also completed modifications to the vehicle targeting system so that external items, such as ship engines, can be specifically targeted. Improvements to ship combat systems continued via automated gimbals, HUD improvements to support Ping & Scanning, and the vehicle ‘XML to DataForge’ migration began. Also, a vehicle gimbal aim assist feature is nearing completion.
VFX
VFX starting to focus on quality-of-life enhancements to their toolset. For example, a simple interface change with the option to reset an emitter strength curve with the click of a button, instead of having to manually delete each key. Although seemingly a minor thing, it makes a huge difference to productivity in the long run. They continued to work on gas cloud tech, working even more closely with the art and design teams to make sure it provides them with everything they need to build something as incredible (and huge) as The Coil! This also included continued iteration on lightning effects, making use of the new lightning editor which speeds up the workflow compared to the previous XML set up. They also began their first pass on the Xi’an ballistic rocket launcher because the trickiest part of this weapon is getting the balance right between traditional ballistic effects and the overtly-sci-fi Xi’an effects.
Weapons
The Weapon Art Team worked on the Multi-Tool rework, Kastak Arms Ravager-212, and the level 2 and 3 upgrades for the Hurston Dynamics Laser Repeaters. They also made minor adjustments to iron sights on a handful of weapons to improve the sight picture and make them more user-friendly. They completed work on the Behring Sawbuck repeaters and kicked off work on Gemini S71 assault rifle and Kastak Arms Coda pistol.
Covert Intel
WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH…
Attention Recruits,
What you are about to read is the latest information on the continuing development of Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).
Read on for classified details from every corner of the planet, collected over the course of the last month, concerning Squadron 42-related work. The information contained in this communication is extremely sensitive and it is of paramount importance that it does not fall into the wrong hands. Purge all records after reading.
Over and out,
UEE Naval High Command
AI
The AI Team worked on the perception system, which was expanded to handle damage stimuli. AI characters now have proper perception of damage, so they can figure out the location of the source and will behave accordingly by tracking enemies and updating the knowledge they have about them. Progress was made on the Usable Builder, a tool that’s used to create and debug all usables. It allows the team to easily visualize usables, edit their properties, and test the different use channels. For the mission system, they exposed several new functionalities to the designers, such as a variety of task nodes, new variable types, and new core functionalities. A ‘group’ variable was introduced that can automatically be filled, for example, when spawning AI characters so that designers can easily track the dynamic elements they’re interested in. They’re currently implementing global callbacks to help designers track environmental events specific to the data they’re interested in without the need to explicitly create variables for each entity.
Characters
The new year began with Character Art supporting the SQ42 iteration of the DNA feature, which allows players to create their own unique avatar to play through the game as. They also began modeling various other characters and clothing, including the Basilisk Advocacy Agent armor. The character artists continue to create new outfits and update old ones to tie into specific in-game events.
Cinematics
The Cinematics Team completed a master and subsequence workflow for Track View sequences, which had become a necessity due to how the game is structured around object containers. They can now work on both master and multiple subsequence scenes at the same time. The groundwork was laid for the most crucial step in the cross-object-container cinematic pipeline: accessibility of interior sequences and their entity nodes from an exterior master level. This means the team is still able to work on interior scenes (e.g. a Bengal carrier’s bridge) while the ship is flying around in battle and banking on a navigation spline. This is crucial for camera movement as lighting and exterior vistas play a huge role in how bridge scenes appear. It also makes it easier to adjust the timing on a master sequence that brings together interior and exterior subsequences. A key sequence was brought into the current Shubin Coil pocket, as the placement of asteroids and clouds had changed due to the evolution of gas cloud tech, so there was a need to adjust framing and lighting. Time was spent working on fire track improvements with the engineers, as weapons were overheating during heavy scene work and back and forth timeline scrubbing. This was addressed, and the team can now endlessly fire the Idris’ turrets at targets without any issues. Another change allows them to adjust the weapon fire-rate, so cinematics can be independent of whatever design changes may come in the future. Some scenes were adjusted in the Shubin Foundry, Gainey base, and other places across the game. Camera passes for other key scenes were completed, including one involving the Vanduul. Priority planning was also finished for scenes scheduled to finish in the first quarter of 2019.
Engineering
The US Engine Team made improvements to crash handling, including various thread safety improvements to enable more robust handling of obscure crashes, and the addition of extra information into minidumps to allow the better debugging of fibers. In the UK, the Actor Feature Team started work on a new visual tool for setting up carriable items. Similar to the usables editor tool, it’s designed to lessen the time it takes to add new items to the game and make it easier to debug when testing picking, carrying, and inspecting. They also improved the vault and mantling mechanic by making it work better with different height obstacles and angles, automatically detecting whether to vault or mantle, and enabling mantle when crouched. Video comm calls can now be triggered by the track view editor, which allows video comms with NPC characters to be easily implemented within larger cinematic sequences. Because track view gives control over things like the camera, lighting, and particle effects, it offers much more control over how comms are presented. Another feature implemented for the track-view-triggered video comms was to allow pre-rendered video to be played in place of any animation. Primarily, this is used for development, so the team can see placeholder video while waiting for final character animations to be supplied, but it can also be used as part of the game if a complicated video would be prohibitive to render dynamically. On the AI side, the team adapted the ship’s AI to work with the New Flight Model and in the process took advantage of the changed handling to allow closer and more rewarding dogfighting.
Environment Art
Lighting work continued on the Javelin, with the first takes done for several of the states the ship cycles through as the story progresses. The blend shader is now fully up and running and rolled out to the team, giving them far more opportunity to texture large assets while maintaining pixel density. Two key areas seen within the campaign are now approaching greybox completion and are in the final weeks of ‘soft-gate’ review (playable and traversable spaces with close-to-final geometry). They’ll then roll into ‘hard-gate’ review once all feedback is accounted for. As mentioned before the holidays, significant effort has been put into destructible and deformable objects that will be placed around every area of the campaign. This work is currently being rolled out into a single ‘hero’ area to give the team a better idea of the overall costs involved and to help them establish a visual language understood by the player (e.g. allowing the player to easily recognize which items can be destroyed, deformed, or moved). Work continues on Archon Station. With its exterior ‘watertight’, the team is now tying up loose ends where sections of the exterior may intersect with the interior. While easy to hide things like this, the entire station is being constructed with correct interior and exterior dimensions as the ships are. Transport systems are being placed into Archon Station, with final art for each section currently being worked on.
Graphics
The Graphics Team’s SQ42 focus has been predominately on performance: This included fixing various multi-CPU issues which were limiting the performance by sometimes forcing a CPU to wait for the other due to the way they accessed specific areas of memory. The CPU-intensive technique used to clip volumetric fog to interior rooms has been completely replaced with a GPU compute shader which frees up further CPU time. The final improvement was to re-write how they merge drawcalls, with the aim to increase efficiency and support multi-threading. This will take load from the CPU used for the submission of GPU work and move it to the graphics driver. On top of the performance work, the team made various improvements to the gas cloud tech, such as unifying the gas cloud and standard lighting systems. They also finalized the signed-distance-field tech to allow the game code to efficiently query the shape of the gas cloud to simulate pressure, turbulence, and procedurally spawn natural-looking lightning.
Level Design
To streamline communication between the numerous feature teams, the Design Team has been split into four: One is responsible for the FPS-heavy chapters and will work closely with the actor and AI feature teams. A spaceflight team will work with the Ship AI and New Flight Model/QT team, and a dedicated social team will focus on all social AI, usables, and NPC activity. Lastly, the tech team will work alongside the gameplay story and cinematic teams to prepare motion-capture and conversations. This change has not altered the chapter responsibilities as each still has a design owner but has improved communication and allows for more-focused meetings and less wasted time. This new format is the best way to facilitate the new feature work coming in from sprint work that now has direct SQ42 use cases.
Narrative
The Narrative Team returned from the holidays and jumped straight into planning for the first quarter of the year. They also started work on a handful of additional lines and story points. The team is also excited to welcome a new producer to the group; not only will he help keep the team organized, he’ll also act as the point of contact for other teams to partner with.
Props
The SQ42 Props Team has been working towards finalizing item sub-sets while continuing to assist the Gameplay Story Team by creating props used in motion capture shoots and generally making assets animation-friendly.
QA
QA testers built tools to help test multiple aspects of expansive levels more effectively. The AI feature tester performed regular checks on the various AI in the SQ42 chapters, focused on Cinematic scenes and delivered additional debug info for any reported issues.
System Design
System Design worked with the SQ42 Mission Team to explore the specific needs of FPS AI for the campaign, and research was done on how to improve the overall accuracy of FPS AI. Gunship behavior was modified to enable ships to circle targets and bring the maximum number of turrets to bear. Fighter behaviors were also modified to get the most out of the New Flight Model.
Tech Animation
Tech Animation supported the various teams working on female animations with tool development, asset conversion, and batch processes. The team also created new head assets for mission givers while refining current ones. The team’s currently refining head assets at the foundation of player face customization. Additionally, they created a raft of new tools to help skinning assets. This is a ground-up rework of the rudimentary tools already available in the authoring packages and will provide greater speed and flexibility to the Technical Art Team in their daily workload. New weapon attachments are starting to make an appearance internally and have required the authoring of a new set of weapon systems and a tools base that can support attachments in the animation packages.
Tech Art
Tech Art made steps to finalize the implementation and pipeline of the new facial customization tech, which was previewed at CitizenCon 2018. They switched the system’s source data format from the CDF-based system (which was used during R&D) to the newer component-based loadout currently used throughout the game. This system allows players’ customized faces to be stored persistently in the database and the corresponding data packets to transfer efficiently over the network and be applied to the correct avatar at runtime. Likewise, it allows all NPCs (every shopkeeper, security guard, civilian and eventually mission givers) to have a unique face built internally by our designers. While R&D on the new ‘DNA’ system was done using male faces, the ‘face pool’ for female characters is being populated and is planned to come online at the same time. Tech Art also supported the Weapons Team with animation debugging, weapon rigging, in-engine setup, and debugging multiple render and resource compiler issues. They added a new system for weapons in Maya to allow animators to quickly attach different attachments, making it easier for them to author specific animations. They also updated the underlying metasystem in the weapon rigs to help the animators export weapons without double transforms on the root or magazine controls. Tech Art also supported the Cinematic Animation Team with various new tools and helped them debug several issues with animations in Maya and the engine. They continued to implement animations into Mannequin to make them available for the designers. They also updated the way cinematic animations are listed for different skeletons to support female players.
Vehicle Features
The Vehicle Team spent time with SQ42 Design to implement various Subsumption callbacks for mission-specific requirements. They also completed modifications to the vehicle targeting system so that external items, such as ship engines, can be specifically targeted. Improvements to ship combat systems continued via automated gimbals, HUD improvements to support Ping & Scanning, and the vehicle ‘XML to DataForge’ migration began. Also, a vehicle gimbal aim assist feature is nearing completion.
VFX
VFX starting to focus on quality-of-life enhancements to their toolset. For example, a simple interface change with the option to reset an emitter strength curve with the click of a button, instead of having to manually delete each key. Although seemingly a minor thing, it makes a huge difference to productivity in the long run. They continued to work on gas cloud tech, working even more closely with the art and design teams to make sure it provides them with everything they need to build something as incredible (and huge) as The Coil! This also included continued iteration on lightning effects, making use of the new lightning editor which speeds up the workflow compared to the previous XML set up. They also began their first pass on the Xi’an ballistic rocket launcher because the trickiest part of this weapon is getting the balance right between traditional ballistic effects and the overtly-sci-fi Xi’an effects.
Weapons
The Weapon Art Team worked on the Multi-Tool rework, Kastak Arms Ravager-212, and the level 2 and 3 upgrades for the Hurston Dynamics Laser Repeaters. They also made minor adjustments to iron sights on a handful of weapons to improve the sight picture and make them more user-friendly. They completed work on the Behring Sawbuck repeaters and kicked off work on Gemini S71 assault rifle and Kastak Arms Coda pistol.
Covert Intel
WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH…
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Metadata
- CIG ID
- 16966
- Channel
- Undefined
- Category
- Undefined
- Series
- Monthly Reports
- Comments
- 23
- Published
- 7 years ago (2019-02-22T00:00:00+00:00)