Sabreseven posted:

Caves? As prison spaces in the far future of CR's 'vision'? I think even in 2019 there are reasons why they are not used as such.

is pepsi ok posted:

Beet Wagon posted:

also lol if you do bad stuff you're gonna have to wait in jail or play a prison minigame

Agony Aunt posted:

Ok, let's put that to one side for the moment. What else do they say about it?

> One of Strike Commander’s innovations was the inclusion of a ‘virtual cockpit’ where the player’s head and the environment could be controlled separately.

Now, maybe it was. Except i don't recall ever doing that in Strike Commander. There were many games before it though that definitely had virtual cockpits and enables you to change your view. But hey, its just marketing speak anyway.[/qoute]
Most notably, Falcon 3.0 (released two years earlier) had padlock view that did exactly the same thing, except in a much more useful and game-focused way.

[quote]> The only problem was that while Strike Commander featured an unprecedented amount of detail in its graphics it was also a faithful F-16 simulator… which meant that most battles were fought with long range missiles and so the lush graphics representing the enemy planes often went overlooked!

The fidelity was so great rarely got to see how good the graphics were!

deej posted:

Reminder that Chris Roberts, CEO of space game, believes you can swim about in space irl

Star posted:

Their new version of the roadmap is not at all as fun as the old one. Where are my percents

quote:

For AI, we almost double the amount of tasks on the Bartender NPC, and although there is a good amount of completed task, the overall result is a fall by -13%.

Dark Off posted:

https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=2598 the design documents gets asked again
https://youtu.be/wENuiIcPK10?t=2865 lando says that design documents were wildly inaccurate

Daztek posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/d0ug2x/star_citizen_roadmap_update_20190906/


lol @ salvage getting moved to 4.0 from 3.8, rip any more gameplay this year

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/d0ughz/squadron_42_roadmap_update_20190906/

trucutru posted:

The reactions to the commercial

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/d0imqe/origin_890_jump_ship_commercial/



Lol, funding for this game is never going to stop.

Daztek posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/d0ug2x/star_citizen_roadmap_update_20190906/


lol @ salvage getting moved to 4.0 from 3.8, rip any more gameplay this year

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/d0ughz/squadron_42_roadmap_update_20190906/

skeletors_condom posted:

Secret parallel building incoming! Any day now!

Beet Wagon posted:

"What's a three month delay for never?" holy gently caress

skeletors_condom posted:

Secret parallel build incoming! Any day now!

Thoatse posted:

TonyMcS posted:

IT APPEARS SQ42 IS POWERING ALONG.

I present the following word salad as the latest info on SQ42. Basically it's a list of things not working. However one phrase has been added to the SC lexicon.

The Character Team finished the first hairstyle under the finalized hair creation pipeline.

I'm sure there are other gems in there but I'll let you discover them yourselves


Attention Recruits,

What you are about to read is the latest information on the continuing development of Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).
Operatives around the world collected the intel needed to provide you with this progress report. Intelligence suggests we've uncovered intel on operations concerning cinematic techniques, the creation of derelict ships, and a new Vulkan-friendly pipeline.

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.

UEE Naval High Command

AI
Character AI worked towards completing the first pass on the new iteration of combat behaviors. This implementation includes better structural organization of the different tactics characters can evaluate during combat and helps the programmers to implement and test all possible options. It’s also great for the player as it makes the overall combat experience more stable and interesting. For example, enemies now have proper tactics for handling open spaces and have a better selection of cover options when fighting in locations with multiple floors. They also started implementing different weapon fire modes so that NPCs can decide which one best suits their current situation. The choice is also affected by the AI’s ‘experience’ – so a scared, inexperienced soldier might shoot as much as possible with reduced accuracy and bullet conservation. Several fixes were made to ensure aiming and shooting syncs correctly between the client and server too.

Ship AI worked on behavior and technical improvements. So of these allow the designers to access more behavior parameters, such as the option to look at a target while flying to a specific offset or to the beginning of a Track View scene. They implemented the first version of the Defend Target behavior that makes great use of the new target selection functionalities – the designers can now customize weights and threat scores to enable the AI to select the most appropriate target. This selection is influenced by several factors, such as the enemy ship’s threat score, the number of enemies targeting a specific entity, or damage inflicted. This provides a more realistic fight experience and allows players to witness more meaningful decisions during firefights.

Further progress was made towards the new ship 3D pathfinding implementation. This new approach has two basic control modes: position and velocity. Positional control means that a spaceship wants to reach a specific location, so a path will be generated incrementally as it moves in space. Velocity control means that a spaceship is going to maneuver related to a specific target or location. Both approaches make use of the physical data stored in the signed distance fields (SDF).


Animation
Animation continued R&D into the motion matching tech mentioned last month, including looking at how seamlessly it can transition from locomotion into a usable enter animation. They also looked into interrupt and resume tech for story scenes, which will allow a player to leave a scene, have the characters pause naturally, and start again seamlessly when they rejoin. The SQ42 Feature Team also started implementing a firing range.


Art (Characters)
The Character Team finished the first hairstyle under the finalized hair creation pipeline, and while they’re still expecting updates on the tech end, the artists are ready to start working through the remaining tasks. They also made revisions to various uniforms and wrapped up a key piece of enemy armor. An extremely important character concept was also completed and will soon move into the implementation phase.


Art (Environment)
Archon Station’s interiors progressed well throughout August - the social hub is coming to a close and many of the team have moved onto the engineering sections seen during key parts of the campaign.
The exterior of the comms array was tweaked slightly and work continued on the geometry and shaders. The station is about to receive a lighting pass and has been handed to the Space Scaping Team for placing.
The development of derelict ships began, with a few interesting variations created, including rotting, frozen, and attacked - all of which are being hand-sculpted to give maximum visual and emotional impact.

Cinematics
SQ42 allows players to create a character at the beginning of the story. This presents a unique challenge for cinematics and narrative, as most things relating to the story feature full performance capture and one of the team’s goals is to keep all cinematic sequences unified. To test this, they picked sequences they’re currently working on and switched between the male and female facial performance capture and evaluated where they can keep the player body motion unified, where they can edit and adjust, and where they have to split the performances. To help, Tech Art unified the player actor records and loadout options and now have an easy way to change the tag from male to female. A lot of scenes worked well with slight adjustment and polish, but areas benefiting from the individual actor’s performance will be split. Audio timing and syncing were also considered. The team don’t want direct copies of line readings and want to give the actors freedom of expression, but the overall cadence and timing must match, particularly the start times for each capture.
The female character model is also smaller than the male version, both in terms of body size and camera framing. So, further adjustments to the character motions were made, such as adjusting the hands and back to fit in chairs properly. To solve the framing issue, a camera tag was created to reduce the “tripod” height by 10cm in scenes that show the female player close up.


Engineering
The Engine Team finished supporting tri-mesh splitting, which optimizes collisions and intersection tests, implements collision filtering and collision merging, and fixes foliage skinning. They also made batch process physics proxy updates which now don’t update the physics proxy if the entity has network serialization disabled.
Rendering wise, the first draft of the new graphics pipeline was submitted. The goal is to gradually transition to a Vulkan/DX12-friendly pipeline and the implement the Vulkan backend. The first pass includes initial interfaces and implementation, tone mapping, and the first Vulkan code added to renderer. For planet rendering, they moved from the explicit table-based evaluation of atmosphere inscatter to an incremental raymarch stepping process. This now allows additional evaluation of ground fog density samples (and clouds at a later stage) and incorporates them into the scatter equations.


Gameplay Story
The Gameplay Story Team made progress on a wide range of scenes last month. Some had already been worked on and only required modest updates, while others were new so were built up from scratch. Mo-cap was delivered quickly throughout the month and enabled the team to make progress at an impressive pace. The also worked closely with Props to finalize several handheld objects and complete all scenes they’re included in.


Graphics
The Graphics Team continued with the same core features as last month, including gas cloud sun shadows. Volumetric sun shadows are now computed on the GPU and correctly account for shadows between adjacent and parented gas clouds. The remaining work involves factoring these volumetric shadows into the general lighting equation for opaque meshes. Alongside this, improvements were made to the glass shader refraction effect, which is used to render plastic sheets and icicles. Work also continued on the updated renderer design. This will continue over the next few months alongside a huge clean-up of old code and redundant features.


Level Design
The Social Team continued to work on narrative scenes, working out conversation breaks and re-joins, directional triggers, and other specific details relating to social AI and player conversations. Most of the Level Design Team worked with Art to finalize the layout and AI operation of a major FPS combat zone. The Dogfight Team is still focused on the various use-cases for the more complicated AI requirements of space combat, while the Tech Team finalized the templates for various crew behaviors.


Narrative
As levels continue to be refined and the pacing of gameplay is solidified, the Narrative Team worked closely with Design to identify areas where additional narrative moments could help to flesh out the world and story. After creating scripts, they worked with Animation, Audio, and Design to implement placeholder assets for playtesting and polishing. Last month also saw the team assisting Environment Art by providing additional environmental storytelling and props documentation. These writeups provide detailed backstory and references for everything from key hero assets intended to catch players’ eyes to small props that make the universe feel more alive. Additionally, they continued writing all the text that players will encounter throughout the game.


QA
QA’s August support predominantly went to Cinematics, who are working on a wide range of cutscenes. A new level was created for the testing of ship explosions and AA-turret setup via Track View to make it easier to quickly test any issues they encounter. Work on a new level to test character animations and lighting began too.
Testing for the newest AI collision avoidance changes is also underway. While AI testing in DE is primarily done for the Persistent Universe, any new AI issues are cross-checked with the SQ42 test team in the UK as there’s often overlap.


Tech Animation
Tech Animation supported the Social AI Team with in-engine animation setups and animation rigs for a wide variety of props. They completed technical setups for new weapon attachment types and bugs were fixed for the animation, design, and art teams.


Tech Art
Tech Art revisited the facial expression scanning pipeline and evaluated various new photogrammetry-based scan solutions. Since highly detailed scans of facial expressions are the core of the new in-house rigging pipeline, efficient creation, processing, and manual touch-ups of the scan meshes are crucial for quick turnaround. This new solution will ultimately help the team expand the character creator’s ‘DNA’ gene pool and give both the designers and players more options to create unique and interesting faces.


VFX
The VFX Team continued their close collaboration with Art and Design on some of the key space environments. As part of this, they added improvements to the ‘VFX transparent shader', which is used to fill environments with moving dust and debris. The VFX tech artists continued to work with the graphics engineers to improve the gas cloud tools and began investigating the destruction pipeline to further improve the campaigns more epic destruction events. They also started developing effects for a new rocket launcher, including the muzzle flashes, backblast, missile trails, and missile impact on various surfaces.

monkeytek posted:

It amazes me that after 7 years Commandos are never concerned to read things like "worked towards completing the first pass on the new iteration of combat behaviors"

Bumble He posted:

Bumble He is curious if the move to games will bring some fresh blood in here.
if not, then Bumble is also fine with the same ole mofos rubbing forever

i'm not a vampire by the way

AutismVaccine posted:

I thought the whole closing of SCAM was a hoax, an elaborate scheme to hide You must be a platinum member to read this text. .

Daztek posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/d0ug2x/star_citizen_roadmap_update_20190906/


lol @ salvage getting moved to 4.0 from 3.8, rip any more gameplay this year

Potato Salad posted:

7 September 2019: No

Squadron 42 Official Release Date: -984 days

Can you move around your ship prison without falling out: No

Strangler 42 posted:

It had to be done but don't worry the Anti-SC Action Command Center - GOONS ONLY thread for coordinating our attacks has moved behind the secret paywall. Here's the link: You must be a platinum member to read this text.

AbstractNapper posted:

Ah, the "design documents" -- actually it's Lando's air quotation marks, not mine, that he gestures when the question is first asked.

Were those the insane(ly long) ramblings that detailed mining and such, and promised ~dreams~ and clearly unfeasible stuff both in terms of complexity and in tediousness that they would result when translated to gameplay?

Those are apparently gone now, never to return. And also, apparently they now have way shorter documents about tier-0 implementation of their mechanics. Which of course they won't even discuss about releasing in public, because reasons I guess, in the most open development project ever.

Don't let the rubes know how much you dialed back the insanity and hurt their dream, as these particular crowd does not react well to that. No, leave it vague (which is why "tier-4" is casually mentioned, when their "tier-0"(!) is not even a thing for most of their mechanics and features).

boviscopophobic posted:

It packs three weasel-word qualifiers into such a short amount of space. They're not working on combat behaviors, but only on the new iteration. In fact, they're not even doing the new iteration, but only the first pass on the new iteration. And they are working towards completing it -- which is to say that they aren't done even with the first draft of the draft.

Truly the excuse-making pipelines are in place, and their content is flowing faster than any other game.

History Comes Inside! posted:

Why is there Ship AI when everything is supposed to be ships being piloted by actual physical pilots so it would be covered by their incredible AAAA+ NPC AI, surely?

AbstractNapper posted:

Ah, the "design documents" -- actually it's Lando's air quotation marks, not mine, that he gestures when the question is first asked.

Were those the insane(ly long) ramblings that detailed mining and such, and promised ~dreams~ and clearly unfeasible stuff both in terms of complexity and in tediousness that they would result when translated to gameplay?

Those are apparently gone now, never to return. And also, apparently they now have way shorter documents about tier-0 implementation of their mechanics. Which of course they won't even discuss about releasing in public, because reasons I guess, in the most open development project ever.

Don't let the rubes know how much you dialed back the insanity and hurt their dream, as these particular crowd does not react well to that. No, leave it vague (which is why "tier-4" is casually mentioned, when their "tier-0"(!) is not even a thing for most of their mechanics and features).

skeletors_condom posted:

But there are times when the citizens really make me lose faith in humanity.

quote:

This is my favourite image from the commercial. It just shows how far we’ve come. The gas clouds outside the window, the perfect lighting setting the mood inside the ship with small candles on the table. The animations which are so good, just look at how the woman turns, looks down for a split second and then up again, it looks so real and fantastic. The narration and music in this scene also hits it out of the park. It just brings emotion.

I have absolute faith after this scene and commercial that S42 is going to be so special and the PU in the future is gonna be something else. 7 years ago I backed and it’s been a long road so far, one I’ve enjoyed almost every step of the way, and this 890 commercial showed me how far we’ve come. It almost brought me to tears.

trucutru posted:

A sad commando posted:

This is my favourite image from the commercial. It just shows how far we’ve come. The gas clouds outside the window, the perfect lighting setting the mood inside the ship with small candles on the table. The animations which are so good, just look at how the woman turns, looks down for a split second and then up again, it looks so real and fantastic. The narration and music in this scene also hits it out of the park. It just brings emotion.

I have absolute faith after this scene and commercial that S42 is going to be so special and the PU in the future is gonna be something else. 7 years ago I backed and it’s been a long road so far, one I’ve enjoyed almost every step of the way, and this 890 commercial showed me how far we’ve come. It almost brought me to tears.

Agony Aunt posted:

Watch their latest vid. They spend ages saying absoloutely nothing.