This month, we see teams around the world gearing up to tackle new content, be it the upcoming point patch or Alpha 3.6 and beyond. We’ve got updates about new landing zones, weapons, tech, vehicles, and loads of other stuff. Read on to find out what happened, is happening, and coming up in the Persistent Universe.
AI To support requests coming from the designers of new missions involving interaction between NPCs and players, the Ship AI Team exposed a new set of nodes in Subsumption. Effectively, this provides a way to tie the position of one AI character to another and will enable NPCs to join various flying formations with specific directions (e.g. stay 100 meters right of the leader). This involved investigating an unexplored functionality of the New Flight System’s autopilot mode, where any action (or command) can be expressed in the local space of another entity instead of the canonical zone space. Eventually, this will give AI pilots more abilities during combat. An offshoot of this is ship strafing, which is currently being tested and improved. The team continued to develop the different pilot skills first mentioned in the monthly report a couple of months ago, this time changing the way they affect dogfighting. Previously, pilot skill was used to determine the route through the branch of combat choices as the fight developed. Now, the skill influences the chance of the AI choosing a specific maneuver and its parameters, such as the duration of braking and evading. A ‘target selection’ option is now available to AI pilots that ensures they consider several factors when prioritizing between all detected targets. These factors currently include distance, perceived strength, damage sustained, and the number of allies already engaging. The next step is to introduce these influencing factors one by one and balance their relative importance during testing. May saw the start of important R&D into improving the spatial perception of AI pilots. A 3D path planner used for positioning goals already exists, but the PU needs a system capable of adapting to different contexts (open space, asteroid fields, planetside, etc.). The aim is to create a new set of ad-hoc ways to query the state of the surrounding environments to give the AI all the information they need while having the lowest possible impact on performance. A project also began to add areas where players and NPCs can interact with a usable (item) without being in an exact position. These areas will allow for higher-fidelity when players and AI interact with numerous usables in a single space. Optimization continues all round, including the continued development and fine-tuning of FPS combat tactics. This includes shooting from cover, fighting in open space, simple search behavior, and improvements to first reactions. Improvements were also made to the Posture Manager – the system used during combat to understand if an AI enemy has visibility of the player and a viable shooting direction.
Animation The Animation Team spent the majority of the month preparing and shooting motion capture for a variety of new bartender behaviors. From pouring shots to mixing cocktails, the team captured a lot of exciting new actions which will be rolled out to the PU throughout the year. They also prepared and refined additional animations for civilian NPCs, most recently bar patrons, as well as the upcoming mission giver, Eddie Parr, who is scheduled to roll out in Alpha 3.8.
Art (Environment) The Landing Zone Team continued moving Orison through the whitebox stage. They currently have the basic layout running in-game and, moving forward, will be working with Design to refine the on-foot areas. They also made progress on the ‘hi-tech’ hangars, with garages, security, transit, and habs all ready for implementation. Away from Crusader, pre-production began on New Babbage. microTech’s landing zone will offer players a very different experience from what’s come before, with corporate espionage, hacking, and high-tech industry all themes being considered for the icy planet. The Modular Team made progress on the new space station exteriors, which just began the ‘final art’ phase. The most difficult part is defining the various libraries, rule sets, and filters required for the game to procedurally generate interesting and believable locations. It takes a long time as they all have to be created from scratch, but the results look promising. Procedural caves are progressing nicely too. WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH…