PU Monthly Report May 2023 Welcome to the latest PU Monthly Report! Last month, Cloud Imperium’s dev teams continued working towards Alpha 3.20 and beyond, including making updates to Sever Meshing, Arena Commander, new vehicles, and more. Read on for everything done across our global studios throughout May.
AI (Tech) Last month, AI Tech continued to improve the collision-avoidance system to give better results when ground vehicles pass each other or NPCs. They also added support for driving along a predefined route, similar to how NPCs can move along a path. For this case, the designers can specify certain properties for the route, like the maximum permitted speed, which direction it should be driven, and if it should loop.
Work then began on a dynamic pathfinding regeneration feature to improve how NPCs find and follow alternative routes. For example, if a hazard (tree falling, vehicle stopping, fire hazard, etc.) impacts a navigation mesh triangle, the navigation volume will notify all related paths and check if new requests are submitted. The first stage of this was implementing an anchor structure to keep track of a location's navigation meshes and triangles, which is notified when a triangle is changed. These navigation anchors are then used to understand when parts of a triangle are modified and to check if new pathfinding is needed.
May also saw AI Tech begin investigating and implementing a solution for NPCs entering and exiting ships from EVA using the external doors of an airlock system. For this, they set up ship and seat access as a usable to allow NPCs to find their closest entry position, fly to it, and trigger the right interaction. They also had to account for a ship’s rotational velocity and allow NPCs to adjust their orientation as they approach.
On the AI tools side, improvements continued for both the usable coordinator and Apollo Subsumption. For the usable coordinator, optimizations were made to the code and logic flow. They updated the visuals and changed to a new usable data view too. For Apollo, the team implemented ‘find references’ functionality with support for Subsumption functions.
AI Tech also completed various support tasks, including creating flowgraph nodes for all Subsumption assignments to help the designers create scripted AI behaviors. More variable types for use as assignment inputs were added alongside support for the usable system, tactical point system, and Alpha 3.19.
Animation The Facial Animation team continued to create assets for PU-specific character types, this time relating to missions and gameplay.
Art (Characters) In May, the Character Art team began work on two outfits for the Dusters gang and one for the Headhunters. Alongside this, Character Concept Art prepared hand-off documents for further Dusters outfits.
Art (Ships) In the UK, the Vehicle Content team moved an as-yet-unannounced ship through the whitebox stage; it’s currently in greybox, with both the interior and exterior progressing well. A new ground-vehicle variant progressed through the greybox stage too.
The team approached the end of their pass on vehicle tractor beams. This included work on the Origin 315p, Drake Caterpillar and Cutlass Black, Consolidated Outland Nomad, and MISC Hull C.
Development of the Crusader Spirit continued – the C1 is almost greybox complete, while the A1 had its LOD0 review scheduled for early June.
The MISC Freelancer’s component rework progressed through the final-art stage, with LODs mostly finished and some polish tasks outstanding; it’s due to finish final art this month.
Last month, the team began preparing the RSI Polaris for whitebox.
“Because this is a sizeable capital ship, we have been breaking the vehicle down and planning a resource pack so that an interior can be constructed out of reusable elements. We also spent time reviewing the concept to highlight any areas that would need additional design time due to new gold-standard requirements.” EU Vehicle Team
In the US, the Tumbril Storm approached the end of the LOD0 greybox stage, with the team applying materials, poms, and decals to the exterior and interior. This is currently in the polishing stage, with the devs tuning the visual balance. They also applied wear to the entire exterior and prepared to begin customization work with various paints. The vehicle’s interior lighting is nearly complete, with an upcoming pass planned for the exterior.
Greybox on the Aopoa San'tok.yāi is mostly complete, with only dashboard work remaining.
“We have been generating a new set of textures to be used for labeling and the dashboard buttons as well as creating a new damage map to show through the gaps in the armor, which will be unique to Aopoa. We are also creating a new pom sheet, which will also be unique to Aopoa.” US Vehicle Team
Community In May, the Community team supported the completion of the Alpha 3.18 patch cycle and the launch of Alpha 3.19: Call to Adventure by providing the developers with a wealth of feedback from the community. This involved working alongside the Player Experience team to collect, collate, and implement feedback to further improve the overall player experience. They also continued tracking, reporting, and following up on the more common bugs and performance issues the community was facing. In preparation for Alpha 3.19, the Community Team released another edition of Patch Watch to highlight new features not on the roadmap, as well as a contest welcoming the community to ArcCorp.
May also saw the culmination of months of preparation as the doors of the Bevic Convention Center opened for Invictus Launch Week 2953. To set players up for success and ensure that both newcomers and veterans got the most out of the military-themed event, the team compiled a comprehensive collection of information, including the ILW FAQ, New Player Guide, Welcome Hub, Welcome Back Pilot Page, and a Spectrum catch-all post.
To add to the festivities, the community-favorite manufacturer screenshot challenges returned. Invictus Launch Week also saw the unveiling of several new vehicles, and to share more information with the community directly from the designers, the team published separate Q&As for the Tumbril Storm, RSI Lynx, and Mirai Fury series.
Furthermore, the team supported and attended community-driven events and met players in person at the Be@Con event in Belgium and the Sacramento Bar Citizen as part of their Bar Citizen World Tour.
Lastly, the team continued preparing for several upcoming real-life events, such as CitizenCon and the upcoming International Bar Citizen Weekend. “International Bar Citizen Weekend 2023 will take place June 17 through 18 at venues near all our studios, and we would love to see you there for some beverages and banter!” Community Team
Engine Part of the Core Engine team’s work last month was supporting Alpha 3.19. A major element of this was enabling Design to overwrite density lifetime manager settings based on spatial markup. Once Design utilize this, the Engine team will be able to add specific ‘cleanup’ rules to different areas of the game. For example, some areas could be cleaned up more aggressively to prevent persistent items from negatively affecting gameplay.
The team also progressed with their work on StarBuild, adding the remaining Linux support. StarBuild is now on feature parity with the old code build system and will be rolled out to other departments soon.
For the renderer, the team started removing legacy Gen-12 code. There is a lot to remove, but this will result in leaner and easier-to-maintain renderer code when complete.
The Core Engine team also progressed with the generic shape system, adding editor support to save generic as well as remaining shapes. Multiple segments will be added before it’s handed to the designers to use.
For MemReplay 2.0, the team are currently adding more features, including file open dialog, faster loading, and async symbol resolving to get it ready for wider use. They’re also adding optimizations and continuing to stabilize their feature stream to integrate it back into the main development stream.
Last month, the Physics team focused on improving and bug-fixing the new method for tracking unique geometry parts.
They then improved cloth simulation for better simulation results, updated the rope and pulley systems, and added cantilever simulation support.
Finally, Physics supported Vehicles on tech issues and investigated performance issues with Alpha 3.19 for the Release team.
Features (Arena Commander) Last month, the Engineering team began a full refactor of how the game-rules system serializes network variables and communicates with the server, which will make it compatible with Server Meshing. Work also continued on a full refactor of the spawning module.
Initial work was completed on a new game rule difficulty module. This was handed off to the Squadron 42 team for expansion, as it will initially be used to allow them to set varying parameters based on the selected difficulty mode. However, the Features team is expecting to pick it up again after Alpha 3.20 for use in Arena Commander's PvE game modes.
A refactor was also done on how loading screens are utilized. The team are currently experimenting with having separate game mode load screens that update to show the map once a response from the server confirms where the client is heading. This will fix a long-standing issue of load screens inaccurately showing the map players are about to enter.
A rework of team balancing and competitive scoring also began last month. This will enable groups of players to stay together more consistently, balance teams based on leaderboard stats, and enable a new mechanic allowing players to volunteer to switch teams if an imbalance is detected during a match. For competitive scoring, the team are currently experimenting with various adjustments, including awarding higher scores based on the KDA/rankings of opponents and awarding lower scores for killing the same player repeatedly.
Finally, Engineering began experimenting with increasing max server FPS, decreasing the actor delay buffer, and increasing packet rate in an effort to reduce latency and desync in Star Marine.
In May, Arena Commander’s Design team began converting the Theaters of War spawn screen to most other game modes. This will allow players to select their general spawn area, customize FPS loadouts from within matches, and select FPS and vehicle loadouts on the fly.
Work also progressed on an upgrade to Vanduul Swarm, with the team experimenting with new gameplay mechanics. The conversion of Security Post Kareah was also completed, which will be added as a new map to all game modes except Classic Race. The team also polished the track layout for the fourth new addition to the New Horizon Speedway collection, Halloran Circuit, while putting the finishing touches to the first atmospheric arena. The arena, Winner's Circle, will be available in all dogfighting game modes.
Finally, the Design and VFX teams completed a pass of all locations featured in Arena Commander to increase their overall visual quality.
Features (Characters & Weapons) Last month, the Features team worked on ammo re-pooling, which allows players to redistribute the ammunition stored in their suit and inventory to maximize the number of full magazines. Once complete, it will make it less likely a player is left with a large number of magazines containing a few bullets each, as it will prioritize filling up the magazine in the weapon first.
The team also explored a new negative actor status triggered by radiation. Radiation can be generated from a point emitter, which has a bigger impact on characters the closer they are to the source, or can be ambient within a room. Irradiated water was also explored, which affects an actor based on how submerged they are. When a character is affected by radiation, the protection of their outfit will start to decay. Once protection is gone, the actor will suffer radiation sickness and will need to seek medical aid to recover. The outfit will regenerate its protective layer over time.
Features (Gameplay) Montreal’s PU team focused on proof-of-concept investigations for the entity-removal/destruction/trash-bin feature. The feature’s test-driven development will be based on these investigation results and proof-of-concept findings, the latter of which was completed last month.
The team also supported the ‘VehicleDied’ event, which is used by Soft Death and vehicle destruction, and made quality-of-life bug fixes for Alpha 3.19.1, staging content, and game dev.
Plus, an issue with the RSI Constellation series’ co-pilot seat UI not connecting properly to IFCS was fixed in the content files. This was combined with a code fix aimed at the UI rules to prevent it from only tracking the pilot. These changes also create the potential for other ships to have their co-pilot UI updated properly if needed.
Features (Mission) The Mission Feature team continued to work on the ship escort, data heist, and consignment retrieval missions and added the finishing touches to a new unlawful salvage mission where a ship must be stripped of an incriminating paint job before law enforcement arrives.
“Another exciting development is that we’re exploring a new lightweight PVP/PVE event set aboard a modified version of the Siege of Orison barge, in which players must figure out how to open shipping containers in order to steal the items within, all while Nine Tails outlaws hold down the location for themselves.” Mission Features Team
For Alpha 3.19.1, the team rebalanced cargo generation within ships across various mission types, including salvage, assassination, and bounty hunting. This involved removing unsellable commodities and ensuring the profit fits the risk involved.
Mission Features actively worked on refactoring old missions into the current modular library, including Missing Person. Alongside this, they refactored how the 'destroy drugs' missions work and made parts of them modular. For example, the previous versions spawned hundreds of individual boxes but, with the help of new code, they can now simply spawn pallets that come with drug box ‘load outs.’ Alongside significantly improved performance and reliability, this method allows the team to control the number of pallets spawned for different mission difficulties.
Mission Features' ongoing work on Bounty Hunting v2 progressed well too. The designers are currently working with Systemic Services and Tools to develop the systems required to have virtual NPC bounties traveling around the system. One of the engineers, with help from the Interactables team, is also developing a method for pods to attach to points in the world so they can seamlessly enter and exit the game space.
Finally, the designers supported Invictus Launch Week, which involved fixing bugs and maintaining the expo-hall-transition system, the Javelin tour, and Bengal fly-by.
Graphics, VFX Programming & Planet Tech The Graphics Feature team spent the month working on performance improvements and new features, including screen space shadows, improvements to quantum jump tunnels, and render-to-texture zone culling. A GPU memory allocator and an upgraded ResourceCache compiler were among the new performance-boosting upgrades, while the evolving Temporal Super Resolution (an automated upscaling system that can now up-sample opaque objects) officially passed its first milestone.
Global Illumination is well underway. So far, the first iterations of a hash-map-based radiance cache, ray-generation code, and a ray-tracing prototype were completed.
Improvements to Gen12’s validation error debugger were made to improve the accuracy of bug detection for faster issue assessment. In preparation for deferred Rendergraph execution, Vulkan’s frame synchronization was improved. Issues with gaps in pipeline-resource sets at bind time were resolved with a remapping update that uses continuous resource-set layouts.
The Planet Tech team started finalizing quantum obstacle generation with generic shapes in asteroid fields. A collision issue detector and wear, dirt, and paint modifiers were also added to the RaStar tool.
Ongoing improvements to the BiomeBuilder will reduce constant spawn/despawning, which in turn will relieve the Physics team of large destruction queues. Water can now be simulated in-engine and features the new disturbance component improvements.
Finally, recent VFX features and bug fixes saw several direct improvements to both the editor and core-tech framework. For example, the new master VFX library can re-save and export in the P4 format, and particles can now be found in a dedicated effects browser. Bugs related to damage maps, particle effect placement, and in-editor crashes were solved too.
In-Game Branding (Montreal) The In-Game Branding team continued working on interior and exterior signage for Ruin Station and supported the EU Locations team.
Lighting In May, the Lighting team worked on Invictus Launch Week and continued to produce content for the Pyro system. This was mainly focused on Ruin Station's exterior and lighting modules for its interior.
Live Tools The Live Tools Team continued to study the usability of the network operation center and are now starting to collect the results. This will allow them to establish an action to highlight improvement needs and priorities for the future.
The team also released a new version of the internal error-handling pipeline, which featured significant improvements over its predecessor.
Locations In May, the Locations teams continued working on Pyro, making good progress on Ruin Station. They supported Invictus Launch Week too. Between major tasks, one of the artists worked on new racetracks, which was shown in a recent episode of Inside Star Citizen.
The Sandbox team further developed planetary content for Pyro and continued to support the Montreal-based team on the new underground facilities.
The Organics team created new fauna for Pyro and are currently reworking come of the upcoming system’s planets to bring them up to current expectations.
“We also have some very cool content that we are working on alongside all this and will share more info at a later date!” Organics Team
Narrative Over the course of May, the Narrative team continued working on several of the mission initiatives started in previous months, including data heist, package extraction, and consignment retrieval. They also worked with the various design teams to brainstorm new mission ideas.
Narrative also kicked off further discussions on Pyro, specifically going over the areas of influence of the system's various factions, as well as defining which groups are allies and rivals.
During a recent motion-capture session, the team recorded the first air-traffic-control assistant for cargo and will be looking to review and refine the wider experience in future months. The team also began polishing and implementing a new tourist behavior that will debut in an upcoming patch.
Narrative also dedicated several of their weekly 'jams’ to exploring some of the verse’s alien cultures and answering questions for some upcoming xeno-language development.
Finally, on the dispatch front, the team released a Portfolio outlining the history of Invictus Launch Week, a Whitley’s Guide to the Prospector mining ship, and wrapped up the month with another batch of Galactapedia entries.
Online services (Montreal) In May, the Online Services team applied fixes to the character-repair system, enabling players to fix some log-in and other issues without requiring CIG support. They also provided bug fixes and optimizations for ASOP terminals. The remainder of the month was spent optimizing Persistent Entity Streaming to improve the performance of its backend database.
Research & Development In May, the R&D team continued improving the temporal render mode for atmospheric and volumetric clouds.
Additionally, planetary terrain height-map generation was optimized to eliminate frame-rate hitches that were reported by players. Aside from using a more suitable partitioning scheme for the tessellation of terrain patches, the changes also include terrain quad viewport culling before further tessellation by the GPU. The resulting height maps are later used to render large-scale planet terrain shadows and to spawn GPU particles on the ground.
Systemic Services & Tools Systemic Services & Tools spent the month working towards Bounty Hunting v2, including finalizing upstream work on the character creation service, R&D for bounty contract missions, a bounty-marker prototype, and connecting the NPC tracker service to the game server. Additionally, a new C# service wrapper was completed.
The team also continued working on the Quantum/Odin tool, including making progress on the data-driven economy, Quanta state, Quanta life, and the battle matrix and battle system.
Finally, SST continued to support the recent live release, including several bug fixes and ship-price modifications.
UI In May, the UI team’s artists and designers worked on the user interface for bounty hunting as well as concepts for upcoming gameplay features, while the Arena Commander team upgraded the multiplayer game’s frontend menus.
The UI Tech team continued improving their tools, including making performance fixes and improvements to the debugging of complex UI screens. They also continued to work on the new interior and mini-map feature. This is initially for Squadron 42 but will eventually be added to the PU, making navigating caves and landing zones a much smoother experience.
VFX Last month, the VFX team revisited several old particle libraries to take advantage of newer attributes that didn’t exist when they were originally created. For example, Alpha Erosion is a setting that ‘erodes’ a particle’s alpha channel, reducing overall transparency in the process and helping to optimize the game’s visuals. This was used effectively in Lorville’s recently updated chimney smoke effects.
Work also continued on several new derelicts and the modular kits for various Pyro locations.