Chuffed and Knackered



The team at Foundry 42 UK works tirelessly on both Star Citizen and Squadron 42, are are excited for everyone to see what they’ve been cooking up.

Environment Team

Some changes are coming to Port Olisar. We gone through and fitted some shopping locations within the struts which helps gives the facility some more personality and is a great testbed for the shopping mechanic. We are starting with a small number of locations initially, but in the future we will be rolling out more locations as more buyable items come online. These updates will be coming in for the next release so we’re looking forward to getting it out to you guys.

Nyx is in the final stages of polish and optimization, we’re drilling down to hit our budgets in each area to make sure we deliver a smooth experience. Once the procedural tech is ready for prime time we will be integrating the location into the terrain ready for release.

The hard work is also continuing on the Sq42 campaign, the vertical slice level is continuing with its final art production phase and part of the weekly company playtests.

That’s all for this month folks, happy shopping in 2.4 and enjoy the vitamin D sunbath…

F42 AD

There are months where it’s hard to keep up, the rate of flow and change sometimes is amazing! I have to admit, the Prospector, we really did wrestle that ship and it took a lot of work on both Gavin’s and my front to get it where Chris was happy – all being said, the results came out pretty good and it might not be too long before it gets made!

Concept work is also continuing on the new corvette, a small personal vehicle and a new small ship. We’ve also tackled some Behring ship weapons (Size 5,4,3) and a boatload of components, not forgetting the Klaus and Werner weapon family guide with a hope to updating and unifying the weapons. There’s has also been a good amount of fettling of the Vertical slice level and prop designs – we all know the standard we want to achieve, there are just no shortcuts and it takes time.

For characters, a lot of work has been going on with the Vanduul, with Chris being in the studio on a more regular basis it making it a lot easier to fine tune the creature design. Also work started on medical staff costumes and also UEE staff.

VFX

This month the VFX team have been busy working on the Starfarer. Specifically, implementing its flight-ready effects – including damage, interior states, thrusters and weapons. The interior effects in particular have been time-consuming because of the sheer quantity of room and corridors. As always, we have worked closely with the ship team to ensure our effects sync up beautifully with the lighting.

We have also created effects for two new ship weapons, added effects to the new Crusader areas, and revisited our “high tech” effects category to bring it in line with the VFX style guide.

Away from the “fun” stuff (i.e.: blowing up massive spaceships!) we have also spent time cleaning up our pipeline documentation. Primarily this is for the other disciplines’ benefit so they can more clearly see how far along the VFX artists are on any given task – essential when a small team is involved in so many tasks at any one time.

Graphics

As well as fixing some stability issues the graphics team have been working on a variety of new features for the artists this month, the first of which is improvements to the layered shader we use for characters, weapons and props. This shader allows us to define the appearance of an object as the combination of more ‘layers’ such as cloth, steel, plastic etc. The new changes allow us to define how each of these layers will wear/erode over time, improve the overall performance of the shader, and allow it to be used on both small props and very large weapons.

We’ve also been finalizing our work on the ‘light linking system’ which allows light sources and glowing light-fittings to be linked together so that the brightness of the light fittings accurately reflects the realistic intensity of the bulb. This is crucial in getting the full benefit of the new HDR flare & bloom tech which we’re hoping to enable for the next release. The latest changes have refactored this to allow it work with the upcoming Object Container system.

After seeing a great presentation from GDC 2016 on improving the performance of tiled-lighting, we’ve been working on integrating this technique into our pipeline so that we can transition to tiled-lighting as opposed to the current deferred-lighting solution (should potentially be faster).

Work has officially started on implementing a new method of handling the ordering of the large number of transparent objects that Star Citizen requires (e.g. cockpit glass, visor, UI and particles etc). This will also involve integration transparent objects better with the post effects such as motion blur, depth of field and anti-aliasing, however this process requires deep engine work so will take quite a while to complete, but should fix issues such the cockpit glass and ship UI rendering in the wrong order when viewed from outside the cockpit.

Finally we have been finalizing a new profiling system that breaks down performance costs per art team to help us profile and optimize the huge amount of content in our game.

Engineering

The big feature development we’ve been helping out working on this month is the persistence, or basically the game remembering stuff between sessions. This is a very big deal as it’s the groundwork that so much of the game will be built upon. The underlying system has been implemented over in the US studios, but we’ve been then building on top of that so you can start seeing and enjoying the results of their hard work.

One of the big things that we now persist is the new AUEC (our alpha credits) so in Crusader we’ve started looking at ways in which we can reward the player with these credits depending on what you accomplish. David’s been working with the designers on implementing some of this gameplay. Now when you complete a mission you will get rewarded. Spotted somebody with a wanted level? Take them out and you’ll get a bounty. Find something interesting on a disused space station? Could make you some money.

Of course we’re implementing ways of spending this newly gotten cash. So we’ve updated the repair stations so that they’re no longer free and you have to pay an amount to fix up your ship. Fuel and ammo also now come with a cost. And of course shopping is being implemented! We’ve now got working shops in both Crusader and ArcCorp where you can go and buy clothes and weapons. On the clothing side Jamie has been working on a new try on mode where you can select a the piece of clothing you’re interested in and your able to view it on your character before deciding to buy, or with weapons being able to pick them up and inspect them before putting down some credits.

Another big aspect of the persistence is how we now store your hangar and the loadout of your ships. Rather than selecting which ships are in your hangar, or which flair items you can see from the website, we can now do it all in-game. This actually brings together several new pieces of tech from the Interaction Point system to the ‘inner thought’ UI which the UI guys here have been working on. Both Simon and Bone have been getting this UI working so you can see these interaction points, go up to one of them, select how you want to interact with it, and depending on what select in this case it’ll bring up a menu of what items can go on that spot. It’s a very flexible system so if it’ll allow you to place what ships you want in your hangar to changing the loadout of the ship itself.

Otherwise as usual we’ve been working in the background on all the ongoing mechanics required for S42. Nothing too much to update on but Craig is making good progress on the new landing system and getting landing working on a moving carrier ship, Rob has been improving the conversation system with it working with subsumption, Romulo has been doing some underlying conversion work on the weapons and implementing grenades, Gordon is progressing nicely with ledge grabs as well and vaulting and mantling.

Quality Assurance

It’s been a very busy month in QA here at Foundry 42. We worked tirelessly with the Dev team and you the community to get 2.3.1 out with the hopes of clearing up some of the nasty frame rate issues and the server stability crashes and while work on that is still ongoing, 2.3.1 brought about some much needed improvements.

With that out the door we began working on the big one, 2.4.0 is probably one of the biggest releases we have worked on since Crusader was created. But boy is it an exciting patch. Persistence. Everything persists now, and testing it has been a rollercoaster of emotions, QA’s main hurdle has been stability. In its first iteration, persistence made the game very unstable, with versions completely failing to build and a lot of time spent on frustrating tests. But we got through the hard times and have been ploughing on, testing the changes to the Hostility system, the Missions system and the Cry Astro Stations. We’re really eager to push this to you guys and gather up your feedback.

But persistence isn’t the only exciting thing we have been working on. Stocked shops (In Both ArcCorp and Port Olisar) & Alpha UEC, A new flight ready ship, a new hangar ready ship and a completely overhauled Hangar system (The Port Modification App). A few fun bugs have showed up in this testing time, such as ships bouncing around the hangar, Eldritch horror style floating eyeballs and so much more.

Right now we are working very hard to find and bug up all the major issues so this can get pushed to the PTU and you guys can get to see all the fantastic changes that have gone in.

See you in the ‘verse!

Audio

April for audio was, as ever, busy! The S42 work and the 2.4 release have been our main points of focus this month, but alongside that a big wedge of music production was undertaken. But we’ll start with the individual updates.

Sam Hall has been hard at it with ship computer work, looking to reengineer and refactor this so we can have it behave more intelligently in-game. This has involved syncing up with those in systems design as well as moving it across to the subsumption system. As well as this he’s been working on resolving 2.4 bugs, optimizing an audio plug-in for Dataforge, and adding triggers for airlock transitions (e.g. for when the player enters space without the prerequisite protective helmet).

As well as his work on the music production (see below), Ross Tregenza has been iterating on the music logic system and is still holding up the fort in being the overall point man for Squadron 42.

Luke Hatton handily bullet-pointed his general tasks! So bullet-point away, Luke:

Tweaks to maneuvering audio for the Aurora and fixed missing audio on the primary thruster for the Aurora LN

Mix tweaks to the tutorial hangar, more ambiance details now audible

Fixed broken enter and exit sounds on the Gladiator

Now using general health parameter in Wwise for ships, so we can alter any sound based on the amount of damage a ship has taken easily

Added distant explosion sound variants

Darren Lambourne, apart from his mastering mission in Munich, has been polishing up the Starfarer and working on audio for the Argo MPUV cargo vehicle.

Matteo Cerquone has also bullet-pointed things:

Added audio for Devastator Energy Shotgun dry fire

Added sounds for interactive elements such as alarm systems, elevators and doors for S42

Old Foley clean up

Bug fixing

Bob Rissolo and Phil Smallwood have both been deep on the dialogue side, preparing for future dialogue/p-cap sessions and implementing/processing material for current usage by the design department. Phil’s also been working on social module tasks, esp. re. shopping and general locations.

Simon Price is still very much engaged in dialogue pipeline tools that will be required for S42 as well as the live release.

Graham Phillipson – he’s also been on 2.4 bugs etc. but otherwise:

Refinements of automatic footstep generation code

Added listener-based RTPC s to area shapes

s to area shapes LUA -> c++ code conversion

-> c++ code conversion Tech debt removal, improving maintainability

Fixed bug with EVA audio not updating properly

Stefan Rutherford has been re-organizing some large aspects of the Wwise project structure to underpin the mix pipeline, which is a joint design/engineering effort by Lee Banyard (me), Jason Cobb, Stefan Rutherford and Graham Philipson currently – this will feed into S42’s linear-styling which require a more ‘filmic’ mix workflow, as well as the more systematic mix workflow that the persistent universe requires. Otherwise he’s been working on new content for our auto-footstep system, restructuring and redesigning the guns. He also headed up another gun recording session that took place in early April at Copehill Down with the company ‘Audiobeast’ (aka Steve Whetman). Hopefully some photos will be along for the ride with this monthly report, if not I’ll post some to the ‘Ask A Dev’ audio forum, hopefully we’ll wrangle some video too.

Jason Cobb has, as ever, been providing technical back-up in various aspects of the audio build pipeline, and is setting up mix states/snapshots across the game as part of the wider mix foundational work.

As mentioned previously, we pushed through a lot of music production work this month. We had another session at the start of the month in Bratislava with the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, to upgrade a lot of the themes and incidental pieces for Star Citizen. Partly this is material for the special edition soundtrack CD, but this material will also make its way into the game as well to improve upon what’s already present.

Then, with that material in the bag, Pedro Macedo Camacho, Ross Tregenza and I went down to Real World Studios, and met up with our mix engineer Peter Fuchs and assistant engineer Patrick Phillips. As well as being a talented and experienced recording engineer for our orchestral sessions, Peter has an extensive CV of mixing orchestral scores for film and games – you can check out his CV on IMDB if interested: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0297273/

We spent five solid days in the studio shaping and sculpting the rather lovely source material into more finalized tracks. If you’re interested in the facility, you can find pictures of it at http://realworldstudios.com/recording-studios/the-big-room/ – we were in what’s aptly named ‘The Big Room’ (hint – it’s big). While there’s an expansive mixing console there, much of the work of mixing by Peter was done ‘in the box’ – that is, within Pro Tools itself rather than routing everything through the SSL console. When working with many pre-recorded tracks this is often a quicker process due to the amount of setting up it would take between one piece of music and the next to assign everything to the desk, and his workflow is better suited to working this way. But mixing desks look impressive, of course! ;)

Once we were done with the mixing process, that material was taken on a step further at CS Mastering – which is a mastering studio in Munich headed up by Christoph Stickel. (If curious, you can see some images at http://www.csmastering.de/) Darren Lambourne was in attendance with Christoph and Peter Fuchs, and the process of putting together a finalized CD master was undertaken here. This involves working with the stereo tracks only, rather than Pro Tools sessions; but refining them yet further so they form a more cohesive ‘whole’, with a mixture of very high end analogue and digital audio processing equipment to hand.

All of this was a workflow that we’d wanted to get locked down for some time and I have to thank everyone for making it possible, we went from performance to a final master in really good time and I hope everyone will enjoy the results, whether in-game or on the soundtrack CD itself. It’s wonderful to hear Pedro’s work polished to this level of sonic shine, I think we all learned a lot from the experience and it will help refine the process for music production across Star Citizen as well as Squadron 42.

And I think that’s all for this month from CIG Audio. As always, thanks for listening!

Animation

Continued on with railgun animation sets

Fixing cover bugs

Turn animations worked on for 180 degrees and 360 degrees

Testing and feedback on tools

Further work to start / stop / step locomotion

New FPS weapon look dev and feedback with the art team

weapon look dev and feedback with the art team Recruitment – new animator starting next month

Props

The ship components continue to be a big focus this month for the props team, we are wrapping up the full set of small coolers and we have started work on power plants and quantum drives.

We have been supporting the new persistence feature by supplying the designers with a hand full of assets to support their new mission mechanics, this initial bunch was a quick pass to get something in to prove out the gameplay and will hopefully just be the start that we can add to in the future.

Another bit of exciting news is that we have now had our additional tech requests added in to the layer blend material and can now use it across the board for prop production. We were waiting on a few tweaks and adjustments to the way the shader worked and that has now been delivered. This is a big step forward for us as it allows us to almost half the number of draw calls on each prop so should really help to make our pops nice and cheap in terms of performance and we plan to use it in anger over the next few months.

Finally we have been supporting the shopping and clothing feature with a new auto valet locker system so allow for quick and easy changing of clothes and a bit of work has been done looking on our workflow for creating hanging and folded variants of all the clothing you can purchase.

Next month, more ship components and back to squadron 42 props.

Spaceships

Interior production of the Idris is coming to a close, this has enabled the team to start look dev and prototyping of the crashed / damaged asset and start to establish a real key beat within the story arc of Squadron 42. From this research the team should then be able to establish a grounded look and feel for damaged cap ships including the Javelin and Bengal.

Production on the Javelin exterior has moved forward, sharing procedures and techniques found during the development of the Idris, this has also fed into the Bengal production, all ships now sharing a very specific Squadron 42 Livery.

Design

We had a very busy April in the UK Design department.

Firstly, we are back in Ealing shooting pickup scenes at Imaginarium, this has kept a lot of designers busy in terms of finalizing the play spaces and putting in stability fixes. It’s always really rewarding for the guys who are working hard on the Squadron 42 levels to see the level of polish that the actor’s performances give to the player experience.

The Live Release team have been very busy this month with the introduction of our first stage of persistence. Crusaders expanding economy now includes new missions and bonuses, as well as new scavengeables. Cry-Astro now charge for their services and players will now find that respawning has a cost attached. As well as the numerous additions to the play space, we have been starting the work on the solar system scale map which will be coming soon. All in all a very interesting and productive month for the Live Release team that you will soon get to experience and feedback to us on.

The Technical team have continued to setup the various ships that are currently slated for release, and the full component refactor that will make such a difference to functionality and versatility of these craft is nearing completion. It’s nice to finally see an upgradability system that works beginning to roll out into the live builds soon.

Obviously the component system will have a huge impact on the new Balancing Team and that is getting a lot of focus right now so that when it hits we can be in the best possible shape to release something that works.

Overall it’s been another good month for Squadron 42 development and continued building for the persistent universe.