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September 9th 2020
Attention Recruits,
What you are about to read is the latest information on the continuing development of Squadron 42 (SCI des: SQ42).
As a result of our latest intel reports, we’ve learned about work towards creating the Xi’an race, responsive music to dynamic situations, and further work on the Vanduul combat AI and animation.
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.
Regarding melee attacks, damage is now triggered by collision with the weapon’s blade to enable timing and assets to be tweaked and adjusted. The Vanduul lance has several states that can be utilized by the behavior, including extending it when preparing for melee attacks or keeping it collapsed when firing or aiming. These weapon state modifications are triggered by the behavior based on general context. Vanduul health was also further developed to reflect the different skeleton and activate the correct damage when it receives hits to different areas.
SQ42-specific behaviors and functionalities were set up for vendor characters as well. Work also started on usables for the mess hall that will allow NPCs to collect and consume food systemically. When complete, NPCs will be able to collect cutlery and plates, serve themselves food, and then occupy seats to eat and drink.
Time was dedicated to the Lombard effect; a newly developed system detects louder volumes and large amounts of noise in-game and makes dialogue louder automatically so that players don’t need to do it manually. Audio also supported the VFX Team on triggering sounds when particles are generated on the GPU. Currently, if a particle is generated on the GPU, audio cannot efficiently play or sync. This ongoing work will remedy that.
Work on the organic shader continued too, bringing tighter integration with the planets to enable the artists to use assets in a variety of biomes and have them automatically integrate into their surroundings.
As part of these playthroughs, they started to call out potential moments that could benefit from additional content, such as filling in potential lulls or calling out gameplay mechanics. After scripting, the hope is to record placeholder versions of the audio to block into the game and see how it plays. This approach will allow them to field-test new lines in situ and iterate on them long before official capture. They also worked alongside the Audio Team to develop the Vanduul language, which involved a deeper dive into the alien race’s culture.