This week on the Week in 10, it takes us a little more than 10, because oh wow, that Monthly Report.
AtV Austin
Intro & Other Information
* Chris is back from Europe after doing some 3.0 mocap and meetings.
Super Hornet Freeflight ended and was successful
* Star Marine is being tested daily with QA
* Making adjustments as feedback comes in.
* Working on network synchronization to reduce lag and smooth client remote animation.
* Helmet 2.0 has been implemented with the new HUD and widgets
* Combat emotes are hooked up to allow signally to friends to taunting enemies.
* Another pass to Arena Commander will be happen after going through the latest feedback from Evocati along with missiles being included in that pass.
Studio Update
* Star Marine is going to be a more tactical FPS.
* Lighting won’t be designed to contrast the player, instead to be more realistic.
When lighting maps, thought went out to how it would have been lit - ie. how would the pirates have lit this?
There will be lots of very moody and flickering lighting.
* Players will have to be cautious, cover teammates and be tactical in how they approach situations.
Echo 11 has lots of rooms connected by tight intricate corridors.
Each room has its own unique feel so it’s easy to call them out.
* 2.6 brings refactored lobby system, new missions, GrimHex additions, Vanguard Hoplite and Drake Herald.
* Testing ship model changes including balance pass to shields, weapons and missiles.
Every day there is a release sync discussing current build, blockers and issues.
* Dedicated FPS specialists have been testing Star Marine.
They utilize checklists, ad-hoc testing and cross-studio playtests.
* Evocati are testing flight model changes.
* Evocati is 800 strong, from 20 countries, speaking 18 languages, and from 5 continents.
Evocati are selected by an algorithm and manual checks.
Lots of feedback provided to make sure bugs are found and fixed before public release.
Iain in Backend Services has been working on service recovery platform and now admin/customer support tooling.
Tom Sawyer has been working on leaderboard and matchmaking modifications.
Jason Ely has been working on the hub system rewrite.
Hub system rewrite simplified the threading model to use new architecture, removed some state and moved state into a single thread.
* Arena Commander and Star Marine UI is getting a big update, Tom Sawyer is working on the backend code for this.
Ensuring that information like game modes, maps and loadouts are synced between players.
* Matchmaking is more similar to Overwatch/HotS where you group up then search for a game than Battlefield/CoD where you go into larger lobbies with timers.
Community Update w/Tyler Witkin
Esperia Prowler art contest is still running through till Nov 11th. Winners will be announced on Nov 18th during the anniversary livestream.
Behind the Scenes: Animation
Brian Brewer, David Peng and Vanessa Landeros talk about getting animations in game
* The team must always keep metrics in mind when shooting motion capture or creating something for the PU
* Whenever they create a new object, like a mess hall table it becomes the standard for objects of that type
* When shooting mocap the actors are given specific instructions on how to approach an object and these also becomes part of the metrics
* Proper metrics allow parts of cinematic performances to be reused even when it wasn't originally intended for the PU
Mocap data is analyzed and cleaned up and then broken into at least three segments: An enter, a cycle and an exit
These segments are called animations sets and are essential for AI to properly use objects *Animations sets can be extended, for example there can be multiple cycle animations and these c...
