[PREVIEW] Operation: Harsh Doorstop

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #22 [May 2022]
Hello Drakelings!

Welcome to the twenty-second devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of May 2022.

We are still currently having many internal discussions about our roadmap towards early access release, and the list that I included in the introduction to last month’s devblog is still highly relevant to the plans that we are discussing right now. At the moment, we are looking at this list, and starting to plan/prepare for how we will tackle these tasks (and in what order), and we are writing design documents so that the team knows how to approach the features that will need to be created.

Over the course of the next few months most of the work that we will be doing will be highly technical and mostly involve the programmers, so we might not have much in the way of content to show off in the near future (although rest assured there is still content being actively produced, just not at the rate that we once had). That being said, the items on this list are going to be critical towards making sure that when we do pivot back into ramping up and producing more content, the entire game’s foundation will be much more robust/solid, which will in turn only further enhance the experience overall.

Our main goal at this stage of development is to ensure that when we do go to early access, we will have a solid, infantry-based foundation with decent gameplay loops, and good support for server infrastructure and modding. It is very important to us that the community will have a quality release experience that isn’t riddled with game breaking bugs, server issues, or a lack of tools and systems to begin creating the experiences that they want to see. If we are successful in achieving this, we believe that any of the work that we do beyond this point (and, in turn, that modders have the potential to do) will have a compounding effect, and the value that will be returned to the game and to the community will be more significant and enjoyable overall.

On to the recap of work completed in May:


Expansions

Operation: Overlord
The WW2 US and German factions are currently being remade for Operation: Overlord so that they will be more appropriate for the battles that we plan on including in this expansion (namely those that occurred in Normandy):

1st Infantry Division (US) and Wehrmacht (Germany) WIP models


Maps

Tan Binh
Work on the first official map for Operation: Rolling Stone began. This map is meant to depict the hamlet of Tan Binh, which is located in the center of the Binh Duong Province of Vietnam, and will contain vast rice fields, thick jungle, hills with tunnels, scattered villages, and a small airfield to fight over.

Currently, Tan Binh is in a blockout phase where the level design team is focusing on shaping the terrain, and figuring out placement of buildings, key POIs, and so on:

Tan Binh will be a 2x2km 0LZQY map.

Omaha Beach
More blockout work on Omaha Beach was completed:

Argonne
Argonne received some new foliage and trees, and ramps were added throughout the trench networks to make it easier to get in and out:

Animations

The new and reworked third person character animations are now implemented into the Test Environment branch of the game, and should be in the next update. As mentioned in the last devblog, we are now utilizing Lyra’s shooter template blendspace animations in combination with our own in-house animations.

One thing to note with these new animations is that they mainly affect the lower body right now, and not the upper body. Upper body animations are a bit more complicated, as we need to factor in all of the weapons and gear that can be held in the hands, which can vary quite drastically due to the amount of variety we will need to account for. We are aware that at the moment these will look KJ08Z a bit strange due to how the upper body is positioned (I always thought it looked like they are sitting back in a chair on some occasions), however, the lower body movements should be a noticeable improvement over what is currently in game.


Upcoming and WIP Features

Vaulting and Mantling
The blockout animations for vaulting that were shown in the last devblog received more improvements and polish, and were brought into the SDK for further prototyping using our own models:

As mentioned in the last devblog, our goal with this system is to allow for the following types of vaulting/mantling scenarios: vaulting/mantling over/onto objects from an idle position, and vaulting/mantling over/onto objects from a sprint. Whether you vault or mantle will be determined by object height, and whether you should go over or up onto something will be determined by the object itself (i.e. is it a thin fence, or a shipping container). These blockout animations should be a fairly good demonstration of what we are hoping to achieve with this system in the future.

Bots/AI
The AI programmer has made some fairly significant updates to the bots/AI in the past month. Soon, bots in a squad will move together as a unit, and if one member (or more) is falling behind, the group will actually wait for them to catch up (but they will not wait forever). In addition, if/when a squad leader is killed, the squad will now fall back and regroup at a location close to their last spawning flag in order to reconnect with their squad leader. In the future, we will be enhancing this system to include “combat effectiveness” for squads, i.e. if 50% or more of a squad is killed, the squad will break contact and seek to regroup somewhere around the last spawn point (like they would for their squad leader) so that they can return to the fight in full force. Bot squads that are defending a flag will also now patrol around the flag capture zone, so that they aren’t just stationary/not moving the entire time.

The AI programmer is also working on making it possible for players to now take on the squad leader role and have an AI squad follow them around wherever they go on the map:










Last but not least, for modders, most (if not all) of the relevant parameters will be exposed to blueprints, as they usually are (including the ability to set their formations).

—

That’s it for Z6M5A this month! If you have gotten this far, thank you for reading, and enjoy the key!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and/or follow our Steam announcements to track updates, and if you would like to support us early on in development don’t forget you can do so on our Patreon! See you all next time!

-
Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #23 [June 2022]
Hello Drakelings!

Welcome to the twenty-third devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of June 2022.

The team is still plugging away at a lot of core/foundational tasks, and I don’t have any special information or plans to share this month before getting into our recap of June (check out our last few devblogs for our broader early access release plans), so let’s just jump right into it:


Expansions

Operation: Overlord
The character modelers finished the Wehrmacht (Germany) uniforms, complete with rolled and unrolled sleeve variants:

In addition, work 0F3EF continued in the 1st Infantry Division (US) uniforms:

Maps

Tan Binh
Tan Binh has transitioned from a blockout phase to a detailing phase where the level designers are actually working on filling out the map with all of the relevant foliage and buildings that they will need:

Objects, Models, and Textures

World Props and Environment Assets
One of our environment artists spent last month creating a first iteration of systems to make modular buildings for our upcoming Normandy-based maps:

These buildings are completely modular, built to keep draw calls and memory costs down while still maintaining many potential variations, and they are utilizing several tileable textures and trim sheets (in fact >90% of these YNV0M buildings are made up of just 3 trim sheets). In addition, there will be enterable and non-enterable variants of all of these buildings.


Upcoming and WIP Features

Bots/AI
The AI programmer has now begun his implementation of limiting AI vision so that they will no longer be able to see through smoke and foliage. In addition, the AI will now target more areas of the body to see and shoot, such as the head, arms, and legs. As some of you may have noticed with the current version of AI, if you are crouched behind a window or above the ground floor of a building they will oftentimes not actually see you, as they are searching for the very center/middle of your body (which in these scenarios would be obscured). This is due to the fact that every player has an invisible pill-shaped capsule that surrounds them, and the very center of this capsule is actually what the AI looks for (so if the center of your body is behind cover, despite your head being fully exposed, you would effectively be completely invisible to them)—now, with this update, they will target much more than just the center, meaning players should no longer be able to exploit this limitation. Last but not least, he will also be working on mechanics that will make it so the AI will continue to fire on last known locations for a period of time if they lose line of sight, so players will not be able to do things like pop in and out of cover and/or concealment to instantly trigger whether or not the AI see them. He is already making decent progress on these changes, and so far our initial tests seem to be working quite well.

Additionally, many of the lingering bugs that were present with the AI grouping systems/behaviors have been ironed out. The lead programmer also included support for static navmesh generation for smaller maps, or maps that don't utilize nav invokers. In those cases, the navmesh would be dynamically generated 8BRCW around Player Characters and CPs only—this should help with AI navigation when we want them to always pick the shortest path to their destination ahead of time (as well as for performance reasons).

Vaulting and Mantling
Currently, vaulting and mantling is being researched by our lead programmer so that he can determine how to best incorporate these features into our framework. As shown off in the past couple of devblogs we already have some blockout animations created to be utilized in the first iteration of these systems, so once the lead programmer feels confident in his approach for implementation we should have some actual WIP gameplay demonstrations to show off (hopefully by the next devblog).

Suppression Overhaul
I don’t have much to share with you all on this just yet, but we are currently also working on a complete overhaul to the suppression system. The one that is in game right now was never really meant to be final, and as such has been a placeholder system. We are hoping to implement a system for suppression that allows for a more “realistic” approach while also providing an avenue for effective suppression that will factor into gameplay in a meaningful way that relies on teamwork and cohesion to successfully achieve. Once we have more progress on this we will make sure to give everyone a proper demonstration/breakdown to see how it will work.

—

Thank you for checking out the devblog this month! Let us know in the comments if you managed to get the key that I hid above.

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and/or follow our Steam announcements to track updates, and if you would like to support us early on in development and grab a Multiplayer Playtest key don’t forget you can do so on our Patreon[www.patreon.com]! See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #24 [July 2022]
Hello Drakelings!

Welcome to the twenty-fourth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of July 2022.

This will be another shorter/brief devblog this month, as we don’t have much in the way of new content to show off since the team has been heavily focused on improvements to bots/AI, as well as developing the vaulting and mantling framework. As we have outlined in devblog #21, almost all of our remaining tasks before early access are entirely programming based, so there won’t be an abundance of screenshots and so on that you all are used to seeing from our past devblogs. That being said, these updates and 0K6JA systems are going to be fundamental to enhancing and rounding out the overall gameplay experience that we hope to launch with, and will be critical to ensuring that the content that we do develop in the future (as well as modded content) is built on as solid of a framework as possible. We are still on track to complete this list with the exception of FOB/construction, which might not make it in before we actually go to early access, and as such might potentially become a post-early access task (although we will probably re-introduce the rallypoint system in the interim).

On to the work that was done in July:


Expansions

Operation: Overlord
The new character models for the 1st Infantry Division soldiers were completed:

Maps

Risala
One of our level designers started working on fleshing out interiors for the buildings in Risala:

in addition, he QRA7V worked on a new lighting preset:

Omaha Beach
The landscape for Omaha FZ968 Beach was redone:

Upcoming and WIP Features

Bots/AI
A lot of rather substantial improvements have been made to the bots/AI in the past month. To start, bots will no longer see 0K9LP players through foliage or smoke, which makes a huge difference to the pace of gameplay as players can now prioritize concealment options that they could not before (and makes foliage-heavy maps like Lam Dong actually playable with bots now).

Bots are now also much more efficient at how they actually see players, namely their specific body parts/regions:

Instead of looking at the center of character only (like they were before), they will now look at and prioritize the chest, head, feet, MXNIC and both shoulders (in that order). If they see a player’s chest, they won't look for the rest of potential target locations and will focus fire on the center mass of the player until they lose sight of the chest, and then they will readjust and check their prioritization accordingly based on what else they can actually see. This also takes into account and includes leaning.

In addition, some critical bug fixes to their movement were fixed that were causing them to get stuck and stop moving, and the way bots determine their target flag was updated to better distribute squads over available flags. These fixes will also pave the way for an update on how squads maneuver on and handle flag capture, conditions for how they regroup when they become combat ineffective, and so on.

Vaulting and Mantling
The first iteration of our vaulting and mantling system has now been implemented:

As you can see demonstrated above, it is now possible to vault over obstacles, as well as climb up onto things. In addition, it is possible to initiate these maneuvers from a sprint, which will actually change the speed and distance traveled, however, this is not fully implemented just yet. Mantling is also not currently implemented as we do not have animations made for it, however, it will be utilizing the same framework and A2P75 concepts, so that is something that we will be adding relatively soon as well.

UI Overhaul
The team also continued working on a revamp to the main menu UI:

The first image depicts roughly how the main menu will depict donator status, as well as ownership badges of the various WIP content expansions. The second image is what our new multiplayer server browser will look like, complete with filters, server listings and icons, and server descriptions. The third image is what our new options menu will look like. As you can see, we are essentially repurposing what the current singleplayer menu layout offers, as we feel this system works quite well and is rather easy to navigate and use while still being able to compartmentalize the various submenus and settings/options in a way that is intuitive and makes sense.

—

That’s it for this month!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and/or follow our Steam announcements to track updates, and if you would like to support us early on in development and grab a Multiplayer Playtest key don’t forget you can do so on our Patreon[www.patreon.com]! See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

Website[drakelings.bluedrake42.com]
Discord[discord.gg]
Youtube
Twitter

Twitter
Discord[discord.gg]
Website[blacksiteltd.com]

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #26 [September 2022]
Hello Drakelings!

Welcome to the twenty-sixth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of September 2022.

There isn’t a ton to go over this month, as it is mostly 26247 continuation of already in-progress tasks from prior months, so let’s jump right into it:


Maps

Risala and Khafji
Risala and Khafji both received major lighting improvements, additions and adjustments to the available hard cover, and overall YY22T improvements to the foliage:

Khafji

Risala 6F2VJ

In addition, more interiors for the buildings on these maps were worked on:

Most if not all of these improvements should already be in the latest Singleplayer Demo and Multiplayer Playtest builds.


Upcoming and WIP Features

Third Person Animation Improvements
The third person animator has been hard at work continuing to improve and refine the third person animations. Below you will see his WIP improvements to the angles and rotations of the character and how they hold the weapons when looking in a wide variety of directions, as well as 263EB the addition of weapon fire having an actual impact on the shoulders and upper body of the character:

Bots/AI
Last month the AI programmer continued his work on bot behaviors and their ability to use grenades, launchers, and so on. They should PWMJT now be able to better calculate optimal trajectories and aim accordingly to be more effective in using these tools (for example, they will actually attempt to reach you with an RPG instead of just shooting it in your general direction when they think to use that weapon). Soon, he will also begin working on their ability to utilize bandages, as well as ammo/med bags.

Up next the AI programmer will begin working on breaking contact/peeling behavior, the ability to understand and take advantage of hard cover, and the ability to conduct bounding overwatch.

Server Browsing and Settings
The multiplayer server browser now has some extra server filter options, and it is now also possible to set passwords on servers.

—

Thank you for checking out the devblog this month! 92ECL

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and/or follow our Steam announcements to track updates, and if you would like to support us early on in development and grab a Multiplayer Playtest key don’t forget you can do so on our Patreon[www.patreon.com]! See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Going It Solo
After months of consideration and negotiation, we have made the decision as a team to release Operation: Harsh Doorstop in February without a publisher. We still have an excellent relationship with Microprose, our previous publisher. However, we have come to the realization that the benefits of releasing Operation: Harsh Doorstop as a self-published project outweigh the alternatives.

Operation: Harsh Doorstop is not like other games. It is a unique project with unique goals. Profits or returns do not define these goals. Our only goal is to develop a superior product that we release for free. This founding principle makes Operation: Harsh Doorstop largely incompatible with most financiers. Because of this, we feel that Operation: Harsh Doorstop will function much better long-term as an independent and self-published project.

We still intend to permanently maintain a strong relationship with Microprose. We have thoroughly enjoyed our time working with Microprose, Microprose’s staff, and Microprose’s CEO David Lagettie. These individuals have shared our vision for many years, and have been instrumental in the success of Operation: Harsh Doorstop.

Because of this, we have also decided the following:

1. Microprose will become the first third-party client of our studio to receive a full license to OHDcore, the underlying framework of our game. Microprose will have a full license to continue development of their own games powered by OHDcore, most notably Warfare 1944. We continue to be available for any development work that Microprose will require, as they continue developing their own games.

2. Warfare 1944 is a Microprose project, owned and developed by Microprose. This was actually already true, but we felt this required further clarification following our announcement to self-publish Operation: Harsh Doorstop. While our studio has been previously contracted to develop Warfare 1944, Warfare 1944 has always ultimately been a product owned and developed by Microprose. We merely develop the OHDcore framework, and have been available for contract development work as needed. Our studio continues to be available to help develop Warfare 1944 as Microprose desires, while we continue to independently develop Operation: Harsh Doorstop as our own self-published product.

3. We will continue to support, promote, and cover Microprose products on our own personal channels. We love Microprose games, and we love what Microprose is doing for independent developers. We intend to continue supporting Microprose as long as they continue to be the champion for independent developers that we have seen them be.

Operation: Harsh Doorstop is a project with a strong and unique future. Our game is not like other games, and our mission is unprecedented. We intend to build a game sandbox that is free, not because releasing a free game is profitable… but because we believe it will create a better gaming community. Our supporting community members have seen this vision, and each of you have helped us to create something extraordinary. We intend to continue this extraordinary mission as the captain of our own fate, as it always should have been.

We look forward to showing you what we can accomplish, together with your support.

See you on the battlefield… soon.

Sincerely,
Connor Hill (Bluedrake42)

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #27 [October 2022]
Hello Drakelings!

Welcome to the twenty-seventh devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of October 2022.


Maps

Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach is now ZWFKZ starting to move past its blockout phase, and will start to receive more final improvements to the terrain, buildings, world props/environment assets, and so on:

Current versions of Omaha Beach can already be played by Patreon supporters of the relevant tier, and is obtained directly from our Itch.io page[drakelinglabs.itch.io], so if you want to check it out DFC28 be sure to grab it there.

Argonne
Argonne also received a few updates to the hardcover (more of it), foliage, and improved lighting layers:

Upcoming and WIP Features

Steam Workshop Support
The lead programmer HMRZE has now begun working on Steam Workshop support/integration, which will be the primary mod delivery method for O:HD once we go to early access. Workshop will likely not be available prior to this point (at least not for the Demo and Playtest builds), however, our intention is to hit early access with full Steam Workshop support day 1, and we are already well on the way to having this ready to go—at the time of this devblog we are roughly 70% complete with ZWGDQ this task.

Third Person Animation Improvements
Work continued on overhauling our third person animations. We redid the aiming offsets for third person resulting in a more natural pose, especially while prone:

We redid most of the layering of the locomotion third person and first person arm weapon poses. This has RREJY resulted in a far more fluid result, especially while sprinting, moving, or in the prone stance:

We also created new aiming transitions, as well as firing animations for third person to add some extra subtle details:

We have set up prone alignment nodes to match the angle of the surface the character is laying on, as well as leg IK surface displacement to match the character's leg pose to irregular terrain or slopes:

Last but not least, we added some basic/first pass first person animations for the vaulting system:

Additional Server Management Tools
We have added the ability to issue server commands in-game with basic admin management. In addition, we have manually defined a "one-time password", and supporters-only server whitelist capabilities for communities that wish to provide a more exclusive/closed experience.

Bots/AI
As mentioned last month, the AI programmer is now currently working on breaking contact/peeling behavior, the ability to understand and take advantage of hard cover, and the ability to conduct bounding overwatch. In order to accomplish this, he is doing a large overhaul of the existing systems and strategies Y2XXL, and refactoring a lot of the existing code to allow for a more dynamic and robust system to be in place for these more complex behaviors (as well as for future planned AI behaviors).

—

That’s it for this month, thank you to everyone who read the devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and/or follow our Steam announcements to track updates, and if you would like to support us early on in development and grab a Multiplayer Playtest key don’t forget you can do so on our Patreon[www.patreon.com]! See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #28 [November 2022]
Hello Drakelings!

Welcome to the twenty-eighth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of November 2022.

With the latest update to all of the builds of the game we have now begun letting in people who have signed up for the Multiplayer Playtest sessions! It has been awesome the past week getting into the servers and playing with everyone, and we are very grateful for all of the feedback and bug reports that we have been receiving—all of this information is invaluable to us, and will greatly help improve the overall experience. We plan on continuing to regularly admit people who have signed up leading all the way up to our early access release in February 2023. If you would like to skip that wait, remember that the Patreon[patreon.com] and now Discord[discord.com] support are both options—please consider supporting the team and the project! Every little bit goes a long way, and makes a huge difference towards the speed at which we can make O:HD the experience that we know it can be for everyone in the community!

Our plan at this point (moving forward to early access) is to eliminate some of the peskier and long standing bugs that have been in the game for a while, such as being unable to utilize certain parts of your kit (bandage “reloads”, 0V08M, etc.), animation bugs (like the SKS double reload), scope issues (actually basically already done on Dev Build), rare instances where you pick up a kit and are unable to use anything (all items red/inaccessible), and so on. We are also doing some optimization and polish passes, and QoL changes as well to try and get the current experience as solid as possible, and give us a good basis to pivot off of and continue on with our next batch of features that we will be focusing on (namely some of the other items that we have discussed in prior devblogs that we wanted to get done around release).

Moving on to the November recap:


Maps

Omaha Beach
Work continued on adding in buildings and walls to the Omaha Beach map:

Risala
The embassy 5LMPL building in Risala has now been replaced with a shipping container yard. This is temporary as the embassy building will eventually wind up being remade—the current version that we have is simply too unoptimized for the map, so we decided to replace it to help improve performance:

In addition, some 5M7CJ of the landscape for the map was improved.

Lam Dong
More work was done to experiment with and improve upon the lighting on Lam Dong:

Upcoming and WIP Features

Steam Workshop Support
Steam Workshop is now 0V26Z complete and ready for day 1 of early access! Once we release, everyone will be able to upload and download mods from the Workshop tab like you are used to seeing with other Workshop supported games on Steam. Until then, the O:HD website will still be the main location to get mods (unfortunately we are unable to implement Workshop to things like the playtest or demo).

Audio Overhaul
This task has been in progress for quite some time, and many of you have likely already heard many (if not all) of the new gun/explosion sounds that we have implemented. That said, I wanted to wait until we were up to about this point before really talking about the work that was done here in the T9AXT devblog since audio is a bit harder to portray here in text format, and there is a lot going on underneath the hood, so I felt it is better to tackle this when a more significant amount of work had been completed that we can actually show alongside these explanations for better context.

In order to better showcase this, we consulted with our sound designer to get some more in-depth information on how his work is set up and what you are actually hearing when a gun is firing, rockets are exploding, etc.

What was O:HD using before for gun sounds?
The problem with the previous sounds is that the stereo channels were too wide for the shooting of the gun, which made the gunshots sound unnatural and not coming from the gun itself
There were IK0ZW also problems with inconsistencies between different weapon sounds and lack of sound spatialization.

Some footage of the old audio:




How was this improved?
The most notable improvement is on the overall soundscape—gunfights sound more dynamic because the loudness and distortion of the gunshots come from the gun itself, while the echo and tails are playing on both stereo channels, which makes the gunshot sound more natural and it gives the illusion that the sound is actually traveling through the environment.

What is the difference between “core sounds” and “reflections”?
As mentioned before, most sounds are made with two layers—the core and the reflection. The core is a mono sound effect that has the transient, kick, distortion and mechanics of the firearm. The core itself is spatialized, which means that the panning is always directed towards the weapon itself. Meanwhile, the reflection is a stereo sound effect that has the tail of the gunshot representing a specific environment, which is not spatialized on “close” and “close-distant” distances 0V4DP and makes the sound on both sides of your headphones (as in the gunshot is reverberating and echoing through the environment around you while you are receiving it on both ears). In the case of Medium and Far distances, the sound has a "wider" stereo separation compared to the core sound file, which also makes it sound more realistic. These two layers are mixed together and crossfaded by distance and then go through the output.

The potential with this new "system", is that we can more easily add environmental variations, since all you need to change on each gunshot to represent a different environment is the reflection sound effects, so that way you can have tons of different reflection sets for forest environments, urban environments, open fields, mountains, indoor rooms, etc.

How does the explosion audio work?
For the explosions you have the previous "core" layer, and "reflection" layer, but you also have an extra layer called "LFE" which stands for Low Frequency Effect. This layer is also not spatialized, which means that it will sound on both sides of your headphones and it consists of very low frequency kicks and bassy impacts. The point of this layer is to have a very low frequency 98333 rumble playing on both stereo channels when an explosion happens, which makes it sound more deep and have a stronger impact, which also makes sense from a realism standpoint, as you can physically feel the explosions both in your body and in the ground, so low frequencies can get very close to this effect.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/FvVp7c2rogc
Currently, we only have the field reflections implemented, so all of the audio you are hearing right now is as if everyone was fighting in a big open field. We also have some preliminary work started on some of the other reflection layers, such as indoors, urban, etc., however, in order to properly implement them this will require the lead programmer to make an actual coded function that will switch the reflection layer based upon where the sound is being generated, and then from there the level designers can place these switchers in the appropriate areas when designing maps.

For example, shooting your rifle in a big open field will get you the sounds you hear now, and then when you walk into a building and continue firing the reflection layer would then switch upon entering the building and your gunshots would now sound like they are being shot indoors where the sound wave itself will come to a rather abrupt end vs. traveling far and wide. In this sense, in the future, you will not only be able to know where a gunfight is happening relative to you, but also what sort of environment they are in (i.e. “I hear a bunch of gunfire to my north and it sounds like that is indoors—there must be a squad holding down a building over there). Without the switcher, we can only implement one layer at a time, so eventually this will be the next natural evolution of our sound design as a whole.

Last but not least, the sound designer has also recently implemented a lot of new bullet impact noises for all sorts of materials (woods, metals, 8AGRH, concrete, etc.), impacts on players getting shot, etc.

—

That’s all for November, thank you everyone for checking out the devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and/or follow our Steam announcements to track updates, and if you would like to support us early on in development and grab a Multiplayer Playtest key don’t forget you can do so on our Patreon[www.patreon.com]! See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #29 [December 2022]


Hello Drakelings!

Welcome to the twenty-ninth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of December 2022.

As a general reminder, we are now closing in on our official early access launch on February 15th! This will be the day that the base game experience will be available to everyone for free, and all of the supporter keys/perks will be redeemable since everyone will finally be able to acquire the base game (reminder that 0NCKC the Multiplayer Playtest build will be going away at that time, as will the demo). In addition, this will also be the day that Steam Workshop will become available, and everyone will be able to upload and download all of their mods through this one central source, which should drastically increase the ease of access for mods. Last but not least, this will also be the day that the game’s server files will be available to all, so anybody will be able to host a server anywhere in the world, running whatever mods/custom experiences that they/their community want. Our main focus and priority leading up to early access at this point is to just continue polishing and enhancing all of the currently existing content and features to the best of our ability, as well as throwing in a few bonuses that it’s looking like we will be able to include for early access (more on that later in the devblog).

Hopefully this should go without saying (although we know it won’t fully be communicated just because we are writing it here), but just to reiterate: please also remember that early access is just the start, and we still have a very long road ahead of us to bring O:HD as a project to the place that we hope for it to go. The game will still be in a very early alpha state, will be missing critical features and content, will have bugs/issues, not always have the best optimization, and so on, but releasing it and getting it into the public's hand at this stage is a critical step for us in this process, and one that we feel will bring great value in the long run (which is our ultimate goal).

Thank you to everyone that has been involved and contributed to the project thus far! While we still have a lot of work to do, we couldn’t have gotten this far without all of the members on the team, our Patreon supporters (and now Discord backers too), modders from all sorts of backgrounds and varying levels of experience tearing up the SDK and helping each other learn, and all of the other members in the community that have been watching the project, coming and having debates and discussions about things from game mechanics to the greater gaming industry at large, and so on KAI4G. We hope that everyone is pleased with what we have been able to achieve so far, and we hope that we will be able to deliver on everything else that we have set out to do and still have coming on the horizon.

On to December’s recap:

Maps

Saint Quentin
The level design team has begun working on the first official map for the Operation: Michael expansion: Saint Quentin. Saint Quentin is a 2x2km map located in France that will feature a lot of trench fighting, and mostly be a no man’s land where it will be tough to travel up top and out of the trenches. Ironically, this map does not actually feature the town of Saint Quentin itself (this area was part of the larger overall Battle of Saint Quentin), but rather an area just north of it in a large, open field that features many hills and uneven terrain.

The early stages 5LIZA of this map are currently available to Patreon supporters via the Itch.io page, so feel free to download it and check it out if you’d like.

Omaha Beach
The town locations on Omaha Beach have begun to be detailed as the team shifts away from blockout stages:

A reminder that Omaha Beach is currently 0NCY7 available to Patreon supporters via the Itch.io page, so just like Saint Quentin if you would like to check all of these updates out you can download it there.

Argonne
Landscape, foliage, and lighting updates were made to Argonne:

Monte Cassino
Monte Cassino received some temporary blockers to portions of the building that people would tend to get lost in in attempts to try and make the map a bit easier to navigate LRQ80 in this section. In addition, cluster meshes of grass and pebbles were made and used in order to further optimize the map.

Khafji
Cluster meshes of grass and pebbles were also placed into Khafji for further optimization and refinement.

Animations

Polishing the Leaning Animations
The animator spent some time refining and improving some of the existing leaning animations and poses. We 0NGMF will eventually be completely replacing these, so this is more of an attempt to improve upon what we already have in place—they aren’t the best in the world, but they should at least be some measure of improvement over the old ones.

Upcoming and WIP Features

Bullet and Magazine Vertex Shaders
Bullets inside magazines/belts are now animated using a “material vertex shader”. Each bullet now has an assigned vertex color value ranging from 0-1. As you deplete your ammunition, the 6VA8T percentage of bullets in your magazine is sent to the shader, and then all bullets with vertex color values lower than the ammo percentage in your magazine will be hidden by collapsing the vertices in the vertex shader—this results in a more realistic depiction of bullets in magazines, belts, and so on, as they are being depleted upon the weapon being fired and cycling rounds. Using this technique, we can also hide objects without using opacity. Last but not least, springs inside the magazine are also animated using the vertex shader by rotating the vertices around an axis.

Nametags
That’s right, we are finally going to be reintroducing nametags back into the game just in time for early access. The following images are part of the prototype system, and we are still doing some additional work to make it so that there is less clutter and overabundance of text on screen at once, but this should give everyone a pretty good picture of what it will more or less look like for its first iteration back into the game:

As you can see, we are attempting to create a simple and clean nametag UI that gives you the minimum critical information that you would really need to see and identify friendlies (up to a certain distance of course), and be able to tell whether or not they are in your squad or just another member of the team. At various distances, not only will nametags scale in size to portray their relative distance to you, but they will also fade out into simple dots/markers further reducing onscreen UI elements when they aren’t really necessary (we are still feeling these distances out to see what feels best). This L3QTE means that, at distance, you will be able to identify friendlies, however you will need to either use your map or communicate with other players to figure out what
specific
squads and/or players you are looking at.

Map Markers
On top of nametags, we are also doing some much needed polish and improvements to our map markers so that they will provide important and relevant information to players when they look at the map:

Players will now be able to see their fellow squad members, as well as the squad leaders for each of the other squads.

Bots/AI
Work on the AI covered in the past few devblogs has continued, and the AI programmer was heavily focused on his overhaul and refactoring process throughout the month. His first phase of changes is more or less complete, and just requires some more testing before it can be implemented. With this update, now when bots enter a combat state, they will alternate between a “safe” spot (whether that is concealment or hardcover), and an open location where they can attack from (thus paving the way for bounding overwatch where a portion of the bots in a squad will be able to effectively seek cover or concealment, while the remaining portion is able to acquire a sight line to provide covering firing during their movement). Once the enemy is either dispatched or moves away the bots will leave their combat state and continue working towards their objective as normal. We are not sure when this update will be coming to the game, but this should start to be the point at which we are able to start getting the bots to do more interesting and nuanced behaviors that will spice up their interactions some more compared to what they currently are capable of doing (which as many of you know is simply capture flags and shoot at enemies when they see them).

Critical Bug Fixes
Some of the more long standing and critical bugs that we have had for a while should now be fixed. This includes, but is not limited to, having to reload kits when you pick them up, needing to “reload” your bandages and grenades, scope bugs, certain situations in which you would not be able to use any items in your kit, and more.

—

Thank you to everyone that checked out the devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and/or follow our Steam announcements to track updates, and if you would like to support us early on in development and grab a Multiplayer Playtest key don’t forget you can do so on our Patreon! See you all next time!

-
Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[RodrigoNPC]

 

[ToniBaladePrata]

Vale o download?

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Vale o download?

Se gosta de Squad, Arma, Post Scriptum, Project Reality.... esse tipo de jogo
Acho que vale
Se não curte, vai apenas perder tempo
Só lança dia 15/02 (e acredito, na verdade tenho certeza, que o jogo vá lançar inacabado Ex: sem uma biblioteca de som, sem algumas animações de personagens...)

 

[RodrigoNPC]

 

[RodrigoNPC]

A few words before launch..


A few words from the CEO before the launch of Operation: Harsh Doorstop:

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Destruction, vehicles, and more...
Hello everyone, and welcome to our third development vlog!

For anyone who wants to cut right to the content, you can watch the vlog below!

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #31 [February 2023]
Hello everyone!

Welcome to the thirty-first devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of February 2023.

Updates on Cheat Prevention Tools
Right now our work on cheat prevention tools is our top priority, and the main focus for our lead programmer. We are working as quickly as we can to begin rolling out a series of solutions and tools that should greatly 4NDD2 help to curb the amount of cheaters that are seen in the multiplayer servers (keep in mind we only have one programmer working on this, and we are working on it as fast as we can given the resources that we have).

This will be a multi-step, iterative process where we are essentially “layering” these solutions and tools on top of one another to prevent certain cheats from being able to occur, and giving server owners filtration methods to attempt to keep cheaters out. To briefly recap what this will look like:

1. First, there will be a patch that addresses some vulnerabilities in the code that have been frequently exploited and are the culprit to most of the cheating that has been seen so far. There is not much more that I can say or reveal about this other than it will take care of most of the more egregious cases that we have been seeing (at least the ones that we are aware of at this present time, and can currently provide fixes for—there is of course still always the possibility that further exploits/methods will be discovered over time, and we will have to address/tackle those as they come up).
2. Second, server owners will be able to utilize a series of filters and restrictions to prevent potential cheating accounts from joining. This includes, but is not limited to, the ability to restrict joins based on whether or not the account has VAC and/or game bans, how many of these bans they M32J6 have, how long it has been since they have received these bans, Steam account age, and how many hours that they have in the game.
   
   Server owners will also be able to “exempt” certain Steam accounts that might fail any of the checks that the server owner imposes on accounts, such as if they want their server to have a certain level of join restrictions, but that would mean a friend who they trust not to cheat on their server then cannot play there due to something like an old game ban that a developer placed on their account over something not related to cheating—in this scenario they would be able to exempt this player from those restrictions, thereby allowing them to join and play (this can be handled on a per server/individual basis, which will allow security to remain high, but provide a means for legitimate players to be let in when they probably shouldn’t otherwise be restricted).
3. Third, a vote kick system will be implemented that server owners can choose to turn on or off for their respective servers. Server owners will be able to also set further parameters for this system if they choose to use it, such as dictating how long someone will be kicked for (it’s actually not a “kick”, it’s more like a “timed ban” that expires after X hours), what the vote succeed/fail conditions should look like, and so on.
4. Fourth, Easy Anti-Cheat will be implemented as a tool that server owners will be able to opt-in/out of as a final measure of protection for if/when all of the aforementioned systems happen to be bypassed. This is something that we will have to adjust ourselves, and server G93XJ owners will only be able to choose whether or not they want to include it but will not have control over what it actually does. In addition, as stated in the last devblog, EAC is NOT a magic bullet, and server owners/admins will still need to actively moderate their servers if they wish to keep them free of cheaters (this will just help alleviate that workload along the way).

General disclaimer/reminder: The steps outlined above are in the order that we will likely see them implemented in, however, that is always subject to change depending on the circumstances. In addition, just to reiterate, there is no perfect cheat prevention method for multiplayer games. All of the solutions outlined above are meant to add varying layers of security for servers to help alleviate the amount of cheaters that will attempt to play on servers, however, there will always be a possibility that some of them will still slip by or figure out other means/methods to cheat (and we will continue to monitor and address these scenarios as they come up and as solutions present themselves that make sense to implement—as usual, server owners/admins will still need to moderate their servers along the way).

Moving on to the rest of the work that the team did in February:


Maps

Most of the existing maps have been touched up/adjusted, some bugs that were spotted during launch 4DBTL were fixed, adjustments to some of the spawns were made to help reduce spawn camping, and so on (not much to share here visually for those).

Carentan
The level design team started to expand the showcase area for Carentan, and further continued to move away from the blockout stages:

Saint Quentin
They also R7TTL started to prepare for expanding the showcase areas for Saint Quentin as well:

Vehicles

Driver and Passenger Animations
The team has been steadily making progress on the prototype vehicles—recently they have introduced a passenger shooting system that allows for passengers in “enabled” seats to lean out of windows and enter a shooting position (“enabled” in the sense that players would only be able to do it in vehicles where they would actually be able to lean out, such as the pickup truck shown below; this 55IY3 would of course not be possible in something that doesn’t have the access or space for a person to be able to lean out of). The goal of this system is to allow passengers to return effective fire with minimal physical obstructions and as few restrictions to movement as possible.

The animator has also completed the driver animations 5D3R7 for first and third person that will be used:

Upcoming and WIP Features

Radial Menu Prototype
We have begun to work on some prototype UI for reintroducing the radial menu system that will be used for a wide variety of mechanics and utilities:

The design LEJ4K of this UI (such as the colors, icons, and so on) is likely going to change up a lot, but this should at least demonstrate how the menu will actually function at base levels. Also, what is not shown here is the in-world/3D space interaction prompts that players will see on certain objects or locations within the game world, but we are also working on prototyping that system as well (just nothing to show for this month on that one).

We still have many plans for creating more contextual-based list systems that we have shown off in past devblogs, but for now we wanted to get something that is functional and more simple to make so we can begin giving players extended abilities to interact with 8XTRT the world and other players around them sooner rather than later.

Destruction Prototype
We have also begun working on our first building destruction prototype with the assistance of Anton, one of the members of the modding community.

Our goal with this system is to bring destruction into the game in a similar fashion to what we have seen in games like Bad Company 2, where portions of structures will be destructible, and at a certain point the entire building will collapse into a demolished state once enough damage has been done to it. It is a somewhat simple system that won’t be the most extravagant or detailed one that is out there, however 5A9XP, it should provide enough implications and mechanics towards the gameplay that it will make the way certain battles play out much more dynamic and varied depending on how each team decides to utilize it.

Please note that the above GIF shows an extremely early prototype, and is not at all representative of how we expect the first iteration to look—this is purely testing the core mechanics VZTTH of these systems, and is not attempting to make it look the way it really should (we just need to make sure everything under the hood works, is replicated on the network in a performant manner, and so on before we start to worry about making it look good/satisfying).

Bots/AI
The AI programmer has jumped back into working on his new AI updates after taking a couple of weeks to help out with the vehicle prototyping, and he is getting close to having these updates ready to preview on the developer build of the game. Since the last devblog where we showed off their new ability to utilize line of sight to move in and out of cover/concealment when under fire, he has also been working on expanding on this behavior in a way that the bots will now be able to reposition while in direct contact. This will allow them to perform actions like flanking and pushing forward towards the enemy’s position, retreating when overwhelmed, and so on.

Bug Fixes
Beyond the cheat prevention tools outlined at the top of the devblog, the lead programmer also fixed a slew of bugs that came up post-launch. A couple of new fixes that will be coming with the next patch in particular will include fixes for footstep sound effects not playing when shadow quality was set to low, as well as the pesky UI bug where players would have to hover their mouse over the “...” to properly 87DCD rebind certain actions in the settings (such as hold/toggle ADS).

—

That’s it for this month!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and/or follow our Steam announcements to track updates, and if you would like to support us early on in development and grab a Multiplayer Playtest key don’t forget you can do so on our Patreon[www.patreon.com]! See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

Website[drakelings.bluedrake42.com]
Discord[discord.gg]
Youtube
Twitter

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #32 [March 2023]
Hello everyone!

Welcome to the thirty-second devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of March 2023.

(More) Updates on Cheat Prevention Tools
Our last patch from mid-April contained some fixes and changes to the code to help address some of the more egregious exploits that we were seeing plague many of the servers (such as people being able to spam grenades, and so on). Since this last patch, we have not seen this occur again, and we have not received any reports about it either from both players as well as server owners/admins, so it’s looking like the changes that were made are doing what they set out to do so far.

This of course does not mean that cheating is completely stamped out or eliminated (nor will it likely ever be totally eliminated), however, we have certainly seen a steep drop off since pushing this last patch, and servers should be much cleaner to play on now. So far we have seen from a few of our sources within the cheat making communities that some older cheats got updated for this patch and are being used so we know they are still out there, and I am sure people will run into them, however, these look much more like the traditional cheats that you tend to see in other games (such as ESP, 3NFLI, aimbot, and so on). If you suspect that someone is using these on the server you are playing on, please make sure that you notify the respective server owners/admins so they can keep a close watch and take the necessary actions that they see fit (and I highly recommend that you do your best to gather proof/evidence as well, as some of those more traditional cheats are much harder to determine whether or not they are in fact being used—things like ESP are tough to know for sure, however, it’s pretty obvious if someone is using something like an aimbot if they are consistently killing players from very far distances and have an extremely high K/D for instance, so some of these things players can use common sense and observe the telltale signs of to know whether or not there is actually cheating going on).

Our next update(s) to further address cheating and give server owners the tools that they need to keep their communities safe will contain the Steam API variables that we discussed in prior devblogs, as well as the optional vote kick system. These will either both come together in the next update, or will be spread out between two simultaneous updates, but you can expect the Steam API stuff to come first between the two. To briefly recap what these will contain, the Steam WRMKA API tools is what will allow server owners to restrict joins based on certain factors such as whether or not their account has a VAC and/or game ban, how long it has been since their last one, their account age, and so on. The vote kick system is exactly what it sounds like: an in–game system that players can use to initiate a vote kick on somebody that they suspect of cheating or breaking any other server rules, then the whole server can vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and the person in question’s fate on the server is then decided by the community (the severity of the punishment for a successful kick being dictated by the server owners/admins). To clarify on a couple of points for this system, server owners will have several options about how they set this up, such as what constitutes a vote succeeding or failing, how long the kick will be for (you can think of this more like a timed/temporary ban than just a simple kick), and whether or not their server even uses the vote system in the first place (this will be entirely optional of course, and not every server will feature a vote kick system unless they explicitly choose to include it).

After the next update(s) mentioned above, we will be revisiting our plans for incorporating EAC and determining whether it will be worthwhile to proceed on incorporating this right after, or if we should return to game features like finishing up the first iteration of vehicles, base building/construction, and so on first. To BXGFQ be clear, we still do plan on incorporating EAC as an option for server owners, so revisiting our plans more so pertains to when we actually do it (not IF), as we would like to get back to working on the actual game itself sooner rather than later. We believe that the systems discussed above will have a far greater impact on curbing any cheating issues than EAC will, however, only time will tell of course so we will cross that bridge when we get there after these next updates take place—our main goal right now is getting the community-ran servers to a place where the server owners/admins have the tools that they need to effectively moderate their communities without a tremendous amount of additional work, and making it so that if/when players do encounter cheaters that it is nothing they aren’t already used to seeing in other games, cheaters are dealt with in a swift and timely manner, and most importantly they have a hard 4R8KV time being able to come back once they have been removed from a server.

Now on to March’s recap:


New Lighting System

We have now begun the process of completely replacing the Ultra Dynamic Sky system for how we light levels/environments. This new system uses a custom PBR (Physically-Based Rendering) lighting system that makes use of pseudo-photorealistic lighting values and techniques, and features a variety of customizable parameters such as wind, sky, and flow controls. This will LX3QZ allow for full control of how the level design team and modders alike choose to create the lighting for their levels.

Here are some images to showcase how this new lighting system looks—the first image of each set is before the new lighting during the day, second is after the new lighting during day and sunset:

For the more technically-inclined that want to know more specifics about what exactly this new lighting system is doing, here is a list of its features/details:

• Proportional photorealistic lighting values
• Global lighting scenario adjustment support
• Global Skydome/Fog Z Offset customization
• Global Skylight Relative Z Offset automation + customization support
• Support for Skydome Realtime Sky Capture, HDRI Panorama, UV manipulation, HDRI M7L49 Texture Adjustment, Sky Flow Mask, UV-based "wind" distortion, Noise-based Variation, Sun Disc customization, and Directional Light vector-based flow masking and texture luminance adjustments
• Automated Directional Light/Skydome Sun Disc pairing support
• Fog Automated Texture-based Fog Inscattering + customization support
• Eye Adaptation/Camera Exposure automation + customization support
• Carefully created/calculated histogram importance values, histogram ranges, exposure ranges, exposure metering mask, and exposure compensation curve
• Modified film stock/default color grading to better match natural vision
• Gaussian Bloom support
• World-Space SSAO support
• DFAO support
• Multiplicative SSAO/DFAO rendering support
• Directional 3LK3T Light light shaft occlusion and bloom support

On the current stable branch/build only Risala features this new lighting layer, however, the team is working on making new layers for each map so that we can totally move off of Ultra Dynamic Sky for the base maps (UDS will still remain in the SDK though for those that wish to still use it in modding). In the next update additional levels (maybe all depending on the level design team’s speed) will be overhauled to replace existing lighting layers with the new one. This system is now also available in the latest SDK update for those that want to start experimenting with it for their own map creations.


Character Model Updates

A handful of updates and improvements were made to some of the preexisting character models.

To start, we are beginning to swap out placeholder heads with new G80A6 MetaHuman heads (before and after):

The Insurgent faction also received some adjustments to their uniform and gear, also displayed in the before/after images above.

The uniforms for the NVA faction were updated to have more detail:

The uniforms for the USMC faction were updated to have rolled cuffs on some of the variants:

Last but not least the US soldiers for Operation: Michael received a number of updates. The uniforms had their colors and mesh adjusted, the soldier’s gear was tweaked to be smaller and more uniform, the Squad 9QZI9 Leader head was swapped out with a more modern one, and camo netting was added to the MG class helmet:

Maps

Saint Quentin
Saint Quentin received new capture routes that use the rest of the map, the foliage was updated, the trench networks continue to be expanded upon, new lighting was added, and the town of Bony is now being set up, which will be a key point on the map.

Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach continues to receive foliage throughout the whole map, and more detail is gradually being added to the smaller showcase area of Vierville-Sur-Mer 4Q3LZ.

Vehicles

Turret Animations
Now that the driving and passenger animations are more or less completed, the animator has moved QYVFY on to creating the turret systems that will be used for static weaponry and emplacements:

Upcoming and WIP Features

Bots/AI
At long last we are nearing the point where the team is preparing to bring in the latest AI updates to the dev build of the game to start testing everything—as soon as the lead programmer has some time between his other taskings, he and the AI programmer will be meeting to review 05I85 his work and start taking the next steps to migrate it all into the main code base that the rest of the team is working on (AI actually has its own separate branch). We will be sure to let everyone know when these are ready for testing in the dev build for those that want to check it out.

—

Thank you for checking out this month’s devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and/or follow our Steam announcements to track updates, and if you would like to support us early on in development and grab a Multiplayer Playtest key don’t forget you can do so on our Patreon[www.patreon.com]! See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #33 [April 2023]
Hello everyone!

Welcome to the thirty-third devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of April 2023.

Let’s get straight into it:


New Lighting System

The new lighting system has now been integrated into all of the currently existing maps, and nearly all of our existing materials and textures have been updated to better fit into this new system.

More specifically, the lighting system 5FWQB blueprint was updated to add more user friendly features to it so it is more of a drag and drop experience for our level design team (as well as modders), and requires fewer tweaks that have to be made to be implemented. In addition, lighting and fog cubemaps can also now be baked—a PDF explaining how to do all of this will be distributed when this next patch goes live on the main build.

All of our materials have been updated for the new lighting system as well. We adjusted all material specular, metallic, and roughness values closer to the proper PBR settings, and parameters and nodes were added to the master materials that should help metallic and specular values look proper under the new lighting. We are also preparing further optimizations to all material and texture sets as well.

Last but not least, all of the lighting layers/levels for all of our currently existing maps have now been updated to use the new lighting system, and multiple lighting layers have been created: Dawn, YPLFM Morning, Mid Day, Afternoon, Sunset, Overcast, Heavy Overcast.

There is still some more polish work to go on the above showcases (such as fixes to some exposure values and some of the ground materials), however, this should be a pretty good demonstration of the new lighting in various IPKGF environments/terrains.


Character Model Updates

Continuing with the work that was shown in last month’s devblog, improvements were made to the US and Russian soldier characters. Each character received more material slots, allowing for higher quality textures. The Russian soldiers received new MetaHuman heads and had some chest rig straps adjusted/fixed, and the US soldiers received some new gear to their belts/rigs 5ELAK as well.

Maps

Tan Binh
Tan Binh was updated to receive the new lighting system (a noon layer for now), mostly as placeholder 63LEF until the next SDK update comes around to get the latest lighting templates and tweaks. More foliage types were also added to improve PTIXR detailing.

Saint Quentin
The rest of the trenches were placed on Saint Quentin, including some improved trenches for the frontlines. This map also received a noon 5G4XJ lighting layer similar to the one shown on Tan Binh.

Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach also received some G7T5N improvements to the foliage.

Vehicles

Turret Animations
Our animator has finished animating the PBEG5 DShK for our vehicle prototype by completing the reload animation, and he is now wrapping up the whole animation pass for our technical pickup.

Upcoming and WIP Features

Bots/AI
The new updates to the AI can now be played and tested in the Development Build of the game. At the time 5A3XX of writing this, their behaviors and abilities have been stripped back down to just their raw movement and attacking patterns so that we can fully test/verify their new line of sight behavior that they utilize in order to take cover from incoming fires. We are still working through a few kinks/bugs (such as one that is preventing them from properly being as aggressive as they need to be to push and capture objectives), then T079G once we resolve those we will begin working back in their other behaviors, such as being able to utilize grenades and launchers, and change their stance. We will also be doing a complete pass to all of their existing values (including accuracy) to make sure everything feels good with this new system, as their ability to now move in and out of cover presents a lot more unique and dynamic scenarios.

—

Thanks for reading 85Z0Z!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

Website[drakelings.bluedrake42.com]
Discord[discord.gg]
Youtube
Twitter

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #34 [May 2023]
Hello everyone!

Welcome to the thirty-fourth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of May 2023.


Maps

Map Redesigns
We have no images to share for these just yet, but currently the maps Lam Dong and Khafji are receiving some redesigns and tweaks. Khafji is starting to be expanded back up towards its original size (4x4km) in anticipation 5AE9N of being a testing ground for the future vehicle framework update. Lam Dong is having portions of the map completely redesigned to better improve the overall flow of the map, and take advantage of some of the spaces that have not been utilized very well in prior versions (in other words, there will be more playable space and should be less flag QFLAM layers that devolve into the frequent choke points that are commonly seen).

Saint Quentin
Saint Quentin continues to receive further detailing and expansion. Support trenches in the back were widened with the grassy fields and communication trenches leading towards the fire trenches at the front towards no RPNIZ man’s land, and forested areas will provide cover for advancing infantry in some places (tanks should work well in these fields).

Vehicles

Last month the 54VXR team pushed more heavily into developing the vehicle framework prototype by creating several armored fighting and transport vehicles with basic functionality. The GIF displayed below shows a ricochet mechanic that some of the vehicles will have when shooting each other in specific locations and angles, and also demonstrates that all players that are inside of the vehicle will die once it is 7QCVM blown up (which then spawns a wrecked version of the vehicle in its place).

Animations

Stance Transitions (Crouch)
We have now MZH99 started to work on animations for stance transitions. To start, we are working on crouching:

Next up will be prone.

First Person Movement Cycle Improvements
Additionally, we're 55AVR working on improving the first person movement cycles with a new blendspace that allows us to seamlessly blend multiple looping animations together to produce more fluid and dynamic 4Z7H0 movements:

Upcoming and WIP Features

Bots/AI
The overhaul to our bots/AI is now more or less completed and can be fully tested on the developer build of the game. All of their past behaviors—the ability to use frag and smoke grenades, shoulder 6MNWI mounted and underbarrel launchers, and so on—have now been reintroduced in addition to their new cover seeking behaviors. The only feature from the previous AI that is technically missing at this point is their ability to crouch and go prone, as these systems are going to need to be recreated from the ground up to work with the overhaul.

The new AI combat behavior (which is triggered by either taking contact or seeing enemies that they decide to engage) essentially has bots seeking cover and popping out of it to attack. They will now search for a "safe spot" if their current 6BFTQ one is no longer providing cover/breaking line of sight, and the same goes for their "attack spot"—if they want to attack but can't see the enemy from their current position, they will now move around until they can. They will also periodically reposition themselves to get closer to their current objective (on a per squad-basis). In the future, this same underlying system will be used for further "reposition actions", like pushing forward, retreating/breaking contact, flanking maneuvers, regrouping, and so on (at the moment, HLQME we have only implemented "move closer to objective").

General Optimizations
A handful of general optimizations have been made to further improve overall performance:

Various assets and decal materials (which every projectile creates when an impact decal is spawned) were optimized in order to reduce draw calls. In addition, quality switches were added to master materials for “Low” settings (all normals on this setting will now get replaced by a flat normal texture which heavily 4W07P reduces texture memory and draw calls), as well as for particle effects (which achieves the same thing noted above).

—

Thank you for checking out this month’s devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[Smurf]

Sem ter jogado ainda, apesar de todas as lindezas e boas intenções, Battlebit tem tudo pra derrubar esse jogo, uma vez que habilitem o modo MILSIM lá.

Pode parecer meio triste, mas é verdade.

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Sem ter jogado ainda, apesar de todas as lindezas e boas intenções, Battlebit tem tudo pra derrubar esse jogo, uma vez que habilitem o modo MILSIM lá.

Pode parecer meio triste, mas é verdade.

Não precisa ninguém matar
Se o jogo não ganhar melhorias, novos modos, vai morrer

Sei que tem bastante mods mas tudo muito inacabado e apenas server gringo
A questão é: falta suporte no geral.


Battlebit se habilita o modo MILSIM, o modo MILSIM dentro do Battlebit morre, o pessoal quer saber da bagunça.

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #35 [May 2023]
Hello everyone!

Welcome to the thirty-fifth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of June 2023.

This will be another shorter one as we don’t have a whole lot to share this month due to most of the work going on 59XWR behind the scenes being pretty rigorous programming work that doesn’t have much to show here in a devblog (more on that in the Upcoming and WIP Features section towards the end), so let’s just jump straight into it:


Voting Systems

We have now implemented a voting system into the game. This not only includes the capability for server owners to set up vote kicking on their servers (and configure what it takes to initiate a kick, how long kicked FG3W8 players must wait before rejoining, and so on), but this system will also be capable of facilitating other types of votes as well. This will also be something that modders will be able to tap into for their own creations. Vote kick and other voting issue types will be configurable by server owners through K4AW7 an INI file.

As a general reminder, and for the sake of clarity, things like vote kicking will be optional and up to the server owner to determine if they want to use it. This will simply be yet another measure at server owner’s/admin’s disposal to have as an option to help with potential trouble making players, whether that be cheating, griefing, and so on (most likely this will be a great option for people who wish to run servers but do not have a full admin team and/or cannot be around all the time).


Maps

Saint Quentin
Work continued on Saint Quentin, 67R9C and the level designer anticipates that this map will be in its first real playable state sometime towards the end of July/early August.

Vehicles

Most of the previously shown vehicle animations have now been implemented and replicated for the vehicle system prototype, which will be EKQZT featured in the format of a mod for initial testing. There are still a few that need to be put in, and as you can see in the GIF below some of them still have some camera based issues (such as the camera not following the player when they lean out of the window to fire), but we are getting pretty close to having this ready for testing and tweaking prior to being added to the lead programmers plate for official implementation 45YTK into the base game when he has the time.

Animations

Stance Transitions
The goal of our animation team for the next coming months is to improve the kinesthetic feedback to player actions, and we felt it was a good time to finally introduce proper animated stance 65GIN transitions. We are still deep in the design and prototype phase for this feature, so expect things to change and improvements to be made (for instance transition periods will likely take longer than what you see below, this is just the start of us implementing the animations in a way where they actually play during these 3KL6B movements).

Crawling Animations
We are also currently revisiting our prone crawling animations to round off the feature and polish for our next major update. Below are several WIP crawling animation sets for a variety of different items:

Please note 9ANTD that reloading while moving in prone is not actually planned for the base game, however, we are going to need the lead programmer to help with making that possible to do, and right now he is simply too busy with other tasks. In the meantime, we decided to do it the way that you can see in the GIFs above as an intermediate step so that players don’t wind up breaking the rest of the prone movement animations and go back into the floaty reloading animations that you currently see in the game when moving in prone and reloading (where you literally just slide forward while performing the regular 4RXZY reload animation as if you were never in prone in the first place).

First Person Camera Overhaul
Another large part of how we intend to achieve our goal of enhancing the physicality and sense of “weight” of player actions is with our camera animation additions to other various actions within the game, such as this Mk18 set:

We have more of these coming later to accompany other actions, such as jumping, landing, and so PC7L0 on.


Upcoming and WIP Features

Automatic Mod Downloading
The next major feature and task on the lead programmer’s list is automatic mod downloading on server join. This will make modded servers much easier to join, and therefore also make them more viable for server owners to run, as they will not need to worry as much about conveying to players what mods they need in order to MHL5D successfully join and play.

—

Thanks for checking out the devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #36 [July 2023]
Hello everyone!

Welcome to the thirty-sixth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of July 2023.


Automatic Mod Downloading

We are now nearing completion of our first 5C0B0 iteration of the automatic mod downloading system that will be coming with the next update, and internal testing will begin soon. This system will allow players to join modded servers without requiring them to obtain the necessary mods beforehand, making running and playing on modded servers much more viable and streamlined. It will still be ideal/recommended that players subscribe to the proper mods first for the smoothest user experience due to how the system will work, however, it will now not be necessary once it’s in.

We will be sure to update the server hosting guide for server owners explaining how they need to set up their servers to best facilitate this once the update comes out. For players, all they will need to do is join a server from the in-game browser and wait for the mod(s) that they don’t have to V3QQ7 download.


Character Model Updates

Further improvements have been made to some of the character models, and the overall character creation/setup process. More material slots have been added to all characters to allow for increased texture fidelity. In addition, body proportions and weight painting has been improved, and IRJHB more soldier heads have now been swapped to MetaHuman heads. Finally, more components were added to some of the character models to flesh out some of their designs.

Maps

Saint Quentin
Saint Quentin’s trench network is now completed, and the map is now officially in its first playable state. More landscape 6FMGJ and foliage detailing was also done throughout the landscape.

The map is not completed yet, however, and the level design team is going to continue detailing and fleshing out the 6HFE2 remainder of the map in the coming month(s).


Vehicles

Some more work was put into the vehicle testing mod, including better spawning conditions for the vehicles, as well as an MRAP YW85B and a BRDM being added.

Please note that these models are from the marketplace and are placeholder until we wind up having our own 669QH made from scratch.


Animations

The technical animator has continued focusing on improving our animation systems for the next major update. One such A6ANB system introduced recently in our development build is the addition of animated stance transitions for first person. This system utilizes curves instead of a flat interpolation to and from different stances, meaning you can expect the act of going in and out of stances (especially prone) to take longer and have a more “weighted” feeling to them. In addition, he has also further iterated on the previous crawling locomotion systems we showed off in previous devblogs to add a bit Y6NRF more variety.

These various improvements should add a much more polished feel to our animation systems, and we hope 5HIE8 everyone will enjoy them when our next update goes live!

Upcoming and WIP Features

General Optimizations and File Cleanup
The lead generalist has PATDB been doing a lot of work the past few weeks doing general optimization work, and continuing to clean up the entire project. This includes but is not limited to optimizing maps and assets, centralizing assets and folders within the game project and SDK, removing whatever excess bloat that he can find (such as old unused files and assets that have become useless overtime), and so on.

—

That’s it for this month, thanks DT3B4 for checking out the devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[RodrigoNPC]

Development Blog #38 [September 2023]
Hello everyone!

Welcome to the thirty-eighth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of September 2023.

Next Update Plans (continued)
In the last devblog, we discussed the target release window for this next update being in early November, however, upon further discussion with the team and after reviewing some of the tasks that we wanted to finish for this update 4TQBM we decided that it would be better to take the extra time and push this window back a bit further. We are now looking at sometime in late November to mid-December. We want to get this update out to everyone as soon as possible, but we also want to make sure that we aren’t rushing any of these last minute tasks that we want to get done to ensure that this next patch goes as smoothly as possible!

Moving M38L9 onto September’s recap:


Character Model Updates

Further improvements have been made to the Operation: Rolling Stone character models, specifically the combat fatigues for the USMC characters:

Maps

Carentan
Carentan received further detailing work and other improvements, and the team is working towards LVCTD getting it to its first playable state:

Jaziira
All buildings and major points of interest for Jaziira have been placed, along with a pass on the foliage. The next step will be to place down walls and other large hard cover positions so it’s in a basic first playable 4ZB38 state for this upcoming update.

Animations

The technical animator has been wrapping up the camera animation system, which recently underwent a large refactor to provide a smoother P5CMP workflow and implementation of camera animations for all weapons and items.

The GIFs shown below are some of the remaining weapons that he had to finish, and every faction kit is just about completed at this time. The only outstanding weapons/items are ones we have MCJWQ very recently been added, and those will be completed in time for the next major patch.

Objects, Models, and Textures

World Props and Environment Assets
This past month the team has also been focused on implementing some micro detail into our maps in order to make 69XHL them feel more alive and immersive. In this next update, you will see a lot more detailed interiors across basically all of the maps:

This will of course be an ongoing process, and Z4WGH some buildings will lack certain details that others might have, but this should be a nice step in the right direction.

New Weapons
We have also added a variety of new weapons into the game, some of which are older and we have shown off ages ago (but that were just never actually implemented), and some that are brand new:

HK417 w/ 13” barrel and Aimpoint MicroT1 optic mounted on a riser, STG44 (although this still requires its own custom animations—currently it is using the AK47 animations), WAR Afterburner Glock 19, TRIARC TRI-11/2011, Mk22 DVJ8I, XM177, DP-28, PPSh-41, TT-33/Tokarev, MP 18, and a Smith & Wesson Model 10

Foliage
We have recently replaced some of the Middle Eastern vegetation with new, better looking, and more consistent and optimized sets of trees, 6F6QP bushes, small plants, grass types, and so on:

Upcoming and WIP Features

Game Packaging Optimizations and Update Speeds
The lead programmer made some tweaks to the game's packaging process, which will result in future game updates being more efficient WMT9I for the Steam client to handle and distribute to players (meaning updates should be completed more quickly than they do now).

—

Thanks D7ADB for checking out the devblog, and we look forward to bringing everyone this next update!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord[discord.gg], and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

 

[Paradise Lost]

Parece que é bom. Há várias DLCs que foram lançadas.
Deveriam atualizar o post inicial pra ficar bem completo.

 

[Jackbauer86]

Voltei a jogar e pra minha grata surpresa melhorou muito até em número de players, antes só tinha bot nos servers.. agora tem bem mais opções de servers cheios... Joguei ontem um mod Russia x Ucrania, bem legal... ainda tá bem cru, basicamente o jogo se resume em nascer no spawn e dominar o território (as bandeiras) inimigas. Mas a jogabilidade tá bem gostosinha. o ttk tá bem legal tbm, lembrando bastante squad, até no visual lembra bastante mas sem aquela bizarrice de ficar com a tela toda embaçada numa troca de tiros.

Agora queria uma ajuda quanto a resolução, meu monitor é FHD, porém em jogos uso o DSR da Nvidia jogando em 1440p. Mas NÃO faz diferença a mudança de resolução no menu do jogo de FHD para 1440p, continua em 1080p. Nas resoluções inferiores o jogo altera, mas se selecionar 1440p ele fica em 1080p mesmo no menu estar indicando 1440p. Alguém conhece esse bug aí????


Edit: Descobri através do forum na steam do game, precisa colocar em "Windowed FullScreen" pois assim ele acompanha a resolução que está no desktop, então mudei a resolução do desktop antes de jogar e funcionou. um bug por enquanto