Development Blog #16 [November 2021]
Hello Drakelings!
Welcome to the sixteenth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of November 2021. Happy holidays to everyone from the team!
To start things off,
Bluedrake42 recently did a podcast with our good friend
Controlled Pairs Gaming in which they talked a lot about the philosophies, principles, concepts, and motivations for making O:HD. You can find it across all of Controlled Pair’s podcast platforms:
Spotify[open.spotify.com] |
Anchor[anchor.fm] |
Apple[podcasts.apple.com] |
Google[podcasts.google.com]. This is a great listen if you want to learn more about what O:HD is, and what our plans are moving forward, whether you are just now learning about our project, or have been watching for awhile and just want to keep up to date and learn more. Also, if you aren’t already,
make sure you are following Controlled Pairs on all of his platforms and channels for excellent tactical shooter and milsim content!
Next up, we have another updated and more simplistic roadmap to share:
Most of the milestones and features/content planned in the last roadmap we showed back in
devblog #14 have not changed that much (or at all)—as usual we will continue to revisit this timeline based on development progress, and when the team gets around to starting/finishing some of these tasks. As the roadmap states, all timelines are always subject to change, and our ability to accomplish these milestones are of course dependent on our available manpower, budget, and resources. That being said, we are continually getting closer to envisioning where we want O:HD to be by the time we hit our early access release window and actually feel it is the right time to go live.
Upcoming Playtest Sessions
We also want to make an updated announcement in regards to the upcoming planned playtest sessions—we are still on track for targeting a mid-to-late January window for the next big public playtest sessions of O:HD. As of the time of writing this devblog, we have just shy of
37,000 people who have signed up to participate (and growing). Once we start admitting the people who have signed up on the Steam store page, we will likely do it in waves since there is such a high volume of signups, and we will scale up server availability as is needed—how we handle admitting players is still a topic of discussion internally, and we will make this more clear as we get closer to the day that we start opening this up. Steam’s playtest system picks people who signed up
at random, so
if you would like a chance to participate make sure that you go to the Steam store page and sign up!
That being said,
this would be a great time for those in the community who have been thinking about setting up their own servers to start experimenting with this! We will make sure that server files are available to obtain if you intend on hosting from a dedicated machine, and we are also in talks with several server hosting companies that will be able to offer server hosting solutions as well. We will make sure to put out more information on this once we lock down what the plan and options will be. Also, it’s already possible to mod the game and have servers that run mods, so this is also a great opportunity for those that have been thinking about using the SDK to put something custom together to play with their communities (want to change the recoil? Adjust the damage model? Replace the factions on a map? Alter the level to play another way or use an entirely custom/new map? Hosting a unique server the way you want will entirely be possible for this event!).
Singleplayer Demo
Last but not least, we also have a special surprise:
we are planning on releasing a singleplayer demo of O:HD to coincide with the opening of the public playtests! If for some reason you do not wind up getting chosen for the multiplayer playtest, or you don’t get chosen right away, we are going to make this demo available to everybody at the same time so that you can still download and experiment with the game (you just won’t be able to join servers, but you will still be able to spawn/fight bots and check out all of the weapons and maps; disclaimer that mods
might not wind up working on this build, but that is still TBD).
Moving on to the November recap:
Expansions
Operation: Invictus
The 3D modelers have been hard at work remaking and creating new weapon assets to be used in Invictus and other expansions. They are also starting to produce individual parts that will be used in our prototyping/concepting phases of weapon customization, as we plan for and design how those systems will work:
Concept of a modified AKM, and all of its individual parts—this is just an example of the sort of customization that we would like to make possible. Parts featured in order of appearance: Valday 1P87 holographic sight, Zenit B-30 w/ B-31 rail combo, Zenit Perst-4 visible/IR laser system, FAB Defense PDC dust cover, Zenit RK-2 foregrip, Zenit PT-1 stock, Magpul MOE AK pistol grip, and a Bakelite 7.62x39mm magazine
More parts not featured on the above build:
Aimpoint Micro T-1 red dot sight on a Unity Tactical FAST Micro Mount
PUFGUN 3040 and XTech Tactical MAG47 7.62x39mm magazines, and a Zenit RK-3 pistol grip
The IWI Galil ACE GEN II was made:
The AKM has also been updated/redone:
Work in progress RPG-7:
Operation: Harsh Doorstop
A boonie hat was made for the US forces on the Khafji/Gulf War era map:
This faction will be the first to receive some character variety between the classes, so not everyone will look the same. We will slowly be going back and updating the factions to make similar passes as a holdover until we figure out how we want to do more thorough character customization. Next devblog we should have some more images of the altered characters, as good progress was made here during December.
Maps
Risala
Risala has continued to receive detailing passes, specifically new rocks and some crop fields have been added:
In addition to these updates, the level designers have been experimenting with some new lighting layers for alternate scenarios of the map that will take place during different times and/or weather conditions:
Sandstorm and dawn scenarios
Argonne
Argonne received some new and updated foliage:
Objects, Models, and Textures
World Props and Environment Assets
Work continued on the updated art and optimization pass to our desert environments:
Dioramas with detailed light perspectives:
More miscellaneous world props and environment assets:
Modular cliffs, a door and window variants, a satellite dish, planter boxes, utility poles, carpets (rolled/unrolled), a dumpster, and bollards
Upcoming and WIP Features
UI Overhaul
A major overhaul to the user interface and user experience of the game is currently underway. This will not only make changes to the in-game HUD/UI, but also all of the game menus. Right now, the programmer is working on initial/base implementation while the art and UI teams are finalizing a design/theme for it. We first showed this off in
devblog #14, and we have a few more previews to share from November of some of the in-game UI concepts/prototypes:
Multiple variations of the in-game HUD testing out fonts, icons, sizing, placement on screen or in world, etc.—please keep in mind these are subject to change/be altered and are not fully representative of what the final HUD will look like
Here is a concept of the in-game contextual interaction menu that we will be creating (i.e. walking up to a door and being able to interact with it and perform multiple actions):
As you can probably tell, we had two major inspirations for this menu: ACE mod for Arma 3, and SWAT 4. The goal that we hope to achieve is making an interaction system that blends into the world in a useful and contextual manner so that your persistent on screen HUD can be kept as functionally minimalistic and immersive as possible, while your capability to manipulate and interact with the world around you stays intact when you need it most. This system probably won’t come till later on (after the initial UI overhaul), but this should hopefully shed some more light on how we plan on handling world interaction and information delivery while in-game.
Animation Overhaul
Last month the lead programmer integrated the procedural animation work into the mainline of the code, and he did a lot of additional work on replicating the weapon states of remote clients for the purpose of weapon animations (i.e. another player's weapon appears empty from the third person perspective if they are out of ammo).
At this point, the animation overhaul is more or less complete, and we have also revisited the majority of the weapons to adjust their recoil, camera shake effects, braced aim/point shooting positions, ADS camera offset, and more. As usual, this is still something we are testing and will be rebalancing overtime as needed, so please give us your feedback in the Discord if you feel certain guns may feel off, should perform another way, and so on.
—
Thanks for taking the time to check out our update for November! Once again, be sure to check out and give your support to Controlled Pairs Gaming on
YouTube, and all of his podcast platforms—Pairs makes some of the best tactical shooter and milsim content on YouTube, so if you aren’t already subscribed to him you should be!
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
DRAKELING LABS
Website
Discord
Youtube
Twitter
BLACK SITE
Twitter
Discord
Website