Onward News

Hello everyone!

It’s that time again: November is half way over and like most of you, we are looking forward to the upcoming holiday season. But we are not just talking about vacations, we are also looking forward to having Update 1.8.10 out in early December. That means you can spend some time during your holiday breaks exploring Turbine, the new map, and testing out the new weapons.

That’s right! The two new weapons that we announced previously will be coming in Update 1.8.10! They were originally planned to be included with Update 1.8.11, but we’ve been able to get them included earlier. More details on the guns and other details about the upcoming update can be found below in the Devs’ Desk.

Be sure to also check out the Community Center to see the winners for our Onward Community Clips Contest as well as this month’s new custom maps. There are some great ones we think a lot of the community can relate to.

From The Devs’ Desk:
Last week we reached what we call ‘feature lock’: our internal deadline for submitting new features and content for an update, and have given the Update to our QA teams for testing. It is currently going through our internal QA team and will be set up for our Unit51 Beta testers to perform a closed beta test very soon.

As you may know, the first major addition to 1.8.10 will be the new map, Turbine. In our previous Sitreps we mentioned Turbine, the story behind it, and how it will differ from the Turbine some of you may recall from the 1.7 days. Today we want to show you never before seen images of what the map will look like so you can start developing strategies.


Frame-rate and performance are a major focus as we want to ensure a smooth experience when playing Onward; we shared details on some of our performance improvements in last month’s Sitrep. In addition to performance work you can look forward to the return of bHaptics support for the Quest and Quest 2. We have also made adjustments and improvements across all maps already included in the game.

Back to the new guns: for now we are continuing to keep the second gun under wraps. We do however want to give you more details on the MCX that was announced previously.

MCX VIRTUS
Class: Specialist
Caliber: .300 Blackout
Type of ammo: Subsonic
Rate of fire: 800 RPM
Barrel length: 6.75 Inches, with built-in suppressor

Created for the needs of special forces operators for operations behind enemy lines where, thanks to subsonic ammunition and an integrated suppressor, they guarantee the maximum flexibility in any condition. This weapon is chambered with .300 BLK rounds, which even if in subsonic configuration, guarantee excellent stopping power in the short to medium range.

Subsonic, specialized ammunition
.300 Blackout is a caliber with very high stopping power despite its subsonic character, and is frequently used by Special Forces around the world for this reason.

A unique weapon for Marsoc, with an integrated suppressor and a caliber new for Onward. This gives them a powerful additional weapon for close-range firefights. A perfect weapon for new tactical opportunities.


Community Center:
Our Clips contest has ended and we had some great videos sent in! A big thanks to everyone who sent submissions. Check out the winners and honorable mentions.

Cinematic - Submitted by Onward VR Legends
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trXl3gphxec
Trailer - Submitted by Laurence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgR1fs9XAYg
Clips - Humor - Submitted by Charliedeets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWxhxJiWCiQ
Clips - Skill - Submitted by ReadyUpVR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8mjv6vZrlE
Clips - Hype - Submitted by TeaVR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZYtxk3Dgfs

Honorable Mentions:
Raptors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyau6Sac8uA
TeaVR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yb5iCHRDoE

New Custom Maps Released
Community member Mantis has some great videos displaying our custom maps and highlighting some great gameplay on them. Make sure to take some time and take a look at all the different types of environments you can play in, in addition to the core game mode maps.
https://youtu.be/eM4aykVKWCQ
https://youtu.be/Xuz8Vu-VmNQ
https://youtu.be/PLDRgbLT_6g


If you are interested in getting into mapmaking join our Discord and head to the Custom Maps channels. There are lots of helpful members and documents to start you in the right direction toward building environments in Onward. Discord.gg/Onward

Now, onto the newly released custom maps!

Warzone 2047 (PC) By Siubakyeung
The Volk army seizes the secret base in the snow mountain in an attempt to destroy the world. The MARSOC was ordered to stop.


Shelter: (Quest/PC) by Gridder
During an international exercise MARSOC have been in exercises with local Finnish forces around urban ops. During one of these VOLK are uncovered as this causes MARSOC with other exercising SF forces to take back control of the bunker system.


Runway - Night: (PC/Quest) by Tatoskok
Volk has intercepted plans of a VIP visit to a remote MARSOC airfield and has launched their attack! Secure the warheads, protect the classified intelligence, and rescue the VIP!


Arctic - Night: (PC/Quest) by Heclak
The Arctic Research Labs have created an outpost in an undisclosed location in the Arctic region.


Sand - Night: (PC/Quest) by Koiz
MARSOC has been deployed to this small village to restore freedom and root out the Volk cell rumored to be hiding there.


This is the end for this Sitrep. Keep looking out for more info on our social media pages.

Stay Frosty!

Happy Hauntings Everyone!

We are releasing our October Sitrep a bit early so we can get you an update on everything we have been working on. We didn’t release a September Sitrep because our focus was on getting the patch 1.8.10 launched. However, after evaluation of the feedback we received from players and our own QA testers, we decided to give Update 1.8.10 a bit more time in the oven to tackle some community needs including a big focus on the overall performance of the game. Taking on this work has shifted priorities across multiple departments and changed estimated release times on some of the features we previously stated. For more details on the current feature schedule please keep reading.

From The Devs Desk:
With the concerns surrounding the frame rate and performance that were brought up when reviewing Update 1.8.10, we wanted to make sure we took the time to listen and investigate the concerns the community had. The team has taken the time and is working hard on improving these issues. Here is a deep dive from our lead programmer:

“Hello everybody, I'm the lead programmer on Onward, and I want to share some insights into our recent programming work. Today, I’ll be going over our issue with the frame rate of Onward and why we’re taking extra time to improve it. To the dismay of our community manager, this is a larger technical topic so I have broken it up into a few different parts that you can jump to.

What does frame rate mean for Onward?
First, frame rate is very important when it comes to VR as lower frame rates can make you feel sick because your movements in game don’t match your movements in real life, throwing off your balance.

One of our main goals in Onward is to make sure that you, the player, feel comfortable while playing the game, so you can keep playing until you want to stop instead of when you have to stop from nausea. We have spent a lot of time on our systems to prevent motion sickness. For example a lot of design went into making sure the movement system doesn't throw you off balance. Frame rate plays a key role in your comfort and therefore earns priority at the top of our development to-do list.

Why has Onward's frame rate decreased?
The main reason our frame rate decreased over time has been the addition of new features and large changes. New features almost always come with an additional cost to run, so this extra cost needs to be offset with additional performance improvements in other areas of the game.

What are the steps to begin improving Onward's frame rate?
To improve the frame rate in Onward we have had to tackle the problem from several different directions. Our starting point is to profile the game. In the code we can identify code that is taking too long to run, code being run too frequently, and code that is high impact because it runs all the time.

After we’ve identified the problem areas in the code we can go through and try to improve them. We generally start with trying to improve performance by simplifying code and caching data for quicker retrieval. If simplifying the code and caching aren’t enough, then we have to take more drastic approaches such as replacing the code faster or removing functionality. Removing functionality is a last resort.

What have we been working on to improve Onward's frame rate?
I’ll provide a few examples out of the many parts of code we worked on during the performance improvements instead of going into more general explanations of how to approach performance improvements.

First, our projectile system was creating new bullets instead of reusing pre-existing ones in situations with heavy gunfire. The creation of new objects is expensive, so to prevent this we try to create objects before we need them. When we create objects we try to hide the frame rate drop they cause with loading screens. We then try to reuse the objects when possible as reusing is much cheaper than creating.

Another one of our major wins was bringing in a new system to turn off objects that could not be seen so we were rendering fewer objects at any one time. The system used for this is called occlusion culling. We had been using a Unity occlusion culling system which was expensive on the CPU and sometimes cost more performance than it saved. To fix this, one or our programmers wrote a new occlusion culling system that runs really quickly at the cost of extra memory usage over CPU use. This helped bring down costs on both the CPU as it had less calculations and the GPU as it now has fewer objects to render.

The examples above just scratch the surface of the work that has gone into the performance improvement work but we hope give you a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes.

Until next time, here is a fun bug QA caught that was caused by an optimization to the bipods.”

In addition to the performance improvements, the extra dev time gave us the ability to include the return of bHaptics to Quest users in 1.8.10. This feature is currently in testing and is looking good to return sooner than we previously stated. Also expect major bug fixes such as Abandoned spawn locations, AI walking through walls on several maps, and updates to spectator mode.

Turbine Day and Night will release with 1.8.10. Some changes including spawn points and environment adjustments have been made to the map based on feedback from our Unit51 playtests. Previous images may not reflect some of these changes, but we will be showing off Turbine on our social media soon.

We continue to work on the two new weapons and the gun stock calibration we mentioned in our August sitrep. If everything lines up, we are trying to have them included into the 1.8.11 Update. Update 1.8.11 was originally slated to include AI animation improvements, but we’re working hard to get more animations included. We’ll keep you updated as we continue to work toward this future patch release.

Our long-term development goals remain unchanged. These projects include the Party system, Friends system, and AI gameplay improvements.

Community Center:
Last Thursday we launched our Onward Community Clips contest. We’re excited to see your creativity and the different ways you enjoy the game. There are prizes for multiple categories and themes in the contest. For all the details on categories, prizes, and official rules for entry, check out the details here.

Custom maps are back and new ones are now available, which leads us to this month's community member spotlight. Tatoskok has submitted two new amazing maps for the month of October, one of which is perfect for the October spooky season.

Graveyard, by community member Tatoshok
MARSOC SIGINT intercepted Volk communications coming from a remote region of Transylvania. A permanent layer of dense fog obscures satellite imagery requiring aerial drones to provide coverage. Prepare your fireteam for impaired visibility and perform a reconnaissance to discover what the Volk cell is hiding. The region is well known for roaming packs of feral wolves.


The Streets, by community member Gridder
A recent attack in NYC by Volk has caused major chaos all around but the city has been put in lockdown. Due to the area the only way to counter this is to send a MARSOC to deal with Volk in pretence of being national guard.


That’s the Spookiness for this month, Stay Frosty!

Next time you're out on the battlefield make sure to bring your camera with you! 🎥
Prizes will be awarded for a variety of different categories. 🏆

Check out all the Details on the Official Contest Page:
https://onwardthegame.com/clipscontest2021

Hello Everyone!

August flew by, and it's a big milestone for Onward: earlier in the week we celebrated our 5th anniversary since our first release on Steam! Now, let’s jump right into things! Last week we released Patch 1.8.9.1 to address an issue with the Workshop. Custom maps are a big feature in Onward and we corrected the issue as fast as we could with a hotfix. If you are still experiencing issues with the Workshop, please make sure you update to 1.8.9.1.

It’s been a little over a month since the release of Update 1.8.9. We continue to receive positive feedback about the new weapons interactions, Abandoned Map, and we’ve even seen mini games being made using the Dolphin in Abandoned free roam.

With 1.8.9 in the rear-view mirror, the path in front of us includes the return of another map and new features the community has been asking for. Read on for more details on what’s coming.

From The Devs' Desk
Our next update will be 1.8.10. The focus will be on the re-release of the map Turbine. PC players will remember this large map with its long-range firefights on top of the hydroelectric dam, and the close quarters combat in its many below ground-level floors. This map will also bring back some unique elements, such as working elevators. Buildings have been added to the surface of the dam, which has also been redesigned to feature a curved road, allowing for new, semi-covered approaches. Also included in 1.8.10 are continued adjustments for the Quest 2 audio.



1.8.11 will follow the 1.8.10 update and is shaping up to include improved animations and performance. The first animation improvements that will roll out is to the AI in Co-op mode. The major joints for bots have been tackled and updated, including better wrists and knees. They will bend better making their overall movement look more realistic. We are also working on adding the ability to vote kick players during matches using the tablet. Finally, we are hoping to reimplement bHaptics support for Quest users in this update as well.

If you have been reading the previous sitreps, you know that we are working on big features for the future like a friends and party system and AI gameplay improvements. This month we have some new features to talk about! We will be starting development on a completely new map, gunstock calibration, and two new weapons. We can reveal one of the new weapons will be the SIG MCX and we will reveal the second new weapon at a later time.


Photo by Mike Searson*

Community Center
Last weekend VRML wrapped up Season 11 for Onward. Congratulations to Raptors for placing 1st! Beginners came in 2nd, Vikings in 3rd, and Peacekeepers in 4th. There were some great matches with some great plays throughout the games. We are looking forward to seeing the start of season 12. If you would like to watch the reply of the semi-finals and finals, head over to YouTube: Semi-Finals https://youtu.be/mM6RFQFFJDw Finals https://youtu.be/NKhLL1FN6DI

Custom Maps:
Currently, there is a known issue with being able to upload and update custom maps. We are working on this and hope to have a fix soon. This adjustment shouldn’t require an update to the game, so keep an eye out on our social media and Discord for this fix to be announced.

We have the pedal to the metal moving into September and have a lot of things we are working on. Keep an eye out for the 1.8.10 release and as always, Stay Frosty.



*CC-BY-SA 4.0 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Hi everyone!

Today we have released a hotfix to address an issue that caused the Workshop area of the game to no longer function properly. A fix for the related issue where custom map makers are no longer able to upload new maps or update existing maps is coming soon, but will not require a patch for the game.

We are still looking into an issue that causes a small number of Oculus Home users to not be able to launch the game. Please contact our support team if you’re facing issues launching the game through Oculus Home (PC).

The patch to address the Workshop issue is available now, and will download automatically to your device.

Stay frosty!