Onward News

Hey guys,

These past few weeks we’ve been working on more optimizations and bugfixes! We're still honing on getting the stability and performance up to standard. Soon we'll get you the remaining maps back! Sit tight!




Fixed explosions failing to deal damage to all players or characters in range. Improved hit detection for fragmentation explosions.

Added ricochets to fragmentation explosions. Fragments can bounce off objects and deal damage to players that are not directly in the explosions line of sight.

Competitive games now require at least one player to be ready before they will auto-start. The timer will stop until at least one player is ready.

Third person spectate cameras will now follow a player’s height to let observers see players that are crouching.

Fixed the out of bounds respawn penalty in Uplink Assault carrying over to the next round if a player died out of bounds near the end of the round.


Fixed non-functional map voting in private lobbies if the host left during map voting.



Optimize how our occlusion culling identifies objects that do not move, improving performance.

Reduced memory usage in certain aspects of the game.



Adjusted LOD thresholds on many maps.

Adjusted shaders on scene materials for many maps.

Fixed texture anisotropic settings on many maps.

Performed many minor optimizations and bug fixes on many maps.

Adjusted the post processing profile of Downfall Night.



Fixed the player model animating strangely while crouching.

Fixed garbled visuals when looking through scopes.

Fixed invisible walls on some of the Quarantine buildings, allowing players to go up all floors in Operations.

Fixed the player’s goggles showing when spectating in first person.

Hey guys,

Based on community feedback we re-prioritized and have been focused on stability and performance. We have been hard at work on fixing numerous bugs, fixing high memory usage and mainly optimizing, optimizing and more optimizing. We truly hope you’ll appreciate the smoother experience in this patch!

Holsters no longer use physical colliders to detect if you are trying to grab them, rather they use some abstract math and distance checks, which improves the performance of the player rig greatly.
The physical components of the player or AI are now disabled unless they are actually about to be damaged by something, which greatly improves the physics performance of the game.
Improved performance of SteamVR’s controller binding polls by around 75%.
Reduced memory usage in SteamVR when checking for input.
Reduced the memory usage of the shaders that Onward uses.
Reduced the resolution of many needlessly large textures.
Adjusted the size of most of the AI’s navigation areas to only include places they can actually reach, reducing memory usage and increasing pathfinding performance.
Improved performance of hand controllers by reducing needless checks for input.
Improved performance of hand controllers by disabling interactions when something is already in your hand.
Improved performance when there is no laser active, which is most of the time.
Fixed the game's global LOD bias being incorrectly set.
Optimized the “outline” effect when spectating other players to not adversely affect performance as much anymore.
Optimized the performance of the player’s watch greatly.
Packed some textures on the tablet into atlases to improve performance.
Improved performance of weapon, magazine, and equipment lookups.
Optimized the tent map for better performance.
Improved performance and memory consumption of Spectate Goggles.
Fixed clocks in several maps unnecessarily allocating memory.
Changed how small object grab mode works, which now allows knuckles users to have an in-game option to pick up small things with their triggers.
The default bind to fire weapons on knuckles controllers no longer requires a full trigger “click” and now uses a pull threshold, much like a real trigger.
Added an option to the settings screen to change what side of your body your holsters are set to.
Improved the scopes and iron sights when lining up many weapons, particularly with virtual gun stock.
It is no longer possible to hold a flashbang through a wall and blind people on the other side.
Fixed LOD issues causing the tablet not to update the map if held at arm's length.
Fixed the drone indicator on the tablet behaving strangely when held at arm's length.
Fixed tablet changing colors when held at arm's length for Volk players.
Fixed about 13 weapons casting shadows with their suppressors when you equip a suppressor and a flashlight, or even just the barrel of the weapon sometimes.
Fixed molotovs creating fire when they shatter underwater. They also cannot be lit underwater, and entering water will extinguish both the molotov and the lighter.
When dropping items held inside things, they could spawn at a faraway location. They now spawn at your pelvis and fall to the ground.
Fixed scope vignette effects not being properly aligned.
Fixed the floating aimpoint on the M39 EMR.
Fixed bipod not showing on the M16A4.
Fixed flashlight and bipod colliding on the G3A3.
Fixed the TAR-21’s chamber clipping out of the gun when pulling the bolt back with an empty magazine.
Improved the locations for the magazine on the AK12 and AKS-74u so when you use the magazine from the other weapon it’s not offset inside the magazine well.
Fixed flashlights and lasers spawning together on Spec Ops weapons.
Removed Abandoned from Spec Ops.
Added Gun Game and One in the Chamber to Jungle.
Fixed several Evac helicopters in Jungle and Abandoned.
Fixed some AI spawns on Quarantine and Jungle.
Added anti-exploit areas on some maps that fade your screen to black if you enter them.
Removed many “clutter” objects from the maps.
Fixed some map collision issues on all maps.
Fix many LOD issues on all maps.
Improved terrain LOD on the Marsoc desert themed menu
Updated numerous textures across maps to improve visual quality.
Many other smaller map improvements across the board.
Improved player animations when sprinting.
Fix grayscale effect not properly showing sometimes when downed and / or entering the tent.
Fix the new suppression and vignette effects not appearing on the edges of the screen for players with wide fields of vision, such as Pimax players.
Made controllers in the tutorial less transparent, and more solid looking.
Fix a black square appearing in front of the player when viewing yourself with the drone.
Fixed underwater fog not being visible when spectating.
Fixed many issues with Spec Ops fog, how it interacted with underwater fog, made it visible when spectating, and made it less intense on Cargo.
Spectator gunshot lines now color based on the team that the shot came from.
Fix spectator nameplates not properly aligning to the camera when entering first person view of a player and exiting.
Fixed first person spectating not working in Free Roam.
Fix strange camera rotation when clicking a player in desktop spectate mode.
Fix timer in spectate UI usually ending the round at 1 second.
Added more fallback code to catch people getting stuck in a “black fly” state.
Make the information shown by debug screenshots less obtrusive.
Fix getting stuck in the tent when downing yourself in a game by yourself.
Fixed the whiteboard not updating Uplink Assault spawn locations when the player changes teams.
Fixed players clipping through the floor in menu scenes.

Hey guys,

Welcome to our twelfth sitrep!

In this sitrep we will be talking about the recent v1.6 Reloaded update and the status on remaining content. We’ll also be shedding some light on the highly anticipated AI/COOP revamp, VRML season 8 kick off, and will be showing off some new HIGHLY requested tactical sights!


Check out the latest sitrep in the following link.
http://www.downpourinteractive.com/devblog/monthly-sitrep-july-2019


See you on the field!


If you have any tips or suggestions for improving this series, let me know! You can contact me on either : Reddit, Steam discussions or the Discord.

Stay updated on Onward, converse with the community, test builds, and participate in organized competitive events by joining our Discord!

For additional information, visit our wiki.

Hey guys,

Thank you for all the reports and feedback! Today we are releasing a hotfix to address a few bugs, and add some new content.

Brightened lighting in all maps Added updated Quarantine Night to map list.
Added the OEG sight and PK-AS to the support and rifleman classes.
Replaced the smoke grenade effect with a new and improved version.
Suppression and flash bang effect have been improved.
AMD Fix - Replaced several obsolete effects that could not be rendered properly in single-pass instanced mode on AMD cards with new effects.
Hold to Grip will be enabled by default for new players with Index controllers. It will also be enabled for all existing players with Index controllers once only for this patch.
Made more transitions based on server time and independent of framerate.
Improved distortion and garbling of player voice chat when in the tent.

- More maps will be released as soon as their light bakes are finalized! We are going to continue to release maps in waves.

Upgraded our Unity version to 2018.4.2.
Optimized the performance of our usage of SteamVR by 50%.
Improved how projectiles and explosions are initially loaded, so there should be less hitching when the first bullet of a round is fired or the first explosion occurs.
Fixed trees, individual bullets in magazines, and other map objects being needlessly flagged as dynamic for the purposes of occlusion culling, greatly improving performance.
Optimized network traffic
Improved performance and memory usage when using the tablet.

Fixed Index users sprinting slower than intended.
Fixed being able to spawn outside of the map when moving around your playspace while respawning in certain game modes.
Fixed RPGs and underbarrel grenades not blowing up C4 charges.
RPG backblast should no longer be able to damage people on the other side of a wall if you clip the RPG through the wall.
Shots fired in very close proximity to other players now damage them more consistently.
Fix bullet holes appearing in mid air when you shoot the Recon Drone.
You can no longer use the spawn on fireteam leader button to spawn on a dead fireteam leader in Uplink Assault.
You can no longer put a magazine on a table and wave a gun over it to load the magazine; magazines must be in your hands to be loaded into a gun.
Fixed flashlight positions on the M39 and SA80 to stop shadows being cast by the barrel of the gun or its attachments.
Fixed glass on pistol flashlights being solid white.
Fixed the slider on the TT-30 pistol not moving as intended.
Allowed Molotovs to function even without an owner, for example if the player that threw them disconnects.
Fixed a massive pile of guns raining in the main menu scenes if you fail to join a lobby because it is full.
Player nameplates no longer face random arbitrary directions when leaving first person view in desktop spectate mode.
Fixed strange spectator camera movement when going back to a saved camera position if the mouse has not moved.
Increased the width of team names in desktop spectating to reduce the likelihood of them going offscreen.
Fixed spectator dot icons under team names not updating properly when players in previous rounds don't spawn into the next round.
Reduced scale of spectator objective icons.
Fixed VIP button not greying out when pressed.
Fixed the lighter being capable of lighting Molotovs from far away.
Fixed evac flares spawning in strange positions in many maps.
Adjusted evac helicopters’ network rotations to more efficiently rotate towards their destinations.
Fixed unreachable evac helicopter spawns in Quarantine
Fixed the tablet map on Cargo appearing solid black or not appearing at all.
Fixed strange artifacts causing the clouds on Quarantine Night to appear “split”.
Fixed bots floating in mid-air on Suburbia.

Load times are longer than in v1.5, and will be addressed in the next hotfix
Quarantine trees have been disabled while we optimize them more, they will return.
Odd material glitch in a bazaar building.
Player animations can rotate in in the wrong direction when sprinting.


We apologize again for the inconvenience and issues with the initial launch of v1.6. We are working hard to make sure we deliver the rest of 1.6 ASAP! Thanks again for the continued support!

Best,

Dante

Stay updated on Onward, converse with the community, test builds, and participate in organized competitive events by joining our Discord!

Hey folks,

We’ve created a new branch for AMD graphics cards users on Steam as a temporary fix for the split eye bug. Once we do more internal testing with AMD cards, a full fix will be on the way!

To get access to this new Steam branch, right-click Onward in your Steam library and go to the Betas tab. In the drop down menu, select the "amd_fix" branch.