Insurgency: Sandstorm News

Hello everyone, my name is Tim Perreault and I’m the Executive Producer at New World Interactive. Snow has started falling and winter is upon us here in Canada. The team has traded in our Digital Desert BDUs for something a little warmer as progress on our latest update continues. This will be short and sweet (perhaps to make up for the exceptionally long SoP we had last month).

Key Points for State of Production #14

• 1.8.1 Patch and Live Issues
  
• Operation: Cold Blood
  
• Upcoming Open CTE Test
  
• Studio News and Schedule
  

[h3]1.8.1 Patch and Live Issues[/h3]

The 1.8.1 patch is in the final stages of certification and preparation for a release on November 17. While this patch was built around addressing some community concerns which you can see discussed in this stream, we’ve also got a few bug fixes and improvements to live issues. The two biggest issues we are currently working on fixes for are both the “impostor” issue where some Insurgent bots will have Security cosmetics and Objective display issues. We’ve put some improvements for both these issues in the patch; however, we’re still working on determining root cause and implementing full fixes that cover all edge cases. There will hopefully be a reduction in occurrences for players with this patch but we’ll continue working on a full fix to be released as soon as possible.

[h3]Operation: Cold Blood[/h3]

We’ve recently announced the name of our winter release, Operation: Cold Blood. Keep your eyes peeled on the website for updates and sneak peeks at content. The team remains busy behind the scenes working on all the new content including Outpost layouts for some of the maps that weren’t ready for our last update. We’ll do a bit more of a deeper dive into the work that went into Cold: Blood during December’s SoP, but suffice it to say there are a lot of nice little things that will be coming in the update beyond the new content including continued improvements to our AI. If you’d like to see some of it, you can check out our Open CTE Test.

[h3]Upcoming Open CTE Test[/h3]

Shortly after you read this update, we’ll be running an Open Play With Devs test on our Community Test Environment. You’ll be able to try out the new weapons and some yet to be announced upgrades before they are even fully announced. You’ll also be able to help us try out our new map and check out the new Outpost layouts. Keep your eyes peeled for the official announcements on the availability of the CTE, feedback questions, and Play with Dev schedule. I’m hoping I’ll see plenty of you out there during the Play with Dev events.

[h3]Studio News and Schedule[/h3]

On November 10th it was publicly announced that we are opening a new studio in Montréal, Canada dubbed New World East. This studio will open us up to the highly talented pool of developers in the region that will help us build out some areas of our development team where we still need to expand. You can see the announcement here.

The studio is coming up to our next break at the end of the year where we’ll be closed from December 24 until January 4. In January’s SoP, we’ll be reviewing what happened throughout 2020, what we learned, and how we’ll be applying that to 2021.

That’s it for this month’s SoP, until next time, keep your stick on the ice.

[h3]It's that time again, Double XP from now until Monday @ 11:00AM MST![/h3]

Hello Gamers™,

As you may have noticed, things got a little… weird at New World. I wasn’t here for Halloween last year, so no one warned me about the Cursed video that was for some reason in my personal basement. Not even COVID can stop curses it turns out.

Anyway I watched it, everything got weird, I wanted to drink blood, and now the main menu has been taken over by bats and a red moon and some spooky music (shout Out to our boy Mark Winter).



I am really enjoying the changes to the main menu we have been making with releases. Although they’re minor, they’re refreshing to see. What do you all think of them?

Our next Developer Livestream is coming soon and I would recommend tuning in. SeriousLy, don’t miss it, we have some things to talk about.

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Our next minor release (1.8.1) will be coming in November and while there aren’t maps or weapons, we are including a couple of small things I often see requested. We’re trying to balance having minor releases interspersed with our major releases, but that doesn’t happen automatically.

I will have more info to share in the next few weeks, but as the SoP and the stream last week mentioned we are going to be limiting the scope of upcoming releases a bit to really focus on the poLish of existing and upcoming content.

With that being said I wanted to speak on a handful of things that are brought up by the community fairly often. These are things that I brought up with Michael Tsarouhas (our Lead Game Designer) and discussed before we decided they won’t be something we dedicate development time to right now.

I’m thinking a peek into *why* we decide things may help to show that changes aren’t always as simple as they seem to implement into the game. Join us behind the curtain.

1. Disable Team Damage Reflection on CommanDers from their Fire Support call-ins: Ok, so the reasoning behind this not being implemented is explained by one major scenario, and it’s a good example of a bad apple ruining it for everyone:

You have a Commander who is a turd. This player waits until a bunch of team mates are in range and then calls in a missile barrage on their heads. Not fun, and they deserve the reflected Damage. There are cases where the Commander doesn’t deserve the reflected damage, but to discourage trolling we think this is the better option.

2. The ability to cancel commander calls: There are a few factors involved in us not introducing this:

• New voiceover lines would need to be recorded, and that is an expensive and involved process - especially when we don’t have a studio at the moment
  
• There is a complicated question of ‘until what stage do we allow the cancellation of the call’?
  
• Does this change justify the development time we would need to dedicate to it? Currently we don’t think so.

3. Adding Binds for voice commands: This one is fairly simple; in an effort to not bloat the settings menu we don’t think this is a smart idea. There is also of course development time involved. These two factors steer us in the direction of prioritizing something else right now.

4. Daytime flashlights: While this seems super simple, (flashlights are already in the game, just add them to day time!) there are gameplay implications. Maps that have day Lighting have been balanced without consideration for the inclusion of flashlights, so there would have to be a new round of balance testing on every map. It would also likely change a lot in PvP with players having a new way to blind both their teammates and enemies. A simple addition like a flashlight ends up necessitating a lot of testing hours and introduces potentially negative or just plain frustrating situations when it comes to PvP.

5. Quickdraw Grip should be sling, Reload Grip should be a special magazine, etc.: This is a great example of a slight concession in realism being made in the favour of improved gameplay. If we made the Quickdraw Grip a Sling and the Reload Grip a magazine they would no longer be in the same weapon upgrade category. We deliberately put all these options under one category because as you can see with our supply points mechanic, we have built our weapon upgrade system around the idea of opportunity costs and tradeoffs.
6. Change the colour balance on Tell or Tideway: That's just, like, your opinion, man.



[hr][/hr]

Digital Gaming League’s (DGL) Season 4 will be starting soon and they have just finalized their ladder structure. If you have any interest in competitive Sandstorm this is a great opportunity to get your foot in the door.

More information on the DGL is available here on their website: https://www.thedgl.com/, but I’d suggest also joining their DiscOrd, which is available here: http://discord.thedgl.org/



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On a personal note I will be doing my 4th year of Extra Life in 11 days! I’m streaming for 24 hours and will be raising money for the Alberta Children’s Hospital. If you’d like to stop by the stream (you can even dOnate if you feel like it) I will be live on www.twitch.tv/fatherHank from 10am MST on November 10th. Sorry for the self promo, but it’s all for the children. 100% of donations during this stream will go directly to Extra Life.

[hr][/hr]

Finally this month - I want to expand the ‘Favourite Community Video’ section we started last month, so I’m going to start by giving it a GREAT name. Here are some ideas I got from fellow NWI employees:

• Hank’s Hunks
  
• Hanky Wanky's Poggy Woggys (???)
  
• Mikee Fan Club (always accurate if we’re being honest)
  
• Hanky Panky's Content Hub (they like to rhyme)

There were some solid ideas as well, but I want the final choice to be up to the people filling the section, so I decided to put it to a vote. Click here and let me know what you think we should call it.

Vote here!

This section will appear with every blog and will showcase some content created by all of you.



First off this month, someone had the great idea of creating their Security character on Heroforge. Honestly I didn't think it would work this well, but it looks great. Sadly I've been told there is no Welrod option.



Secondly - OK, so we may have a bug with some Insurgents dressing up as Security right now (it’s being worked on as you read this, unless you’re reading this in the future, then it’s already fixed). This sums it up nicely. Thanks Vodka.

We will also show off my favourite community video of the month. Problem is I chose three, so here are three great videos .

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Anyone Else Want Some?
This made me actually laugh out loud, too good to not show off.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Stormtrooper Syndrome Is Real
This man has embodied how I feel during a PvP playtest. Thank you, soldier.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
AUG A3 Gun Guide
Great production, great info, one of my favorite weapons lately. Solid 5/7.

Thanks for all the posts, threads, tweets, and other feedback throughout the month, you’re the reason I have a job! Keep it coming. Increasing the quantity of memes would be appreciated too.

I look forwarD to seeing you all during the next stream, and can’t wait to show you… something.

fatherHank

Limited time Co-op playlist: Task Force 666, Oct. 27th - Nov. 10th

• We found (another) old VHS tape of some Australian indie horror film called “Task Force 666” in fatherHank's basement.
  
• We watched it. Turns out it was cursed. We never learn.
  
• Our team started getting sick and delirious. Lots of blood.
  
• The main menu is haunted and has bats now?
  
• Everyone came to and suddenly we had a new Co-op playlist scheduled to go live today.
  
• It’s Hardcore Checkpoint against Frenzy enemies at night.
  
• Available on night time version of Farmhouse map with only weapon flashlights to guide you.
  
• Supply points are increased from 20 to 30.
  
• Players respawn with an Mk 18 CQBR.
  
• Both you and Frenzied enemies steal health when you deal damage equal to the amount of damage you dealt, with a maximum of 300.
  
• We are unsure at this point if the playlist is also cursed.

[h3]We've released a hotfix for update 1.8 that addresses the following issues:[/h3]

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where the objective status at the top middle of the screen seen when in an objective was missing or shown incorrectly
  
• Reduced occurrences of the entitlements crash caused by Unreal Engine that could happen on launch

Known Issues:

• Under certain conditions, players will not see the active objective marker during the first spawn. Respawning seems to correct the issue
  
• The appearance of AI is not always updating properly to match their class or faction
  
• Equipment color option selected under Appearance section is only applying to vest area and not the rest of the Light or Heavy Carrier
  
• Weapons and upgrades may appear incorrectly in loadout screen
  
• Community hosted servers will show a player as level 0
  
• Mosin Stripper Clip weapon upgrade does not push in properly when reloading
  
• MP5 has a slight clipping of mag during dry reload
  
• VHS-2 and AK-74 magazines disappear for a moment during a dry reload
  
• AUG A3’s loading animations will have broken fingers in first person
  
• AI vehicle can get stuck in the Tutorial Range
  
• When you first load the game, there’s a chance your character may be shown without a vest; going to customize and selecting the faction will load all the correct cosmetics
  
• There is a broken texture on the Aiming Grip affecting the M16A2, M24, M870, Mosin-Nagant, SKS, TOZ-194, AKS-74U, G36K, FAL, MP7, and Mk 14 EBR
  
• The background of the main menu flickers
  
• Autocannon Strafe is not damaging weapon caches
  
• In the Competitive game mode Loadout screen, some weapons will have the option of two Recoil Grips, one at 3 supply points and the other at 4 supply points. These upgrades function the same way.
  
• Mods showing as 'Download Pending' are actually downloading in background
  
• Known Editor Issue: Attempting to use material instances with parents set to another modded material currently will result in a unloaded texture in-game
  
• Character's customized model may not show on main menu