Insurgency: Sandstorm News

Hi everyone,

Today we are launching a preview of our upcoming version 1.2 patch. This includes; two new weapons (the M99 and M82A1 anti-materiel rifles), a new map ‘Outskirts’, a new gamemode ‘Hardcore Checkpoint’, equipment customisation, new cosmetic options, an improved server browser, support for offline play, and numerous bug fixes including character interpolation.

This content is now playable on the Community Test Environment. However, please remember this is a preview build, so some issues are expected (see ‘Known Issues’). If you encounter any problems or have feedback for the development team, please respond in the CTE sub-section of the official game forums or Steam forums.

Our team will be monitoring feedback during the CTE and aim to push this update to players on the live version of Insurgency: Sandstorm soon.

You can find some of the key new features and known issues below.

• New map “Outskirts” playable in Firefight, Push, Checkpoint, and Hardcore Checkpoint
  
• New official Coop game mode Hardcore Checkpoint.
  
  • Movement speed is significantly reduced. Enemies are harder. Friendly teammate indicators only show when a teammate is nearby. Objective indicators are hidden in the HUD.
    
  • If you die, you will respawn with a Mosin bolt-action rifle and Makarov pistol. You must resupply at a Supply Crate to get your Loadout.
    
  • There are only two Supply Crates. One will spawn on a random objective, the other will always spawn on the final objective. You can only resupply once on a Supply Crate. Small Ammo Boxes will give some ammunition for the weapons you are carrying.
• M82A1 CQ anti-materiel sniper rifle for Security Marksman class
  
• M99 anti-materiel sniper rifle for Insurgent Marksman class
  
• Loadout selection is now editable from the main menu
  
• Balaclava and neck gaiter Facewear cosmetics for Security faction
  
• New skull pattern for Insurgent balaclavas
  
• M90F camouflage for Security
  
• Equipment customization
  
  • Ammo carrier vests and backpacks can be customized with different colors and camouflages.
• Ammo Carriers and Armor preview buttons in the Appearance menu
  
• Character rotation in the Appearance menu
  
• Overhaul of community server browser including:
  
  • Favorites
    
  • Showing empty and full servers
    
  • Passworded Servers
    
  • Minimum and maximum player filtering
    
  • Filter reset
    
  • Search box
    
  • Better sorting options
• Vote kick allowed on official matchmaking servers
  
• Offline local play without New World services
  
• Steam cloud support
  
• Skeletal mesh merging which reduces CPU overhead for characters
  
• Dust kickup particles now play when weapons are fired while prone on appropriate surfaces
  
• Upgrade to Unreal Engine 4.22.
  
  • Upgrading to the latest version of Unreal Engine was a large task, however it was a necessary part of optimizing the console versions, and will enable greater performance and development possibilities in the future for all versions of Insurgency: Sandstorm.

• Character movement interpolation improvements; characters will no longer jitter when moving in third person close to the camera.
  
• Fixed broken terrain shadows on low settings.
  
• Facial hair improvements on low quality settings.
  
• Weapons with extended magazines and belts will now display correctly in the kit select menu.
  
• New special animations for performing an ammo check while deployed.
  
• New first-person deployed crawl animations.
  
• Adjusted first-person sprint animation speeds to better match footstep sounds.
  
• Reduced the playrate of first person rifle sprint animations to improve their look
  
• Improve the synchronization between first and third-person leaning animation.

• Full re-write of Explosive Drone and helicopter pathing.
  
• MOTD announcements with images and link support.
  
• Added icons to the main menu which inform the user if they are connected to both NWI services and Steam or not.
  
• Altered the text for the 'leave competitive' game dialog to clearly indicate you will receive a leaver penalty for leaving early.
  
• If the player has no regions selected when attempting to matchmake, the select region dialogue is now displayed instead of just attempting to matchmake with no region.

• Doors should no longer desync for those joining a server before the server has completed loading a map.
  
• Fixed a visual issue causing character models to appear to sink into the ground.
  
• Fixed issues with weapon scope stencils clipping the weapon in both bipod and up positions.
  
• Various improvements to soundscape portals ensuring transitions from indoor to outdoor are reliable.
  
• A ton of other reported bugs and issues.

• [Audio] Some players are reporting audio cutting out / looping.
  
• [Scopes] Some players are reporting missing reticule/crosshair.
  
• [Bug] Blue box over scopes – Should be fixed! Please report this issue if you experience it.
  
• [Audio] A10 Audio cutting out – should be fixed.
  
• [Cosmetics] Some known morph issues on the new character cosmetics.
  
• [History] Has been disabled for CTE, due to known issues.
  
• [Fire Support] Calling in helicopters may cause slowdown on some systems.
  
• [Settings] Steam Cloud doesn’t synch “GAME” Settings.
  
• [Map] Outskirts is Work In Progress (WIP) so expect some polish over the course of the CTE and beyond.
  
• [Scope] Low-Quality Scope material is broken when spawning with M99 and 7xM99 scope after the round started.
  
• [Visual] GasMask has known visual issues
  
• [Visual] Restricted Areas sometimes look strange on the map, but they should still work as intended.
  
• [Settings] Rebinding certain keys may lead to actions becoming doubled / ignored.
  
• [Stability] Some users may experience a crash when exiting the game.

• Fixed a crash caused by Wwise when exiting the game.

• Fixed issue where the local profile would be saved before the key binding changes had been applied resulting in key bind changes not being applied properly.
  
• Fixed an issue where restricted areas could show as visually incorrect on the tactical map.
  
• Fixed an issue where Explosive Drones were not able to enter windows correctly.
  
• Fixed an issue where pressing escape on the Customize screen would not return you to the previous menu.
  
• Fixed an issue where Match Preferences text size would be incorrect if only one game mode was selected.

Hey everyone, my name is Michael Tsarouhas, I am the lead game designer on Insurgency: Sandstorm. In today’s post we want to talk a little about our upcoming new official cooperative mode Hardcore Checkpoint. We’ll go over our motivation behind creating the mode, the pillars that govern its design, and how we turned traditional Sandstorm gameplay on its head and created something that plays unlike any of our other game modes. We’d also like to take this opportunity to say that you can check out all the content coming in our next update including Hardcore Checkpoint in our Community Testing Environment May 20th. Just go to your Steam Library and look for “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment,” which you should own as long as you own Insurgency: Sandstorm.

The idea for Hardcore Checkpoint actually came from our community rather than any sort of flash of inspiration we had ourselves. Just a couple months following Sandstorm’s release in December, we saw that a lot of players were already modding co-op on community servers. They increased enemy counts, turned up the AI difficulty, and made other tweaks. While these modifications might sound simple, they went a long way in making things way more intense. YouTubers like Karmakut, OperatorDrewski, Bluedrake42, and others took this to another level, turning off the HUD and playing with as few as just two players. The result was more a much more difficult, tense, and tactical play that you can’t always get from normal Checkpoint mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr9E1Bi3PrI

These community servers and videos demonstrated to our team that there was a clear interest in gameplay geared toward our hardcore audience. People who aren’t afraid of a challenge and getting struck down by our AI. One of the unique things about Insurgency’s design is that it sits in the middle between the fast paced military FPS games like Call of Duty or Battlefield and the slow paced ones like Arma, Squad, or Escape from Tarkov. Because of this, when it comes to designing new game modes that actually change gameplay fundamentals, we can lean one way or the other. In February we released Team Deathmatch, an FPS classic obviously geared towards players who prefer fast-paced arcade-oriented gameplay. But now, with Hardcore Checkpoint, we’re leaning in the other direction.



Hardcore Checkpoint is founded on the ideas of scarcity and adaptation. Until now, all our game modes have been fairly consistent in terms of equipment. When you die, you respawn with all your gear as if nothing happened. In Hardcore Checkpoint however, this isn’t the case. If you die in this mode, when you respawn you’ll come back with only an unupgraded Mosin rifle, a Makarov pistol, and a smoke grenade. You can get your Class Loadout back by resupplying at a Supply Crate as you normally would, but there are only three crates in the map, and you can only resupply once at each crate. You get one crate at the beginning to start you out with your goodies, one that spawns at a random objective, and one at the very end for the final counter-attack. That’s it. This means players need to be much more careful, and when they die and respawn, they need to manage their ammo and make do with what they find. They can gather weapons and ammo off the ground or search for randomly spawning Ammo Boxes which will give a few magazines for the weapons they’re carrying.

New enemy AI behaviors have been added. Bots in Hardcore Checkpoint are fewer, but they are more trained, sneaky, tactical, and human. They’ll fire more accurately, wait to ambush you, use better weapons and weapon upgrades, hunch down in cover when suppressed, and retreat and regroup when overrun. Also, they dress cooler.



Movement speeds have been significantly reduced. Sprinting across a road without cover to flank an enemy is going to take longer, and isn’t always the smartest decision. Normal standing movement is now more of a tactical glide. When we first started playtesting, this felt pretty weird. We felt like slugs and we felt restricted in our abilities. But as we played, we realized this was exactly what we needed to feel, and was important to what the mode is trying to accomplish. The slower speed makes players even more vulnerable than they are in normal play, and thus raises the tension. It gives off some strong Rogue Spear or old school Ghost Recon vibes where every movement and action feels much more deliberate, and there are more opportunities for what game designer Brian Upton calls “anticipatory play”. In Hardcore Checkpoint, you’re not a rocksteady gunman or unstoppable competitive sprinter; you’re a soft squishy human trying to keep your gun up and on target as you pitter patter forward and hope a suicide bomber isn’t waiting around the corner. Running around everywhere will carry a much greater risk of getting shot, on top of the already great risk of losing that sexy Mk 17 Mod 0 with suppressor, optic, laser sight, and extended magazines for a dumpy old bolt-action rifle from WWII.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCCmJcieaog
(Video example movement comparison between Normal and Hardcore Checkpoint, using a loadout with 73% total weight)

Each of the eight classes is limited to just one player per class. Official matches are still set at eight players, however we found that player counts of six or even lower were also a lot of fun and congruent with the slower pace. With one player to a class, everyone has a specific role to fill and must take advantage of their unique capabilities to help the team. The Gunner and Marksman both need to be in position and set up in those windows as soon as a counter-attack starts. The Demolitions needs to be diligently putting grenade launcher rounds and other explosives into any dangerous looking rooms or buildings. The Observer needs to be with the Commander at all times in case fire support is needed, since there is never another Observer to fall back on. Friendly teammate indicators are hidden at a distance, so target identification and communication are paramount.



Hardcore Checkpoint is a brutal mode. There will be sudden death, there will be friendly fire, there will be stupid Observers, and there will be a time when you get very angry at us for not making the Mosin cycle its bolt faster. But when a team does their jobs right, communicates effectively, keeps the tempo slow, and gets into their groove, Hardcore Checkpoint is fun as hell. It’s been exciting for us to experiment with the traditional Checkpoint co-op that we and our community know so well and to create a totally new experience out of it. It stands as an example of how we (and modders) can take the Insurgency: Sandstorm platform and push the design in totally different directions. We look forward to having you all play it, and please let us know what you think in the comments, on the forums, social media, Reddit, etc. Hardcore Checkpoint will be coming out in our next update, and is playable as both Security and Insurgents on all our maps including our upcoming new map Outskirts. Remember you can also check out Hardcore Checkpoint and all the other content coming in the next update in our Community Testing Environment starting next week. Go to your Steam Library and look for “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment,” which you should own as long as you own Insurgency: Sandstorm. We hope you enjoyed this community update. Be sure to stay tuned for more.