Insurgency: Sandstorm News

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Greetings!

My name is Derek, and I am the Head of Production at New World Interactive. I hope that the new year is treating everyone well thus far, and that everyone is feeling refreshed after the holiday! This month’s SoP will be a little lighter in terms of content, but I’ll be sharing some details about what we’re working on and working towards throughout the Spring. Without further ado, let’s jump right into it!


Key Points of State of Production #5

• PAX East presence + details of where and who will be there from NWI.
  
• Hitreg/De-Sync issue commentary + where we’re at in resolving this issue
  
• Player Reporting Features: Expansion of basic support
  
• Tournaments, prizes, competitions, partnership program, and more!
  
• New content + new map + next update teaser
  
• Adding Domination layouts to all maps to expand mode accessibility
  
• A.I. overhaul to improve the co-op experience in terms of consistent behaviors
  

If you weren’t aware, New World Interactive will be attending PAX East in Boston with our publisher and partner, Focus Home Interactive! We’ll be demoing a playthrough of the game in a co-op capacity, and on controllers. A large part of this will be related to publicly testing some adjustments we’re making to our controller support for the PC version, in anticipation of our console release. What you play at PAX East will likely serve as the foundation for controller configurations for the console release later this year, but we are also looking to hear feedback on what we have so far.

PAX East will include several key members of staff whom the community likely knows and loves, including our Communication Director Jon Higgins, and our Community Manager DaraDef. If you’re attending PAX East, make sure to swing by and check out our booth (#29017), and meet some key members of the team!



While we’ve received reports of this in the past, the inconsistent nature of this bug has made it extremely elusive to track down for our development team. Unfortunately, I am sad to report that this bug seems to have re-emerged, both in terms of prevalence and frequency. Internally, we’ve created a dedicated strike team to track down and identify the root cause. We have explored numerous solutions to this problem, but thus far, our initial hypotheses and testing hasn’t revealed a definitive cause. Our Technical Director, Steve Swires, has also opened a support ticket with Epic, just to ensure that this issue isn’t an engine-level conflict.

Additionally, we’ve enlisted the help of the community, and thanks to the community’s efforts, we’ve been able to hone in on a few likely start points for the problem. We have been aware of this issue since last week, but at my discretion, we have not deployed a hotfix at this time. There are multiple reasons for this:

• Initial regression tests related to proposed hot-fixes were unsuccessful, and in some cases, exacerbated the issue
  
• We have been experiencing a slew of illnesses within the studio, likely related to weather changes and the fierce Calgary winter
  
• I did not wish to deploy an experimental hotfix on Friday that may not have fixed the issue, but COULD have further complicated the issue/added additional problems.
  

I’d also like to take a moment to apologize for the impact that this issue has created for all of our players. I’d also like to take a moment to apologize for the disruption that these bugs have had on our ranked queues, on tournament planning and league-based play, and on our general players’ quality of life experience in-game. I know both the SEL and the DGL have been forced to postpone defining some key dates for some tournaments they want to conduct in the Spring. I fully accept the responsibility for how this has been addressed and handled, and quite frankly, we’re learning a lot from this experience, too. We know this is an extremely frustrating problem, and we’ve already reached out to Epic Games to see if they can clarify if this is an engine-related conflict. I wish there was a better explanation for why this is such a timely endeavor, but we had to work our way through this process, which unfortunately has taken a degree of time longer than initially anticipated.

As for resolution, it is impossible to know for sure if this will impact the issue at-scale, but we are planning to deploy a hotfix this week. Based on initial waves of testing, it appears to be a successful fix for the issue. If it doesn’t fix the issue, we’ll spin up a community “Mega-thread” and try to collect as much information as possible, and proceed forward with working the problem more completely.






Firstly, I’d like to thank our community for taking full advantage of using our 1.0 version of the player reporting tool! Participation rates were significantly higher than we expected for our first iteration, and it highlights the value of this implementation for us as a company. From the first month we introduced this feature into the game till today, we had over 51,000 reports, with an average of 870 reports a day!

I thought it might be fun to share some of the stats related to this with the community, so I asked our Lead Automation Engineer, Phen, to scrape some data and stats to share publicly.

• The most reports we saw in one day was 2075 during the free weekend in December, or 1.5 reports per minute of that day.
  
• We saw a drastic increase in the average number of “Team Killing” reports during free weekend, with a peak of 269 counted teamkilling reports in a single day. We suspect this is due to the volume of new and returning players.
  
• Out of all the reports 52% of them contain comments about what happened
  
• A little over 90% of the reports with a comment can fit in a SMS Text Message (160 Characters).
  
• Our highest reported players are due to hacking/cheating reports, with the worst offender having 135 reports - this user has since been banned!
  
• We receive two times more reports during the hours of 2:00 PM MST to 10:00 PM MST.
  

We’re planning to expand upon the capabilities here later in the year, but for the interim, this early version is serving its purpose well-enough that we can shift development efforts to more critical studio needs.




Back in October, we had a few open meetings with the competitive community on Discord to collect feedback as well as explore ideas to improve the competitive scene. We have since created a competitive leaderboard where players can keep track of their score/placement in Competitive.

Additionally, we have increased the visibility of our community's competitive events by better supporting and promoting tournaments through all of our social media platforms. This month, we were excited to support The Digital Gaming League’s first tournament of the year. The Newblood PUG tournament was catered to players new or less experienced in the competitive scene. Congratulations to the winners: Nate.cr, LsteveTM, werewolf, papadeuce, and Toasty Joe!

Quick Stats:

• Number of teams: 8
  
• Twitch Average Viewers (on DGL Channel): 148
  
• Live Views: 8,783
  
• Time Streamed: 4 hours and 39 minutes
  
• Average Chatters: 77
  
• Average Match Length: 25-35 minutes
  

You can watch the Newblood tournament vod here. The next DGL tournament is the World Cup on February 22/23 1:oo PM - 7:00 PM EST. Those looking to find teams can join the DGL Discord. The Sandstorm Esports League is another community league that we have been working closely with to support. Registration for the SEL Pro League Season 1 is open now. Register here! If you are interested in the SEL and upcoming events please join their Discord.

We rolled out the Sandstorm Partnership Program for content creators on January 15th! The goal of the program is to help creators build their channels and communities around Sandstorm to continue to grow across Youtube and Twitch. The perks the partners will be getting are ingame cosmetics, codes for giveaways, partner merch. With a focus on growth opportunities such as streaming on the steam store page, and networking opportunities with other partners. Some of you may already know some of the partners as they are well known in the community, but some will be fairly unknown as we look in bringing new channels to Sandstorm from competitors. We’ll be announcing the first wave very soon!



We know it has been awhile since we’ve released a content update. Our last content update occurred on September 10th, 2019. Rest assured our next major content update will be coming in the Spring.

Originally, we had planned to release a console-exclusive map for a limited time period. The map in question, “Power Plant”, would be released with a 2-week exclusivity window for consoles, and would then be released on PC a bit later. We thought this would be a great way of generating some excitement, hype, and a degree of ownership amongst console players, and would grant them temporary access to a map that they’d have the chance to experience slightly earlier than our PC community. However, after consulting with our porting and publishing partners, they suggested that we not proceed in this direction. As such, we’ve been working on a perfectly new, functional, ready-to-go map. Instead, we’ve opted to release this map in our Spring update. We’ll continue testing it over the next few weeks to have it in a better state before deployment. We hope you’ll like it; it takes place in a unique setting that you haven’t seen before yet in Sandstorm.



Furthermore, the community has been asking for new weapons for awhile. We’ll be shipping 2 new weapons in our Spring update as well. Additionally, we’ll be putting out a few new cosmetic items, for both the Security and the Insurgents, including the headset, leather jacket, and mask.



Given how well-received the introduction of our Domination mode was when we deployed it last year, we thought the community might enjoy being able to play the mode on every map in the game. As such, in our Spring update, players will be able to play Domination on all existing maps, as well as any maps we release in the future.

Additionally, we made several improvements relating to spawn locations based on your feedback. We had several reports from players where they were spawning in the wrong direction, looking away from the objectives, as well as spawning too close to objectives or in the middle of a room directly in the line of fire.




For a long while, the co-op enthusiasts within our community have been hankering for some updates and changes geared towards the PvE side of gameplay. Your pleas have been heard. With our biggest update ever planned for later this year (codenamed “Nightfall”) we’ll need to implement and re-factor certain aspects of the AI to ensure they are able to behave intelligently within the context of this release. This includes improving the consistency of AI behavior for both day and night maps, better-supporting new and community-created Co-Op modes, and future modes that we release to the community.

I know this is just a bread-crumb trail, but I still wanted to share it, even if it is a bit early, so that co-op players know that we’ve not forgotten about them!




Many players in the community have been asking for more communication from the team beyond these State of Production posts. Now that our office setup is completed and streaming gear acquired, our Community Manager DaraDef will be livestreaming on our Twitch channel playing Sandstorm and doing a Q&A every second Wednesday. Our next stream is Wednesday February 12, 2:00 PM Mountain Time and the one after that on February 26th. If you missed the livestream from this past Wednesday, you can check it out here.

Additionally, Dara will be starting a Community Blog, differing from the State of Production posts in that it will be community focused - announcing contests, promoting community events, sharing community content, and more.

That’s all for this State of Production, we’ll be back with more information soon! Be sure to follow @InsurgencyGame on social media for regular bite-sized updates.

Note: This Steam news version is tailored for PC players, the full version is available on our website.

[h2]Stability[/h2]

• Fixed a frequent crash encountered by certain players during the splash screen sequence or shortly after arriving at the main menu.
  
• Fixed a potential server crash caused by the code that checks for spawn locations.
  
• Fixed a potential server crash caused by the soundscape system if it encountered an invalidly set soundscape.

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed an issue where after firing an underbarrel grenade launcher, then reloading, should the player immediately resupply, equipping the grenade launcher again and firing it would not result in projectiles being shot.
  
• Fixed an issue that would allow players to slide just as they landed from a jumping crouch which was not the intended behavior.
  
• Fixed an issue where launchers could always get an additional +1 to ammo no matter their carrier level.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented the “Grounded” achievement from being obtainable when using a rocket launcher to destroy a helicopter.
  
• Fixed an issue where during modes such as Domination if you immediately respawned it was possible to see the killer information panel fade out twice.
  
• Fixed an issue where grenade particles would remain on round start even if thrown during the “Game Starting” phase.
  
• Fixed an issue where during the last frames of the M24 dry reload animation the left arm would move in an erratic manner.
  
• Fixed an issue where the third person reload animation for the Mosin would not show the hand following the bolt correctly at the end of the reload animation.
  
• Fixed an issue where the lesson panel popup would not have the text correctly aligned if running the game in certain languages.
  
• Fixed a visual issue with the M45 and M1911 that would show any barrel attachment as floating slightly in front of the weapon in the loadout menu.
  
• Fixed an issue where first time players would not see the correct key bindings prompts displayed for the crouch and vault lessons.

[h2]Gameplay Improvements[/h2]

• Infinite resupply in spawn zones either from the loadout menu or resupply crate is now only available for 45 seconds after the round has started and the player has remained inside said spawn zone.

[h2]Visual Improvements[/h2]

• Created a new set of unique third person standing reload animations for the Mosin-Nagant.

[h2]Map Fixes[/h2]

• Summit
  • Fixed a major player collision issue near to the E objective on Checkpoint Security which would allow players to pass through the geometry.
    
  • Fixed an issue where certain rocks were clipping with a building.
    
  • Fixed an issue allowing an unintended sight line into the spawn area on Firefight East.
• Hideout
  • Fixed a large number of clipping issues that would allow the player to become stuck if vaulting over certain props.
    
  • Adjusted the playable area for Firefight East.
• Refinery
  • Fixed a major player collision issue which would allow players to fall through a specific metal catwalk.
    
  • Fixed various minor prop clipping and texture stretching issues.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the player could vault through a chainlink fence prop.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the player could pixel walk on the ledge of a building.
    
  • Fixed an issue where a number of floating street lamp props could be seen throughout the map.
    
  • Fixed some ground texture seam issues.
• Hillside
  • Fixed an issue on Push Security where the vehicle would not spawn for players due to its spawner being invalid.
    
  • Fixed an issue allowing players to capture the A objective on Domination while hidden behind a curtain.
    
  • Fixed an issue where players on the B objective on Domination could capture the objective from an unintended place.
    
  • Fixed a number of misleading door props that look like they could be opened by the player.
    
  • Fixed an issue that would allow the player to get under a specific surface when deploying their bipod.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the player could become stuck when jumping in areas near to the Insurgent spawn or Security spawns.
• Ministry
  • Fixed various spots where the player could become stuck between geometry.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the player could pixel walk on the ledge of a staircase leading to the underground parking lot.
• Outskirts
  • Fixed an exploit where players could spawn camp the enemy team at the C objective on Security Push.
• Precinct
  • Fixed a camping spot that would allow players to obtain an unfair advantage.
    
  • Fixed an issue where a number of floating street lamp props could be seen throughout the map.
• Crossing
  • Fixed an out-of-bounds path that was not included in the playable area.

[h2]1.5 - Hotfix 4, January 29[/h2]

• Addressed a number of additional console commands and ini variables that players could exploit to gain an unfair advantage during public matches.
  
• Addressed a console command exploit that would allow players to kill themselves before a match began to provide dropped weapons and gear for their team mates.

[h2]Leaderboards[/h2]

• Reworked rankings to more accurately represent top players

[h2]1.5 - Hotfix 5, February 2[/h2]
[h2]Critical Fixes[/h2]

• Corrected an issue for most players that could cause desync and ghost bullets when firing relating to the resupply interaction.
• Fixed an additional number of console and ini based foliage exploits.

In the next few minutes, we will be rolling out a small server-side fix for an issue affecting purchased cosmetics not showing until the game was restarted.

This very small patch will take effect the next time you relaunch the game, this should not cause disruption to games already in progress.

Enjoy the Free Week!

This week marks one year since the PC launch of Insurgency: Sandstorm during this time our team at New World Interactive have been busy continuing to build and expand the game.

To celebrate our one year anniversary on Steam, we are excited to give all players an opportunity to experience our immersive team-based, tactical FPS during our 1 year anniversary Free Week which kicks off December 10th until December 17th.

Since release, we've added free new content through several updates including 3 new maps, 4 new game modes, 10 new weapons, dozens of cosmetics, player reporting, and more.

There's never been a better time to hop into the game. Check out our anniversary trailer below for a recap of the past year and a preview of what's still to come in 2020!

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