Development Blog #11 [June 2021]
Hello Drakelings!
Welcome to the eleventh devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of June 2021.
This devblog will be a little lighter on content compared to some of the recent ones, as most of the work that has been happening behind the scenes is related to AI, and wrapping up some level design work on existing maps. That said, we are preparing for a return to playtests the week of August 15, 2021, at which time we hope to have the remaining levels more fleshed out, and have the AI behaviors more polished so that they don’t conga line everywhere and have 100% accuracy (they already are a lot better in those aspects, but we still have a long way to go!).
Let’s jump straight into it:
Expansions
[h3]Operation: Invictus[/h3]
We have another round of the “Three Shot Burst” developer interviews prepared by the ISMC team:
Interview with Kden, developer for Operation: Invictus
Operation: Invictus is the flagship expansion for the upcoming title Operation: Harsh Doorstop. It is the newest project created by the original devs of the ISMC mod.
1. What is your biggest weapon pet peeve when playing other games? Weak animations are the first thing I notice in a shooter. Animations are one of the most important components to the "feel" of a gun in-game. It needs to feel satisfying to fire. Would it feel heavy or light? How snappy is the recoil? All of those details can improve gunplay experience for the player. This is a core design principle you'll see in Operation: Invictus.
2. What element of weapon design is most challenging to implement? It's difficult to emulate the physical aspect of a weapon in game. A well-designed weapon feels powerful. Whether you've held a weapon or not, it needs to align with your version of "realistic". And we don't (yet) get to use physical feedback to demonstrate that. So we focus on how it's held, how it reloads, how correct the model is...if we get that right, then players will love the weapon almost regardless of the in-game meta.
3. What's your favorite firearm and why? My favourite firearm would probably be the Galil ACE GEN2 in 7.62 - when it's fitted with a 40-round Bakelite magazine, it has such satisfying proportions. I also can't forget the more obscure AK-platform guns, like the AEK-971, AN-94 or SR1. They all have unique, unconventional mechanisms that make them intriguing.
Bio: Kden is the chief weapons designer and firearms expert for Operation: Invictus. He lives in Belgium where he enjoys swimming in the lake and playing football with his friends".
Here is some of the new content for Operation: Invictus that the ISMC team worked on last month:
Colt M4A1 with a Trijicon ACOG/RMR optic comboColt M4A1 with a Trijicon ACOG/RMR optic combo
AN/PRC-152 Radio, and a Princeton helmet light
[h3]Operation: Michael[/h3]
New weapons and the German character model are nearing a first pass for completion:
Chauchat and Madsen light machine guns
[h3]Operation: Overlord[/h3]
Work on replacing the US soldier character model for Overlord has begun. Only the pants and boots portion were done in June, so July’s devblog should have the more completed paratrooper model to show off:
Maps
[h3]Risala[/h3]
Risala continued to receive more level design work, and attention to the environment details. In addition, the team has been playing with new lighting scenarios:
If you have access and want to see the most current iterations of the lighting and level design, you can check it out on the Test Environment.
[h3]Argonne[/h3]
Argonne was one of the least worked on maps out of the bunch, so the level design team worked on this one a lot in June testing new lighting, swapping out blockout buildings, as well as finishing up some of the remaining trench networks:
As usual, Argonne is already much further ahead in the Test Environment, so check it out if you are curious to see where it is at now. The team has been having a lot of fun doing internal playtests on this map recently.
[h3]Monte Cassino[/h3]
More lighting experimentation, this time on Monte Cassino:
[h3]Khafji[/h3]
One more for lighting experimentation, this time to our original map Khafji:
Objects, Models, and Textures
[h3]World Props and Environment Assets[/h3]
As stated earlier, Argonne received the most love last month in regards to level design, environment detailing, and so on. The following environment assets and world props were worked on:
Church ruins, bunker pieces, trench pieces, trench mud materialUpcoming and WIP Features
[h3]Optics[/h3]
Work has now begun on creating an optic system for O:HD. We have a lot of plans for how optics will work, and these will be an ongoing project for us, but for now (as with most systems in OHDCore) we are more focused on creating a basic implementation that functions well, and gets the job done. Here is a preview of one of the optics we are working on:
Please keep in mind optics are still extremely WIP, and this is not representative of what they will look like in their final form. Eventually, we may explore picture-in-picture (PiP) optics as well, but that will likely come later on as PiP tends to be very expensive performance-wise. Most likely what will happen is, if PiP is implemented, players will be given the option to pick whether or not they want regular optics or PiP (similar to what you see in games like Insurgency: Sandstorm).
[h3]Bots/AI[/h3]
The programming team primarily focused on updating and configuring the bot/AI systems in June. For those that have been tracking, you may recall that the very first implementation of our bots was quite basic—they walked in a conga line, had 100% accuracy aim, and did not engage enemies until they were within very close proximity. Now, they spread out more, their engagement range has been increased, and their accuracy has been toned down a lot so that the firefights you get into with them feel a little more natural.
In addition to these changes, the programmers implemented AI support for larger/tiled maps, as well as integrating and refactoring other changes to the AI made outside the framework. “Boids algorithm” for group movement behavior was also implemented as well.
[h3]Software Development Kit (SDK) and Modding[/h3]
Another month of waiting for Epic to move forward with the SDK. We anticipate that the SDK will be out sometime this month, maybe next month. We have been in active communication with our contacts at Epic, and we know they are looking into it, so as soon as they are ready to proceed the SDK should become available for everyone to start experimenting with. As we stated last month, we will be sure to make announcements the moment it is available for everyone to get their hands on.
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That’s it for this month folks! We look forward to sharing more with you all later.
Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and/or follow our Steam announcements to track updates, and if you would like to support us early on in development you can do so through our Patreon! See you all next time!
-Goomes, Lead Community Manager
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