Operation: Harsh Doorstop News

We've loved watching everyone having a blast in the game. You all have been consistently reporting issues and problems, and it has been fantastic. Some of our most extreme critics have unintentionally ended up being our most helpful players, and we want to keep that information flowing.

Firstly, for anyone that wants to get thoughts directly from the studio founder, you can watch Bluedrake42's video here where he shows off and the what issues we're seeing reported the most.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

For everyone else who wants a simple run down, I've got you.

Easy Anti-Cheat System
EAC (Easy Anti Cheat) is currently in the planning stages of being implemented into the game. There are many users who missed the beginning of our previous development blog stating that standard anti-cheat solutions are still planned. I want to reiterate to everyone that standard anti-cheat solutions will definitely be incorporated into the game, and we're now in the early stages of incorporating those systems.

Server Anti-Cheat Systems
We are currently working with our community server owners to develop and release additional server anti-cheat systems that will allow server hosts to more effectively police servers. This includes systems that interface with Steam's API allowing you to ban users who have already been VAC banned, or restrict users with fresh Steam accounts from joining a server. There are also a variety of additional passive anti-cheat systems we'll be introducing in the coming weeks.

Workshop Improvements
Currently our team is focused on improving Steam Workshop support and fixing any issues with the current mod support. As Operation: Harsh Doorstop is a mod-first platform, this is currently our number one priority. Some issues with mods occasionally not being loaded have been reported, and we have a fix that is already prepared to go out in an upcoming hotfix that resolves this issue.

Ongoing bug fixes and corrections
Video and screenshot evidence of bugs and other issues have been instrumental in targeting and prioritizing bugs. Please continue posting videos regarding bugs, and how to replicate them. I think many users do not realize how incredibly valuable this is to us. Even if you currently despise the game, but intend to make videos on it anyways... please continue getting video footage of these bugs. These are extremely helpful to our core team.

More coming soon...
We love the reception we've received. Both negative and positive feedback has been extremely helpful to us. We know that many of you are still waiting for critical features to be implemented before you fully embrace Operation: Harsh Doorstop, and we're currently focused on combating those issues. However, we are currently in our second day of over one thousand players... and we can safely say that we're incredibly excited to see how many people who love the game are currently playing. As of right now we believe the players who love our game those most are those focused on cooperative and single player game-play... however we know that a huge portion of players are still hoping that Operation: Harsh Doorstop can become a solid platform for competitive gaming. We see you all, and we're working every day to get the systems and features you require in Operation: Harsh Doorstop to make the PVP community healthy.

Thank you so much for how much everyone has been putting effort into giving us feedback so far, and please... keep it coming. Negative or positive, we need it all.

See you on the battlefield.

Bluedrake42 (the founder of the studio) discusses our take on the game launch, and what our plans are now that the game is out in the open. Watch the video below to hear his thoughts.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hello everyone. My name is Bluedrake42, and I am the studio owner.

We are launching today, and an issue that has been repeatedly brought up is how to deal with cheaters when the game comes out.

As many of you know, Operation: Harsh Doorstop is a completely free and open game that allows users to host their own servers. While this comes with many benefits... this also comes with many fundamental drawbacks.

One of the primary drawbacks is that cheating is a per-server responsibility. While our development team has already introduced measures to curb cheating in multiplayer servers, the responsibility to entirely eliminate cheating is still the responsibility of each individual server owner. Our development team will continue to work on implementing additional anti-cheat measures in future updates, and possibly even introduce (entirely optional) standard anti-cheat systems that server owners can enable.

However the reality is still that each server owner is responsible for maintaining and moderating their own player base. This is a similar approach to Discord or other openly self-moderated (and free) projects.

With all that said (and also as a previous full-time server owner myself) let me help with some pointers on how to deal with cheaters.

Advice #1: Administration team.

All server owners that run public multiplayer servers should strongly consider creating a 24/7 server administration team. You can typically achieve this with only a handful of administrators covering periods of time that your server is most active. Operation: Harsh Doorstop currently has all the basic administration tools required for any administration team to moderate your server, including kicking and banning users. Use these tools.

Advice #2: Write your own anti-cheat scripts.

Operation: Harsh Doorstop is a completely open game. While this comes with many drawbacks, it also opens up the ability for servers to self-innovate and create solutions that truly set themselves apart. While default anti-cheat measures applied to the entire game are definitely helpful, creating (or hiring someone to create) your own anti-cheat systems for your own server can greatly improve the experience of your players. Additionally, if each individual server owner creates their own unique custom anti-cheat scripts... this will likely confuse cheaters that utilize more standardized cheat engines, as their cheat engine will not work unanimously across all servers.

Basically... if a player is teleporting to the other side of the map, it won't be difficult to write a script that simply automatically bans users that are detected performing extremely impossible maneuvers.

Advice #3: Create whitelisted, co-operative, or other community gated servers.

This is a pretty simple idea, but basically... cheaters can't cheat in a server they can't even join. If you are a small community that is interested in focusing on small-scale or co-operative gameplay, you should strongly consider using our existing whitelist system to whitelist your most loyal community members. This whitelist system is based on a simple text file, and you could quite easily connect this to a Discord bot that automatically whitelists authenticated players in your community.

Last words...

Operation: Harsh Doorstop is an open game, similar to games like Project Reality. I ran a Project Reality server for years, and Project Reality has literally no default anti-cheat measures what-so-ever. Project Reality still exists to this day, and the servers have always been able to create healthy communities that often have less cheaters than "official" anti-cheat powered games have. The difference is that the server owners there care.

The reason there are more cheaters in Fortnite and Call of Duty than there is in Project Reality, is because those games don't have a community that can ban cheaters from their own servers. If someone writes a cheat that defeats EAC in Fortnite... then they have suddenly just achieved the ability to cheat in every match throughout the entire game.

If someone writes a script to cheat in Project Reality, they can only get as far as the community lets them... before they're banned either by an administrator, or possibly even by an automatic anti-cheat script that a server owner has implemented.

This is how Operation: Harsh Doorstop will work. Some of you will love it, some of you will hate it... but it is how this game is built to be. We do things differently, and there are many benefits to how we do things... but the difference is that running a server will require effort.

This is the same mentality that powers projects like FiveM and Garry's Mod. We have given you the tools you need to succeed. Now it is up to you to use them.

We will continue to work on giving you even more tools to make healthier and stronger communities as time goes on.

Good luck, and please join our Discord community if you need any further help or advice regarding server hosting. Our community is here to help you, and there are already many members creating additional community-powered tools to help create better multiplayer servers.

https://discord.gg/drakelings

See you on the battlefield.

A few words from the CEO before the launch of Operation: Harsh Doorstop:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Hi everyone,

We are holding a playtest for O:HD on Saturday, February 11th @ 4:00PM EST over in the O:HD Community Discord.

We look forward to seeing you there![/h3]