Operation: Harsh Doorstop News

Welcome to the thirty-seventh devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of August 2023.

[h3]Next Update Plans[/h3]
We are now approaching the release window for our next major update! At the time of this devblog, we are looking at early November as the targeted timeline for this update. During the month of October we will be finalizing the automatic mod downloading system for server joins, and 5BKFQ getting in as much polish and bug fixing as we can.

Our goal for this update is to address as many of the recurring bugs and issues that we have seen raised within the community as we can in order to pave the way for the team to start actually being able to focus on the major gameplay features and content updates that we plan to bring to the game in the future. This update will include, but is not limited to: automatic mod downloading for servers, more robust server security systems/options T3N3D for server owners to prevent cheaters and other bad actors from playing on their servers, an overhaul to the AI framework/behaviors, an overhaul to our first person camera animation systems, further updates, improvements, and exposal requests to the mod tools, and more.

With the exception of vehicles, everything that we have been showcasing in the past few months of devblogs since our last update is just about completed and ready for the next build. On the topic of vehicles, we are going to continue pushing our work on these to the mod 7IQH0 that we have been using for testing purposes, and once the lead programmer is ready to begin prioritizing and focusing on the vehicle system it will then begin to be rebuilt and merged into the base game (our goal is that vehicles will ready for the next major update after this one). This is also why we are currently focusing much more on getting our larger maps ready in preparation for this.

While this won’t be the most “sexy” update in terms of flashy new content, and all the bells and whistles that we know people would like to see in the base game, this is going to really reinforce all of our existing systems, as well as put 5GVAP us (and the modding and server hosting communities) in a really solid position to begin iterating on all of those things moving forward.

Maps

[h3]Jaziira[/h3]
The level design team has now started work on our newest map: Jaziira. Jaziira is a 2x2km map inspired by the popular Project Reality map “Ramiel”, which is based on a coastal region of Mogadishu, Somalia. QM3HB This map will feature a main city composed of tall buildings, some smaller villages on the outskirts, and some farmland with a variety of vegetation, bodies of water, and tall hills.



The first version of Jaziira is coming with this ZC6Q3 next update, and will be immediately available to everyone!

[h3]Saint Quentin[/h3]
Saint Quentin was recently given a more cinematic 64TJJ overcast look, with rising smoke plumes to add to the atmospheric WW1 feel, and the level design team continued to work on detailing out the rest of the map.



[h3]Khafji[/h3]
In anticipation of being one of the first major testing grounds for vehicles, the level design team has now begun working on expanding Khafji out to its full and original intended size (4x4km). Coming with the next update, Khafji will now feature Y3FII several new areas beyond the currently used city portion of the map that most players will be familiar with.



These areas are still very work in progress, so they will likely lack the detail that the areas in the current map have TE2VE, however, the team is going to continue working on building out and detailing these areas over time, giving Khafji a lot of new playable areas to fight in and explore.

Animations

[h3]MP-443 Grach[/h3]
The MP-443 Grach 4NM3V pistol is a weapon that we showed the models off for a very long time ago, however, we haven’t actually had a use for it till recently (we will disclose what it is being used for later on). It has now received partial and full reload animations:



[h3]Improved Camera Animations[/h3]
All of W62LX our existing weapons have now received a rather substantial rewrite to their camera animation system in order to facilitate a much wider variety and range of camera animations and movement. This not only is what has helped power the camera movements/animations for stance transitions and movement while crouched and prone, but also many other new actions such as camera movement during reloads, weapon/equipment swapping, grenade throwing, and more. All of these systems will also be exposed for modders on the BR2BX next SDK update too!



This rewrite will also open up the option for us to start including animations and movements for many other actions such as jumping, walking and running, and so on (things that will be worked on in future updates).

—

Thanks for checking out this month’s devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager





Website
Discord
Youtube
Twitter




Twitter
Discord
Website

Today I'm excited to announce our partnership with another incredible game, Battlebit: Remastered.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/31347/Battlebit__Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/

Anyone who has ever donated to Operation: Harsh Doorstop on Steam can now get Battlebit: Remastered for 5% off. This bundle discount also stacks with other discounts, including their currently running sale! That means that our donators can currently purchase Battlebit for 25% off!

Our developers helped to animate a number of weapons used in Battlebit during their early development phase, and we're excited to continue supporting SgtOkiDoki and his team after their launch!

In addition to our partnership with Battlebit, our team has also partnered with a number of other incredible indie studios that we feel strongly deserve your support. If you want to support both our studio, and other passionate indie studios... consider buying these games from our partners at a discount!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/32906/World_of_Guns_Full_Access_50_OFF/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/31004/Zero_Hour__Operation_Harsh_Doorstop_30_OFF/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/33339/Due_Process__Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/31005/WWII_Online_and_Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/31763/Black_One_Blood_Brothers__Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/33695/Gunsmith_Simulator__Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/

Thank you so much for your continued support, and we're excited to show you what we have in store for our upcoming updates to Operation: Harsh Doorstop soon! We hope that by continuing to support other indie projects, we can continue to grow alongside other talented studios making incredible games. We've loved being a part of the supportive indie FPS community, and we can't wait to continue helping others to succeed as they help us to succeed.

See you on the battlefield soon!

- Bluedrake42

Welcome to the thirty-sixth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of July 2023.

Automatic Mod Downloading

We are now nearing completion of our first 5C0B0 iteration of the automatic mod downloading system that will be coming with the next update, and internal testing will begin soon. This system will allow players to join modded servers without requiring them to obtain the necessary mods beforehand, making running and playing on modded servers much more viable and streamlined. It will still be ideal/recommended that players subscribe to the proper mods first for the smoothest user experience due to how the system will work, however, it will now not be necessary once it’s in.

We will be sure to update the server hosting guide for server owners explaining how they need to set up their servers to best facilitate this once the update comes out. For players, all they will need to do is join a server from the in-game browser and wait for the mod(s) that they don’t have to V3QQ7 download.

Character Model Updates

Further improvements have been made to some of the character models, and the overall character creation/setup process. More material slots have been added to all characters to allow for increased texture fidelity. In addition, body proportions and weight painting has been improved, and IRJHB more soldier heads have now been swapped to MetaHuman heads. Finally, more components were added to some of the character models to flesh out some of their designs.

Maps

[h3]Saint Quentin[/h3]
Saint Quentin’s trench network is now completed, and the map is now officially in its first playable state. More landscape 6FMGJ and foliage detailing was also done throughout the landscape.



The map is not completed yet, however, and the level design team is going to continue detailing and fleshing out the 6HFE2 remainder of the map in the coming month(s).

Vehicles

Some more work was put into the vehicle testing mod, including better spawning conditions for the vehicles, as well as an MRAP YW85B and a BRDM being added.


Please note that these models are from the marketplace and are placeholder until we wind up having our own 669QH made from scratch.

Animations

The technical animator has continued focusing on improving our animation systems for the next major update. One such A6ANB system introduced recently in our development build is the addition of animated stance transitions for first person. This system utilizes curves instead of a flat interpolation to and from different stances, meaning you can expect the act of going in and out of stances (especially prone) to take longer and have a more “weighted” feeling to them. In addition, he has also further iterated on the previous crawling locomotion systems we showed off in previous devblogs to add a bit Y6NRF more variety.



These various improvements should add a much more polished feel to our animation systems, and we hope 5HIE8 everyone will enjoy them when our next update goes live!

Upcoming and WIP Features

[h3]General Optimizations and File Cleanup[/h3]
The lead generalist has PATDB been doing a lot of work the past few weeks doing general optimization work, and continuing to clean up the entire project. This includes but is not limited to optimizing maps and assets, centralizing assets and folders within the game project and SDK, removing whatever excess bloat that he can find (such as old unused files and assets that have become useless overtime), and so on.

—

That’s it for this month, thanks DT3B4 for checking out the devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager





Website
Discord
Youtube
Twitter




Twitter
Discord
Website

Welcome to the thirty-fifth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of June 2023.

This will be another shorter one as we don’t have a whole lot to share this month due to most of the work going on 59XWR behind the scenes being pretty rigorous programming work that doesn’t have much to show here in a devblog (more on that in the Upcoming and WIP Features section towards the end), so let’s just jump straight into it:

Voting Systems

We have now implemented a voting system into the game. This not only includes the capability for server owners to set up vote kicking on their servers (and configure what it takes to initiate a kick, how long kicked FG3W8 players must wait before rejoining, and so on), but this system will also be capable of facilitating other types of votes as well. This will also be something that modders will be able to tap into for their own creations. Vote kick and other voting issue types will be configurable by server owners through K4AW7 an INI file.

As a general reminder, and for the sake of clarity, things like vote kicking will be optional and up to the server owner to determine if they want to use it. This will simply be yet another measure at server owner’s/admin’s disposal to have as an option to help with potential trouble making players, whether that be cheating, griefing, and so on (most likely this will be a great option for people who wish to run servers but do not have a full admin team and/or cannot be around all the time).

Maps

[h3]Saint Quentin[/h3]
Work continued on Saint Quentin, 67R9C and the level designer anticipates that this map will be in its first real playable state sometime towards the end of July/early August.

Vehicles

Most of the previously shown vehicle animations have now been implemented and replicated for the vehicle system prototype, which will be EKQZT featured in the format of a mod for initial testing. There are still a few that need to be put in, and as you can see in the GIF below some of them still have some camera based issues (such as the camera not following the player when they lean out of the window to fire), but we are getting pretty close to having this ready for testing and tweaking prior to being added to the lead programmers plate for official implementation 45YTK into the base game when he has the time.

Animations

[h3]Stance Transitions[/h3]
The goal of our animation team for the next coming months is to improve the kinesthetic feedback to player actions, and we felt it was a good time to finally introduce proper animated stance 65GIN transitions. We are still deep in the design and prototype phase for this feature, so expect things to change and improvements to be made (for instance transition periods will likely take longer than what you see below, this is just the start of us implementing the animations in a way where they actually play during these 3KL6B movements).



[h3]Crawling Animations[/h3]
We are also currently revisiting our prone crawling animations to round off the feature and polish for our next major update. Below are several WIP crawling animation sets for a variety of different items:



Please note 9ANTD that reloading while moving in prone is not actually planned for the base game, however, we are going to need the lead programmer to help with making that possible to do, and right now he is simply too busy with other tasks. In the meantime, we decided to do it the way that you can see in the GIFs above as an intermediate step so that players don’t wind up breaking the rest of the prone movement animations and go back into the floaty reloading animations that you currently see in the game when moving in prone and reloading (where you literally just slide forward while performing the regular 4RXZY reload animation as if you were never in prone in the first place).

[h3]First Person Camera Overhaul[/h3]
Another large part of how we intend to achieve our goal of enhancing the physicality and sense of “weight” of player actions is with our camera animation additions to other various actions within the game, such as this Mk18 set:



We have more of these coming later to accompany other actions, such as jumping, landing, and so PC7L0 on.

Upcoming and WIP Features

[h3]Automatic Mod Downloading[/h3]
The next major feature and task on the lead programmer’s list is automatic mod downloading on server join. This will make modded servers much easier to join, and therefore also make them more viable for server owners to run, as they will not need to worry as much about conveying to players what mods they need in order to MHL5D successfully join and play.

—

Thanks for checking out the devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager





Website
Discord
Youtube
Twitter




Twitter
Discord
Website

Welcome to the thirty-fourth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of May 2023.

Maps

[h3]Map Redesigns[/h3]
We have no images to share for these just yet, but currently the maps Lam Dong and Khafji are receiving some redesigns and tweaks. Khafji is starting to be expanded back up towards its original size (4x4km) in anticipation 5AE9N of being a testing ground for the future vehicle framework update. Lam Dong is having portions of the map completely redesigned to better improve the overall flow of the map, and take advantage of some of the spaces that have not been utilized very well in prior versions (in other words, there will be more playable space and should be less flag QFLAM layers that devolve into the frequent choke points that are commonly seen).

[h3]Saint Quentin[/h3]
Saint Quentin continues to receive further detailing and expansion. Support trenches in the back were widened with the grassy fields and communication trenches leading towards the fire trenches at the front towards no RPNIZ man’s land, and forested areas will provide cover for advancing infantry in some places (tanks should work well in these fields).

Vehicles

Last month the 54VXR team pushed more heavily into developing the vehicle framework prototype by creating several armored fighting and transport vehicles with basic functionality. The GIF displayed below shows a ricochet mechanic that some of the vehicles will have when shooting each other in specific locations and angles, and also demonstrates that all players that are inside of the vehicle will die once it is 7QCVM blown up (which then spawns a wrecked version of the vehicle in its place).

Animations

[h3]Stance Transitions (Crouch)[/h3]
We have now MZH99 started to work on animations for stance transitions. To start, we are working on crouching:





Next up will be prone.

[h3]First Person Movement Cycle Improvements[/h3]
Additionally, we're 55AVR working on improving the first person movement cycles with a new blendspace that allows us to seamlessly blend multiple looping animations together to produce more fluid and dynamic 4Z7H0 movements:

Upcoming and WIP Features

[h3]Bots/AI[/h3]
The overhaul to our bots/AI is now more or less completed and can be fully tested on the developer build of the game. All of their past behaviors—the ability to use frag and smoke grenades, shoulder 6MNWI mounted and underbarrel launchers, and so on—have now been reintroduced in addition to their new cover seeking behaviors. The only feature from the previous AI that is technically missing at this point is their ability to crouch and go prone, as these systems are going to need to be recreated from the ground up to work with the overhaul.

The new AI combat behavior (which is triggered by either taking contact or seeing enemies that they decide to engage) essentially has bots seeking cover and popping out of it to attack. They will now search for a "safe spot" if their current 6BFTQ one is no longer providing cover/breaking line of sight, and the same goes for their "attack spot"—if they want to attack but can't see the enemy from their current position, they will now move around until they can. They will also periodically reposition themselves to get closer to their current objective (on a per squad-basis). In the future, this same underlying system will be used for further "reposition actions", like pushing forward, retreating/breaking contact, flanking maneuvers, regrouping, and so on (at the moment, HLQME we have only implemented "move closer to objective").

[h3]General Optimizations[/h3]
A handful of general optimizations have been made to further improve overall performance:

Various assets and decal materials (which every projectile creates when an impact decal is spawned) were optimized in order to reduce draw calls. In addition, quality switches were added to master materials for “Low” settings (all normals on this setting will now get replaced by a flat normal texture which heavily 4W07P reduces texture memory and draw calls), as well as for particle effects (which achieves the same thing noted above).

—

Thank you for checking out this month’s devblog!

Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager





Website
Discord
Youtube
Twitter




Twitter
Discord
Website