Development Blog #10

Hello Drakelings!

Welcome to the tenth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of May 2021.

To start off this month’s devblog, we want to recap a couple of major events that happened in the past few weeks: we had our very first test with bots/AI (went up to 128 bots combined with a handful of players with ease!), and we also did our first testing with a prototype system for the FOB construction system.

For the bots/AI, as you can see in the GIF below, they aren’t very intelligent yet or even capable of doing anything that impressive (all they can do right now is capture flags and shoot enemies, and they love to walk in a giant conga line), however this was a major/critical step forward in achieving our goal for the OHDCore platform to deliver players with the choice to use bots to play by yourself offline (PvE), play with or against them with friends (PvEvP), or of course play without them and only against other players (PvP). In the coming weeks and months, the programming team will be working on improving their behaviors so that the bots/AI present themselves as more cunning foes, and behave more like human players (i.e. seeking cover when shot at, understanding how to maneuver and flank, and so on).

Playtest with bots/AI—128 players and bots (mostly bots). Performance was not the greatest as I am sure you can imagine, but there were no server crashes and things ran stable the whole time. It will only get better from here!

If you would like to experiment with the bots, make sure you have Test Environment installed, and then you can use the following console commands in the main menu to start a match:

net.MaxPlayersOverride # net.MinPlayersOverride # Bot.Autofill 1 open MAP

Replace # with the number of bots you want, and replace MAP with whatever map you want to play (map names you can use: khafji_p, fallujah, lamdong, montecassino, argonne, AAS-TestMap). You must set net.MinPlayersOverride to be greater than 1, otherwise the autofill will not work.

Let’s get into the rest of the recap for May:

Expansions

Operation: Invictus

The ISMC team has been hard at work continuing to produce some very high quality assets for use in the Operation: Invictus expansion. Before we get into showing off some of their recent work, their team prepared a short Q&A with one of the lead developers titled “Three Shot Burst”:

Interview with Anders, 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. You cut your teeth developing the extremely popular ISMC mod for Insurgency: Sandstorm. What parts of that experience contribute most to the development of Invictus? ISMC started because of my passion for guns and gear, and through it I was constantly getting better at texturing. Now I get to learn modeling on top of that! It's a very fun process collaborating with the other artists. I also learned a ton from figuring out the core features like scopes, gun handling, balancing realism with gameplay - all that stuff I did for ISMC. So for me it feels like a continuation and evolution of my work on ISMC: pure passion and fun.

2. What will be possible with Invictus that wasn't with ISMC? Oh, everything! We can do sounds, animations, game modes, every aspect of game design is open to us. We are still building the solid core systems, like scopes and gun customization, but I would take that freedom to create over restricted use of developed tools any day.

3. What music do you listen to when you code? *Dream Theater, mostly! I'm a huge prog fan, so I do enjoy Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Haken and such. As a guitar player I gravitate towards more complex music, and I do plan on making some music to go with my game development projects at some point!

Anders lives in his native Norway with his partner Liv. He has been an accomplished woodworker and archer for 15 years, and crafts historically accurate medieval bows and arrows.*

Here are some of the models that Anders and the rest of the team worked on last month:

MP5, TriArc Glock 19, TriArc 2011 Commander, M4A1, AWS SMU Battlebelt

At the time of posting this devblog, the TriArc Glock 19 is already available to use in game (although the animations are still not fully configured properly), and the rest will be made game ready very soon.

Operation: Michael

The ISMC team has also been working on creating the US soldier character model for Operation: Michael:

These models should be available to preview on the Test Environment.

Operation: Rolling Stone

In May, work began on the USMC soldier model concepts that were shown off in April:

These models are also now more or less completed and can be found in game.

Maps

Risala

Risala has continued to receive detailing and design passes to further flesh the map out:

Lam Dong

Lam Dong underwent a list of updates and improvements, including updates to the lighting, tweaks to the water color to make it look more blue, the landscape was repainted, and more ground cover/debris was added to add to the overall detail.

Monte Cassino

Monte Cassino received further blockout work to the Abbey building, as well as detailing passes to the fields and nature areas around the map.

Argonne

Argonne continued to receive detailing passes to the foliage and landscape, and the team began laying out the trench assets throughout the various trench lines across the map.

Animations

More gun animations!

TriArc Glock 19, M1919A2 Browning Machine Gun, AKMN, MG42 (not final/WIP), P38

Objects, Models, and Textures

Weapons

Rifle mounted grenade launcher variants of both the M1 Garand and Kar98k were created:

World Props and Environment Assets

More props were created for use in all of the levels:

PMC and Insurgent faction flags for Invictus, barrels, gun powder canisters, sandbags, and spike walls for Rolling Stone, and some traffic cones (the Pooky Special)

Upcoming and WIP Features

Software Development Kit (SDK) and Modding

Not much to report here other than we are still waiting on Epic! As we have mentioned in prior devblogs, all of the paperwork is done, agreements signed, and so on, so the ball is in Epic’s court. We will be sure to make announcements the moment it is available for everyone to get their hands on.

Bots/AI

As mentioned at the beginning of the devblog, we now have the very first iteration of bots/AI in O:HD. They are available to play with on the Test Environment branch of the game. Just to reiterate, if you would like to experiment with the bots, make sure you have Test Environment installed, and then you can use the following console commands in the main menu to start a match:

net.MaxPlayersOverride # net.MinPlayersOverride # Bot.Autofill 1 open MAP

Replace # with the number of bots you want, and replace MAP with whatever map you want to play (map names you can use: khafji_p, fallujah, lamdong, montecassino, argonne, AAS-TestMap). You must set net.MinPlayersOverride to be greater than 1, otherwise the autofill will not work.

Work now begins on some initial configuration and optimization, and then we will be working on expanding and adding greater depth to the AI behaviors so that they will be more interesting to play with. Some of the behaviors that we will be working on include, but are not limited to, the ability to bound and peel, flank and maneuver, seek hard cover and/or concealment when being shot at, being able to operate in fireteams/squads/platoon-size elements (varying levels of command), use vehicles and static emplacements, and more. All of this of course will not happen overnight and will require a lot of time and dedication from the programming team, but we are quite confident that we will be able to get there when all is said and done.

Building/Construction System

Last month we did several playtests where we tested out a prototype of the building/construction system that we have shown off in prior devblogs. We collected a good first round of bugs and feedback, and now the system is being rebuilt for a more proper implementation. One of the new features that is being worked on for that implementation is snapping:

We hope to have another updated version soon as we push towards having a first iteration ready for a stable build.

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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 be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!

-Goomes, Lead Community Manager

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