Welcome to the forty-fifth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of April 2024.
Not much to go over this month other than the latest 3WH4Z work, so let’s jump straight into it:
Vehicles
A basic transport truck is now available for testing on the Developer Build of QIZWQ the game. This is just a very, very basic truck that you can spawn in, get into the various seats (using F1, F2, F3 ZZYXH, etc.), drive around, and blow up when damage is applied (literally any form of damage for testing purposes)—sounds, animations, configuration for handling/performance, and so on are NOT factored in yet as we are mainly testing base functionality, and networking optimizations.
If you would like to test it out, launch 4P03T into the Developer Build of the game, open the console (default keybind is ~ but you can rebind this in the settings if you need to), then type spawnvehicle and the truck should appear in front of YBM5J you. You can also do this on a server, you just have to be an admin and you need to type enablecheats first before running the spawn CN97F command. You can also press N to go into third person camera—this is for testing purposes only right now, you will not be able to do this by default once vehicles are officially in (unless 5WYF9 a server owner decides that they want to enable it and that feature/option is available for them to adjust once vehicles actually come to the main branch of the game). Please JG2JP keep in mind that these commands are subject to change and might not always function this way.
Upcoming and WIP Features
Bipods and Weapon Resting
Our Technical Animator has continued his work on bipods and weapon mounting, and while 9AJP3 these systems are not currently testable on the Developer Build just yet, they are now finally in a place where we can start showcasing them.
Weapons will soon be able to be bipodded/mounted onto flat surfaces. In order to activate it, players will walk up to a surface and press a key to deploy the bipod/mount their weapon—this will initiate a line trace in multiple directions to determine where to translate your first person view, which will then move the weapon into the mounted position in a spot that the system deems proper. Players will be able to remain in the bipodded/mounted position both in ADS and while not in ADS. Directional 4ZWGT movement at any point will cancel the mount and move the weapon off the surface to avoid a “sticky” feel to the bipod/weapon resting, and so players never feel stuck in place.
As you can see above, bipods flipping down has not been completed yet, but that part would be purely visual and the system would still work the same.
Utilizing this system he has also added in wall mounting, meaning you can now use walls and other applicable meshes in the world as a direct MH3MM point of contact for the weapon, allowing for recoil stabilization and use of the environment to your advantage in more dynamic situations:
Bipods and weapon resting/mounting will also impact weapon recoil and steadiness, and will be configurable at the individual weapon levels.
We will be sure to let everyone LN7GX know when this is all testable in the Developer Build.
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Thank you for reading 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!
Welcome to the forty-fourth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of March 2024.
Summer Update Goals
We are currently full speed ahead on the features that 5HPAF will be coming in the next major patch, which include our first iteration of our vehicle framework, a basic system for FOBs, Rally Points, construction, weapon bipods and resting/mounting, and—if all goes well—a very basic and simple revive system. Adjustments to existing AAS map layers for all maps that are meant for vehicles will also be coming with this update in order to help promote teamwork, as teams will be required to start at their respective main base flags and deploy FOBs together in order to spawn in the field, and players will benefit from sticking with their squad leader in order to place rally points 0H39I and keep the squad together as they push to attack or defend capture points (and if we can get revives in players will have a chance to keep their teammates in the fight if they go down).
While all of these systems in their first form will be quite basic and still have a long way to go, this should hopefully M3YTW be the first time where O:HD will really feel like it has the complete gameplay loop that we are going for feature-wise in the base game. While we still do not have a concrete release window to announce just yet, we plan for the update to come this summer (sometime within the next 2-3 months if I had to give a rough 5H70C estimate).
Vehicles
Nothing too exciting to show with vehicles for this devblog, but during March our lead programmer worked on resolving some issues with a pre-existing vehicle implementation involving players P509E entering/exiting the seats of a vehicle, as well as a player's view angle being constrained while inside a vehicle. In addition he also fixed up functionality for showing/hiding or enabling/disabling a player's weapon while in a vehicle when appropriate (such as when they enter a seat in which they should be able to shoot out of). He should be getting very close to having something available for testing in 2T3MJ the Developer Build of the game, and we will be sure to announce when Supporters can begin to check this out.
Maps
Our lead generalist 5I4E5 began working on new variants of our existing desert-themed buildings to not only bring more variety to the structures used in the maps, but also enhance our building development workflow and further improve XZL9G optimization altogether:
All of the buildings in game will be IC32Q getting the same treatment over time.
Upcoming and WIP Features
Bipods and Weapon Resting
Unfortunately still nothing to 5F33J show here for this month, however, we have already been reviewing and providing feedback on internal bipod prototypes W683C created by our lead technical animator, so hopefully we will have a demonstration to showcase soon once it is a bit further LKTM3 along.
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Thank you 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!
Welcome to the forty-third devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of February 2024.
As mentioned in the last devblog, January and February were pretty much exclusively focused on bug fixing, polish, discussing design/prototyping systems, and a lot of internal housekeeping and file cleanup after our last major patch in December. That said, there isn’t a whole lot of new stuff to go 5H93Y over this time around, so let’s jump straight into it:
Vehicles
Our lead programmer is now completely focused on officially implementing the first iteration of the vehicle framework F6EJL into the project. This will be a major feature addition to our codebase that will allow fully functional, fully networked vehicles to be brought into the game. The first vehicles that we plan on implementing will be very basic ground transport vehicles—we have decided 5DV6Y to start with the following transport trucks to keep it simple (as seen in our roadmap) and allow us to focus on performance, optimization, base functionality, and so on:
M923 and KamAZ-6350 5HWAG transport trucks
As usual, the first version of this will be accessible for testing on the Developer Build of the game when it is ready. We will be sure to make corresponding posts and announcements once they are 8CK66 ready for testing.
Upcoming and WIP Features
Bipods and Weapon Resting
Our technical animator 4EKH9 is making progress on setting up the animation systems necessary for our mounting and bipods prototype. He has already set up the camera and arms lerp to the desired 6ABF0 surface height, as well as the state machines and animation graph for playing animations to enter and exit the mounted state. These state XZH7G machines are currently utilizing placeholder animations which will be replaced with dedicated mounting entrance C30X4 and exit animations next (and we will be showcasing these as soon as they are ready/available).
Once the systems are complete and animations are made, we will move onto general polish and implementation of procedural 6GJXI offsets for the weapon to better align with surfaces, as well as tying the mounting to other animation blueprint systems for added utility/function BB6WD (such as our weapon sway and visual recoil in order to give extra stability to the weapon when in a mounted state so that this isn’t a purely visual feature).
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That’s it for this month, thank KLNNC you for reading!
Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!
Hello everyone! Today Steam's spring sale has started, and all of our bundles (including our "Donator" packages) are heavily on sale! This means that not only can you get "Donator" status for a discount, but everyone who already has "Donator" status can also get games from our partners for up to 50% OFF!
Here are some of the most popular games that we're lucky to be partnered with! Get these while you can!
Thank you all SO MUCH for your support! As you all know, our game is funded PURELY through your donations! So every dollar spent helps us make the game better! We have lots of HUGE updates coming to Operation: Harsh Doorstop in the coming months, including the official release of vehicles, outpost construction, and much more!
Also, if you've already donated to the project, make sure you join our "Attack Helicopter" playtests which are going on now!
Hello everyone, we've been playtesting many experimental features (such as helicopters) in our donator playtest servers, and I wanted to share some footage of those playtests with you here today.
Here is footage of some of the new features we've been working on!
If you would like to join these playtests and support development of our free game, consider becoming a donator. Donators get early access to features like this, as well as access to many of our beta playtests.
The playtest server with attack helicopters will be available over the next week. If you'd like to try them out, simply filter by "Supporter Only" servers in the server browser!
More updates coming soon. Stay tuned!
- Bluedrake42
Development Blog #41 [December 2023]
Hello everyone!
Welcome to the forty-first devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of December 2023.
This will be a lighter devblog in terms of content as December 2023 was the month that we released our latest update, and the team was in a lockdown phase during this month so that our leads could prepare the update and make sure there were no last minute curveballs that could jeopardize it (plus it was the 5H868 holidays). Otherwise, it’s still business as usual for the team at the moment, and as mentioned in the last devblog, our top priority right now is monitoring the game and fixing any remaining critical bugs/issues that we can find, as well as doing some much needed polish and optimization work that we didn’t have the time to get in for this last update. Once these steps are done, our plan is to move on to the first official implementation of our vehicle framework, and then from there base building/construction for the creation of FOBs and bases ARP9Q should be next.
Before we jump into it, Bluedrake also just recently released his January 2024 Mod Spotlight video which showcases a handful of awesome mods that the modding community has been working on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTPnEqknhQU
I highly recommend giving that a watch and checking out the mods over on our Steam Workshop! There’s a lot of really great content being uploaded there on a regular basis, so it’s always worth going to look periodically.
Expansions
As the currently available WIP AVPLW expansions are almost entirely level design-oriented at this stage, part of the team has started to work on some of our other planned/upcoming faction-based content that we will be introducing into the game:
Operation: Hyrcania
Operation: Hyrcania is an expansion that will be adding a variety of new modern factions to the game, namely modern US Army and Russian Marines. Both factions will feature modern weaponry, including but not limited to the M4A1, M249 SAW, M110 Marksman Rifle, and SCAR-H 5HGHK on the US side, and the AK12, PKP Y4474, and AS VAL on the Russian side. While the US Army faction will only feature the standard Multicam uniforms and gear, the Russian Marines will be available in both forest and desert EMR camo patterns.
We have gone ahead and released a preview build of these factions on Steam Workshop BIEJQ if you want to check them out now!
Operation: Invictus
Operation: Invictus consists of a faction that is essentially a Russian/Eastern counterpart to the current PMC 5IGH3 faction, and will feature a variety of modded and/or unique Eastern weaponry:
We have gone ahead and also released CKXM7 a preview build of this faction as well on Steam Workshop if you want to check it out now!
Upcoming and WIP Features
Bipods and Weapon Resting
Our technical animator is now going to begin working on the implementation of bipods and weapon resting mechanics. At KM9RZ this stage we are currently still discussing design and overall approach, so there is nothing to show this month in terms of GIFs or images, but we should have some prototypes to show hopefully in the next devblog, or one after that.
As far as design goes and what to expect, we will be taking heavy inspiration from Red Orchestra/Rising Storm’s bipod and weapon resting mechanics, so if anyone would like a direct reference to see what we are aiming for that will be the best place to look. In a nutshell, what this system will entail is players will have the ability to deploy/undeploy bipods on weapons that have them at any point in time. Once the bipod is “activated” and players go prone, move up to an obstacle/object (such as 5LRW0 a windowsill, sandbag wall, ledge, car, etc.), and so on, they will be able to actually properly place the weapon down into the bipodded position, gaining them more control and better stabilization of the weapon when aiming and firing. Once in the bipod position, players should then also be able to do things like move the bipodded weapon across where it is being rested in order to make more fine grain adjustments to their shooting position to obtain the ideal vantage point. We also plan to make it so that weapons in the bipodded position have their own reload considerations as well, including an option to be able to keep the weapon bipodded and ZMYRP reload while in cover.
As far as weapon resting goes, this should be quite simple and not too fancy: if a player is close enough to an obstacle/object that they can rest the weapon on, the weapon will then be considered “rested” (and this will likely be indicated in the UI). Rested weapons should then handle somewhere between regular shoulder fired (like you are used to now) and a full blown bipodded weapon.
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That’s all for this month 0ERR6, thanks for reading!
Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!
Welcome to the fortieth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of November 2023.
Post-Update Plans
This past Wednesday we released our first major update since early access, and so far it appears everything has been going pretty smoothly with that. This update included a whole slew of new changes and fixes, and a number 4RC0X of new major backend features, such as automatic mod downloading on server join (making it so all you have to do is boot up the game and join a server without any guesswork as to what mods you will need). If you would like to view the complete list of updates and changes, please check out the Update v0.13.0.0 Changelog.
Over the next couple of months, our top priority will be monitoring the game and fixing any remaining critical bugs/issues that we can find, as well as doing some much needed polish and optimization 3H7CB work that we didn’t have the time to get in for this last update (and potentially push a hotfix or two). Once these steps are done, our plan is to move on to the first official implementation of our vehicle framework, and then from there base building/construction for the creation of FOBs and bases should be next.
Maps
Carentan
The level design team added on to the main village area of Carentan, towards the center of the map, including QVR4W parts of the main square and outskirts of the town.
Jaziira
In November the final touches were put on the first version 46R4B of Jaziira to get it ready for the update. For the next steps on this map, our level designs will be working towards detailing and polishing up the rest of the city portion of the map to get it up to the same detail levels as the current layout features so that we can start adding in more layers and areas of the map KZVPG to fight in.
Animations
Stamina-Based Sway
Our technical animator added a basic sway animation to the weapons that becomes more and more intense the lower your stamina goes to encourage players to manage their stamina better, and favor taking and holding positions D6KPL over running and gunning. While this system is very basic right now and doesn’t impact gameplay a tremendous amount, it will be a precursor/base foundation to a more advanced system we will be adding and tying more elements of the gameplay into in the future (such as our medical overhaul).
Walking Cycles
He also revisited the ADS walking cycles to make them better fit with the rest of the animation overhaul that we have been 4W326 working on, and to also make it a bit harder to aim and shoot on the move.
Prone Movement Improvements
Lastly, he has also been refactoring the prone animation graph, which should result in a much more improved blending result between JNCHW crawling animations and seamless direction reversals.
Objects, Models, and Textures
More New/Updated Weapons
There were a few more weapon ZLJI7 additions that I forgot to include in one of the last devblogs:
CMMG Endeavor, an SKS 5PGBG w/ a PU scope (replacing the PSO variant), an improved version of the M4A1 w/ M203 launcher to replace the existing one in the PMC faction, an AKM, an earlier variant of the M1919 BAR for use w/ the WW1 faction, and a Mauser 1914 (currently using 29PG2 the Makarov animations and it will require its own set later on, so these might not be totally proper right now)
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Thanks for checking out this month’s devblog. Happy holidays everyone, and 243CG have a great New Year!
Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!
Added player filtration/access control system, allowing server owners to deny player entry based on a variety of criteria such as VAC/Game ban count or date issued, account age, and playtime hours.
Animations
New Prone Animations
New Stance Transition Animations
Weapon-World Collision
Weapon Sway
Fixed issue where FP camera could get stuck off screen (part way through a camera animation) if there was a network correction while the player was in the middle of a vault
Fixed issue where a player's leaning state, from the perspective of other players, could go out of sync on the server
Audio
Replaced far sounds with better-quality sounds
Reduced footstep sounds by 20%
Decreased volume on all Close Echo sounds as they were overpowering the main gunshot
Adjusted ricochet, suppression, and bullet crack sounds, making them louder
Buildings
Added many new props, replaced placeholder assets
Added lights to all enterable buildings, set low culling distances for better performance
Set lights to not cast dynamic shadows for better performance
Characters
Rebaked all character LODs, adjusted LOD materials to blend better as you move away from other characters
US, RU, PMC, Insurgent, USMC, and NVA characters have new additions, backpacks removed, new faces, and material optimizations
Fixed death timer handle reset that was preventing death animations from playing, if configured
Cleanup
Fixed misspelling of Wehrmacht assets
Removed several Textures, Meshes, Materials, and Blueprints that were no longer being used
Updated M203GL Launcher
Moved all buildings, props, and blueprints out of the Operation folders and into HDAssets
Credits
Added several Developer, Contributor, and Supporter names to the credits list
DLC Maps
Replaced Ultra Dynamic Sky lighting with new Lighting system
All DLC maps are still Work In Progress, performance varies
Gameplay
Major improvements to AI, including new mechanics for dynamic cover and more cautious advancement on objectives
Re-enabled collision between players
Adjusted movement speeds
Implemented "interaction sphere" for dropped kits, making them easier to interact with and to pick up off the ground.
Resolved an issue with players talking over voip that were not able to be heard if there were several players talking simultaneously
Tuned removal behavior of shot tracking to enhance server stability
Game Servers/Multiplayer
Additional security improvements and enhancements
Added server auto-mod download feature where joining clients will download the mods deemed necessary by the server before loading into the map
Introduced the ability for mod authors to mark select modifications as "server-only" and not required for clients to download
Omit non-essential server tags from GameTags section to prevent overflow
Enabled steam rich presence, allowing for server connection info to be provided via the "Game Info" dialog for steam friends currently in a server
Allow for players to join a server through a steam game invite or off of a friend directly
Lighting
Updated lighting BP with an updated v2 version
Removed lighting levels that were using Ultra Dynamic Sky lighting
Imported new v2 lighting templates
Updated all maps with new Lighting v2 templates
Created new cube maps for all maps and lighting scenarios
Maps
Rebuilt all HLODs without Normal maps, reducing overall texture memory
Instanced several props used on buildings to reduce draw calls
Replaced several meshes with merged versions to reduce draw calls
Added new lighting levels with a new lighting system
Removed several merged walls and replaced them with individual meshes, reducing draw calls
Reduced landscape material shader complexity on all maps, helps performance on Low and Medium Quality settings
Resolved issue with bots not spawning on some map configurations with capture points whose radius extends beyond the allowed boundaries of the nav mesh or are affected by a nav modifier
Khafji
Increased playable area from its current 1km area to 4km
Added more capture routes for AAS
Added more props, cover, and buildings
Replaced Ultra Dynamic Sky with new Lighting Setup
Risala
Replaced several buildings and assets with optimized assets to improve performance
Increased the ratio of non-enterable buildings versus enterable buildings for better performance
Replaced the Embassy building, and made that area into a cargo container area
Replaced Ultra Dynamic Sky with new Lighting Setup
Argonne
Added background foliage to the outside play area
Replaced several merged meshes with their individual meshes to reduce tri count and draw calls
Added foliage color variation
Improved landscape roughness and specular settings
Replaced Ultra Dynamic Sky with new Lighting Setup
Montecassino
Replaced merged sections of the monastery with their individual modular meshes for better performance
Added interior lights to the monastery
Added more cover and firing positions to the interior of the monastery
Added foliage to the background mountains
Reduced landscape shader complexity for better performance on Low and Medium settings
Replaced Ultra Dynamic Sky with new Lighting Setup
Lam Dong
Replaced large water plane with smaller water plane meshes
Improved overall foliage quality on Jungle foliage
Optimized collisions on all the Jungle Huts
Added the ability to climb the Watch Towers
Replaced Ultra Dynamic Sky with new Lighting Setup
Jaziira
Our new official 2km² map set in Somalia
One full layout, ready to play for the update. The rest of the map will continue to be worked on for the coming updates and the addition of vehicles in the future with larger routes
Added "Quality Switch" to all master materials for Diffuse, Normal, and ORM, this will reduce texture memory on Low and Medium Quality settings
Quality switch applies to landscape, props, effects, and foliage as well
SDK
Added setting to allow for pak files to be compressed during mod packaging to help cut down on the file size of larger mods
Added PBR Validator Tool, which helps set all materials and textures within the PBR range
Fixed some cases of packaging error "Package X is set to NeverCook, but something is trying to cook it!" that would occur if the mod had references to engine content
The editor will now load straight into the HarshDoorstop uproject automatically if the user launches the editor by running UE4Editor.exe directly
Enabled EQS Editor setting
Added BP static: SetCastStaticShadow
Updated description of "No Recoil" setting to better clarify that it removes a weapon's configured cone of fire in addition to removing any recoil
User Settings
Exposure value used by Low, and Medium settings adjusted, levels should not be dark or pitch black anymore
Disable mouse smoothing setting by default
Added "Vote Yes" and "Vote No" keybindings, used for player voting system
Added keybinding for "Chat History" with the default key set to 'Forward Slash' instead of 'F12'.
VFX
Reduced emitter delay on the smoke grenades, start time reduced from 11 seconds to 3 seconds
Added fourth LOD to smoke grenades and increased the distance they cull out
Increased the duration of the suppression effect
Weapons
Adjusted all weapon materials for new lighting
Removed tracers on all weapons except for Squad Leaders, and Machine Gunners
ADS, Braced Aim, Recoil, and Camera Shake have been adjusted on all weapons
Optic material has been optimized, reducing frame drop
Fixed bone damage multipliers that were improperly set
Various fixes to client weapon clip ammo jitter and desync, resulting in reloads not working among other issues
Fixed issue involving weapons with fast fire rates that would sometimes drop the player's inputs to fire the weapon if the fire button was released and subsequently held down in quick succession
Fixed crash from unsafe call to stop weapon fire during GC when exiting the game
Fixed issue involving single-load weapons (ones with a dry reload function) ending up with a partial ammo clip after a combination of dry and partial reloads
Resolved issue with ammo capacity totals counting the clip ammo from ammo clips loaded into other guns in inventory that accept the same ammo clip type
Adjusted ammo bag and medical bag are slower to heal, however, they replenish more HP per tick
Bandages heal for less HP
Full top-to-bottom review and adjustment of every single weapon in-game
Faction Kits reviewed and adjusted
Grenade throw distances adjusted
Known Bugs
Jaziira, shell casings cull too early when ejected from the weapon
Khafji needs more improvements to increase performance
Arms glitching while switching between weapons
Grenade explosion, one of the explosion effects has a flickering flipbook texture
Development Blog #39 [October 2023]
Hello everyone!
Welcome to the thirty-ninth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of October 2023.
Next Update Plans (continued)
To start I want to give another brief update/reminder that our planned release window for this next update will be next month, sometime in mid-December. We will announce a more precise date when 4TFHI we get a bit closer to it, but that is the planned timeline. The team plans on initiating a work lockdown in the beginning of December (approximately 1 week from the release of this devblog), at which time the update will be finalized for release, patch notes will be made, any finishing touches will be worked on, and so on.
Maps
Carentan
The level design team continues working on detailing and building out Carentan for the Operation: WWHB5 Overlord expansion:
Jaziira
A lot of work went into Jaziira 5VZK6 to get the first route ready for the update, and many props, walls, foliage, landscape work and more were introduced and polished up. After the update in December, we plan on doing further passes on this map to incorporate more routes, more details, 577PL and so on.
Animations
Jumping and Landing
Our technical animator has been working on getting the 2GETF last few core systems ready for the next update, including a new camera effects/animation system for jumping, falling, and landing. All of these smaller subsystems work together to achieve a more polished feel to the animations, RTDYQ which should help make our overall movement feel less “floaty”, which is a common piece of feedback that we tend to see.
Vaulting Improvements
In addition, he has also revisited the vaulting 4C0B2 animations to further polish them up, and as a part of that process vaulting animations have also been given their own camera animations, which will enhance the overall physicality/feeling of those actions.
Upcoming and WIP Features
Movement and Stamina-Based Sway
The team is also currently working on a basic first implementation of movement and stamina-based weapon sway, which we will show in the next devblog. What this basically entails however is that 563QA there will now be more substantial weapon sway when you are in ADS and moving, as well as when you exhaust your running and jumping stamina bars, and then go into ADS (the severity of which will increase the lower your stamina bars are).
Movement Changes
We have also incorporated some rather substantial movement changes as well. Overall, movement in general has been slowed down—things like the basic jog movement, movement while in ADS and while leaning, prone movement, and so on have all been slowed down. On the flip side of this, in order to alleviate CG0R6 any issues that might come with this in regards to how long it takes to traverse the map and move from objective to objective, we have kept the overall stamina speed roughly the same, and we gave players a larger stamina pool in order to run for further distances without having to stop. When compared side-to-side with the main build, it should take approximately just as long (if not faster) to travel between objectives.
With these changes, we are hoping to accomplish two things: first, movement while in close quarters environments, or just generally attempting to fight around positions that players are holding, should feel a lot better and more controllable; second, your time to objective should be unaffected, if not made even better, as you now have more stamina to take advantage of to get there (this is only temporary, however, as we do intend on reducing the amount of stamina that players have once we start incorporating vehicles). This should make fighting on specific locations more enjoyable overall and feel more in line with the gameplay style that we would like to go for 3Q7L2 with the base game without hindering players too much due to some of the larger map sizes and travel times.
Suppression Changes
While the suppression system is still largely the same in regards to effects and overall functionality, the actual length of effects, camera shake, and so on have been made a bit more exaggerated to make suppressing fire a little more effective. This shouldn’t completely hinder players to the point where they cannot effectively return fire, but it should make accurate return fire more challenging overall to accomplish. This is something that we are still experimenting with, and have plans to do a full blown overhaul on in the future, but in general our intent is to always make sure that combat reasonably maintains high lethality, makes the types of weapons and weapon systems being used have a purpose/relevance, retains player agency/control, and allows for there to be a skill gap in place.
Balancing Changes
A myriad of balancing changes have also been made to some of the kit items, such as ammo and med bags, bandages, grenades, and so on:
Ammo Bags: Ammo bags now take longer to replenish ammo. This is still a very placeholder system that doesn’t provide the greatest depth, but this should help a bit with grenade and rocket ECYKA spam that we have seen occur. Not much more that we can do with these for now with the current systems, but this should be a positive change overall for balance purposes.
Med Bags: Med bags now take slightly longer to give health, however, the amount of health that they provide per heal is higher, which means the Medic classes should now be more viable and effective, as it takes less time for them to fully heal teammates, and bandages overall are less effective (see below).
Bandages: Bandages now heal for less per bandage, but players get more of them. This will make healing a more time consuming event (no more ripping a bandage and instantly getting back most of your health), and players are encouraged to focus on establishing solid fighting positions, maintaining hard cover, and working together more as a team in order to tip the odds in their favor 38CVM during firefights. Just like the ammo and med bags, this is still a very placeholder system, and will ultimately be replaced with a complete medical system overhaul.
Grenades: Grenades now cannot be thrown as far, and the overall blast radius has been reduced. In the past it has been too easy to just lob a couple of grenades into a general area and completely nuke everything in and around it, so this should help tamp down on these instances from occurring, as grenades will need more strategic placement in order to be used effectively.
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That’s it for this month, thanks for reading!
Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!
Operation: Harsh Doorstop is proud to be nominated for the Steam Awards!
Nominate Operation: Harsh Doorstop in the "Best Game You Suck At" category!
This is an absolutely surreal moment for us. We've been working on Operation: Harsh Doorstop for years, and to now be nominated for a Steam award is absolutely surreal. As many of you know, we still have a long road ahead of us, but we're incredibly excited about what is coming next. In a few mere weeks we'll be launching the biggest update to our game that we've ever launched, and we still have much more planned after that.
Our team is dedicated and full of loyal members who dedicate their time to building our ultimate vision together. A completely free, community developed, tactical shooter for the entire world to enjoy. If you also believe in that vision, please consider supporting our nomination by voting for us in the 2023 Steam Awards!
You can also become a supporter for 10% OFF during the ENTIRE STEAM AWARDS EVENT!
