Recently we've been splitting our time between fixing bugs, adding new UI features, and optimizing the first time user experience (see our change to servers in the changelog). We've been getting closer and closer to having our 4th map Caul where we want it. Our level designer and 3D artist have been crushing it. We are still aiming for the very very end of November to release the map.
As far as AI / bot improvements go, we've been pretty open about this in Discord, streams, etc. When we first implemented AI, due to scope reasons, we made all the AI just play as riflemen and there wasn't the ability for AI to play as different classes. With all the energy and love we've received from the community, we're now fired up to add the functionality for AI to play different classes. This is a biggish task as we don't have the functionality in yet. We will have to do this iteratively. Meaning... we will start with the Support class most likely, get it working properly and behaving, and then move onto another class. Our goal is to get the AI to at least play Squad Leader, Medic, Support, and Riflemen. Roles that can really improve the experience. We have a pretty clear idea how we will make the AI play Squad Leader which should really enhance the experience - especially when there are no Squad Leaders.
Again, this is a very big task and it will be done iteratively so we ask you all to be a little patient. Once we get the Support class in and it's behavior's polished that will be a huge milestone for us. I don't want to give you a timeline and get your hopes up but we are really hoping and trying to have this in before the December holidays (at least Support and Medic).
There are some other stuff we have planned to put into the game as well but I'll keep that for another day.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you this Saturday at 12 PM PST for our Play Session!
Patch Notes for November 9th 2023
A major mechanic we just implemented for servers is:
We will only be having servers up for one region during set times throughout the day. Europe servers will be active for 12 hours and then NA servers will be active for the other 12 hours. This is to help keep the population from splitting. For the time being, we have removed region selector. This should help so players don't join an empty server in one region, while another region has players.
Adjustments
Adjusted text chat to include 150 characters with word wrapping now so you can enter longer messages
Adjusted the Support class icon to be flipped so it's easier to tell the Riflemen class apart from the Support class.
Adjusted Support Class for both teams:
Black Foxes now has 60 x 5 magazines
United Militia now has 100 x 3 magazines
Reduced reload time for the m249 from 7 seconds to 4 seconds to balance this change.
Added
Added UI to show your squad members all the time and what classes they are playing. This UI will only be hidden when you are in a vehicle.
Added UI on the scoreboard to show the classes of all your teammates.
Added hint text to show that " Y " enables the chat
Fixed
Fixed teambalance being broken so it didn't actually work (team balance difference is currently set to " 1 " player difference between the two teams)
Fixed a bug where AI would run into rocks on Kalinsk
Fixed shovel audio not playing when the camera was zoomed all the way out.
Fixed issue causing players to get a loss if they were spectating a game and it ended.
Fixed an issue where the spectator camera shakes in freelook (known bug - this sometimes will be triggered if you are spectating a player and they die).
Fixed vehicle colors being the wrong color for team vs. squad
Fixed material on the anti tank star buildable
Hotfix for AI not Spawning on Kalinsk
Fixed AI not spawning on Kalinsk due to our new AI behavior where they can vault up and down certain geometry.
This is an iterative process so AI won't be able to vault up and down everything, but over time we can add areas they will be able to.
Speedrun Competition w/ Prizes!
Speedrun Shoothouse Competition
We are holding a Speedrun competition for the Live Fire portion of our Shoothouse from November 1st to November 8th.
The top 10 Speedrun scores will get a special badge in game while the top 3 Speedrun scores will get a special banner in game! All you have to do is join our discord and make sure to submit your results after each Live Fire run in the Shoothouse. The shoothouse AI positions have been updated so... good luck!
We will be having another play session this Saturday at 12 PM PDT. This play session will be community driven so be sure to drop by discord and join in!
Patch Notes for November 1st 2023
November 1st Changelog
Adjustments
Adjusted matchmaking to be very fast given the current population of the game. This will need to be adjusted when we grow a little, but for now, queueing should happen within 60 seconds (usually ~45 seconds).
Adjusted match preparation time to start sooner so players are not waiting as long.
Adjusted the "buildable detected" feature from 60 seconds to 10 seconds. Enemy buildables will now disappear from the map after 10 seconds of you no longer have vision of the buildable. This is to help balance buildables being destroyed by mortars so easily and deconstructed so easily.
Adjusted all refill areas on all maps for vehicles
Adjusted the shovel digging sound so it can only be heard when very close (on screen). This was a riduculously large range (too large) and made it very easy to find people building.
Reworked AI prioritization - you should not see AI pull their syringe out as much anymore until they are directly near the person they are trying to revive. There are also many other small changes we made to make AI behave a little better.
Adjusted mortar for balance:
Deadzone changed from 50 to 35
Shooting range changed from 400 to 350
Shooting delay changed from 5 to 3 seconds
Projectile speed changed from 50 to 70
Heat speed changed from 0.4 to 0.3
Cool down speed changed from 0.34 to 0.26
Cool down after last shot changed from 6 to 8 seconds
Spawn mortar impact after 4 seconds
Adjusted size of mortar shell UI to display damage area correctly
Added
Added feature where AI will vault over buildables, we will slowly be adding areas around the map that AI can vault up and down, please let us know if you see specific areas where this can be added and we can add them! :)
Added feature where AI stand still for 1.5 seconds after being revived to help medics heal them
Added feature where AI will stand still when being healed by a medic
Added feature where AI (maximum 2 per team) will help construct friendly buildables or destroyed enemy buildables. AI will prioritize attacking enemies or objectives over constructing/deconstructing. AI will not construct a buildable that is being deconstructed by a teammate.
Players now get points from destroying a rally point
Added 15 second cooldown on rally point
Reduced the time duration the building would show on the map after being discovered from 60 seconds to 10 seconds to help with buildables being destroyed so quickly
Fixed
Fixed issue where AI would shoot at a target even if they could not hit the target
Fixed crash related to FOB
Fixed potential crash related to players changing teams
Fixed objective indicators for Black Foxes being inconsistent
Fixed issue with various colliders around the maps (more will be fixed in the next patch but please keep posting any weird issues around the maps!)
Fixed issue where AI were not aiming accurately at enemies at a large height difference (if you see areas where they miss a lot, please post in the bug report section of our discord!).
Fixed objective captured text not displaying properly when contested sometimes
Fixed capture points being collected when a player was downed
Fixed leaderboard not showing losses or deaths
Fixed leaderboard sorting (WLR and KDR are still not working yet)
Fixed building placement error priority
Large Patch + Saturday Play Session
This post will be very long but it's worth the read trust me!
Our Community
Thank you so much again to our community. We know that we are small right now, but we have plans on how we will grow in the coming months. You early supporters mean the world to us. Thank you for believing in us. We hope to see you this Saturday for our Play Session!
You can now add the "looking for group" (lfg) role to yourself so that you can be pinged when others are looking for players.
We added a regular "looking for group" channel as well.
We also added a locked Events channel so you can see when the next event is coming up (typically the devs will be playing every other Saturday starting at 12 PM PDT and staying on for several hours.
I want to highlight a few big changes coming to our game real quick before getting into the details:
Local Voice Chat ("C" Key by default) can now be heard by enemies within range, so be sure to talk to your enemies ;)
If there are no matches/servers active, a match/server will now be started even if just 1 player is in queue. That player will need to be in queue for at least 200 seconds.
The server will now start 120 after the first player spawns. When another player connects the time will go down to 90 seconds.
Added objective indicators around the player ring to better guide the player where to Attack (red arrow) and Defend (blue arrow)
Saturday Play Session
We will be having another Play Session this Saturday, October 28th at 12 PM PDT // 3 PM EDT // 9 PM CEST. The play session will last about 6 hours and we will be streaming on our Twitch as usual while doing giveaways!
Added objective indicators around the player ring to better guide the player where to Attack (red arrow) and Defend (blue arrow)
Added spaces to all setting names (thank you @JoelPlzNo)
Added UI to show default keybinds to move the map and changed default keybind to move map to Right Click. (Thank you @ebaw for bringing this up!)
It will now show "killed by world" when a player clicks Respawn.
Added new ways to earn points:
Ammo Refill (support)
Capturing Point
Spawning at buildable (squad leader)
Constructing
Deconstructing
Place buildable (squad leader)
Buildable damage
Destroy buildable
Refill vehicle
Construct buildable
If there are no matches/servers active, a match/server will now be started even if just 1 player is in queue. That player will need to be in queue for at least 200 seconds.
The server will now start 120 after the first player spawns. When another player connects the time will go down to 90 seconds.
Set default map / overview map keybinding to RIGHT CLICK for moving the map. (It is still bound to MIDDLE MOUSE for people playing before this patch. thank you @ebaw)
Fixed
Fixed an issue where respawn in the preparation phase would cost you tickets.
Fixed capture point lock symbols being inconsistent.
Fixed help text not showing when "Ground to uneven" when trying to build.
Fixed an issue with enemy player's badge/banner not showing in the kill card.
Fixed a bug where camera zooming in and out would not work if you tried to join a team after being in spectator.
Fixed a bug where you could not resupply your ammo if the value in the vehicle was exactly what you needed to resupply.
Fixed an issue on Stafburg where you could glitch through a building (thank you @mrparadox)
Fixed terrain issue on Sumersgate (thank you @just_that_classy)
Fixed issue where you could vault on top of the doorway in the tutorial (thank you @truedoom)
Balance
For the Sniper, made it less punishing to walk while sniping.
Adjusted Support Class LMG on both teams to be more inaccurate when standing and added more delay to fire after coming out of a run
Adjusted SMG on both teams to have accuracy be less punishing when moving
Decreased weapon switch time slightly for the SMG.
Increase radius between FOBs from 100 to 125 to prevent spamming of FOBs
Looking forward
We will have a special announcement early next week. Beyond that, we will probably only have a small patch next week while we fully focus on getting community servers into the game. Again - there will probably only be a small patch next week, but rest assured we are working behind the scenes on community servers.
See you this Saturday at 12 PM PDT for our Play Session!
Patch Notes for October 20th 2023
Fixed replays not loading
Potentially fixed a crash that was occurring on Sumersgate
A fix for bots getting stuck on Kalinsk
Developer Streams, Patch, and More!
Thank you to everyone who played on the first day of our release!
If you haven't already be sure to leave us a Steam review as it really helps us out 💛
We will be streaming later tonight on our twitch and streaming tomorrow (Saturday) at 12 PM PDT. We will be doing more giveaways during Saturday's stream!
The release yesterday went well with very few major issues. We are deploying a small patch later today with the following fixes:
Fixed replays not loading
Potentially fixed a crash that was occurring on Sumersgate
A fix for bots getting stuck on Kalinsk
Again thanks to all you awesome people who picked up the game! We are focused this next week on fixing any major bugs you report in our Discord and adding quality of life improvements!
We will see you later tonight and tomorrow (12 PM PDT) for our Developer streams!
We're excited to announce that Operation Valor's full release will be available on PC today!
Operation Valor is a tactical top-down PvPvE shooter that provides large-scale combat through base building and teamwork. This game is a cross between action-packed military gameplay and RTS-style mechanics. Players will fight across diverse battlefields with squad-based action in vehicles, or on foot. Prepare for an exciting battle utilizing strategy, logistics, and base building.
We will be doing a developer stream on Twitch today for a few hours during our release. We will be giving away copies of Operation Valor during the stream so tune in and ask questions!
Operation Valor's full release will be available on PC today online at 12pm PDT / 9pm CEST!
Launch Plans, Giveaways, and More!
Hi everyone,
As we near launch in 24 hours, we'd like to take a moment and thank everyone who has joined us along this journey the last few years. Those who have joined in on our previous alphas, betas, including our last beta that took place on September 30th. A lot of you reported bugs and gave constructive feedback that was imperative to making this game what it is today. Even just being in the test helped us get valuable information on our multiplayer servers and catch crash reports. Thank you.
Thursday's launch is just the beginning. We will be releasing a new map by the end of November and we want to add better support for community servers as well. The week or so following release we will primarily be focused on fixing any bugs people catch and adding quality of life updates.
