TO4: Tactical Operations
We are live!
Twitch
Upcoming Livestream Tomorrow!
Upcoming Livestream Tomorrow!
Well Guys, It's time for another Live Stream, Tomorrow at 3pm (15:00) (GMT+2) we will be streaming and answering your questions. We will also be showing our new map RapidWaters, So please Join us. Fingers crossed nothing will go wrong this time. ːsteamsadː
Twitchlink: TO4Game
GMT+2 Time: Timezone
Devblog #11
The delayed #11
chr & kulan
Hi everyone, I know it's been a while since our last devblog and we were trying to publish a devblog monthly, sadly this did not go to plan, be reassured that TO4: Tactical Operations is still in development and the team is working on getting the game to open alpha testing as soon as possible. We have had some bad news over the last couple of months, but on a positive side, we have made some progression in the development of the game. Well on with the blog I guess bad news first.
The Q1 Dream
TacByte
As we have announced in discord sadly we won't be able to release the game for public Steam access in the Q1 of this year and we don't have a date for when we will be able to, we are not going to make the mistake of getting players hopes up with another release date till we are 100% sure we can achieve it, we are trying to be as honest and transparent as possible, but in a development like this there are so many problems that can arise, but when they do we will try our best to inform you.
Our first-person weapon animator slayer5530 left the group early february, this has put a pause on that part of the development, slayer5530 has a lot of stuff going on in his real life at the moment and those must take precedence over any project. This ment we had an issue with manpower, he is now back, however, this outlines one of the major problems with developing a game like this its man-hours, we are not paid for working on this project and everyone on the project is doing it in their own free time, sometimes family life or our 9-5 jobs impede on the time we have free to work on this project, that is something we can't predict. When these problems arise we have to adjust our development plans and this could have massive implications on the development schedule, luckily we have managed to move forward again.
slayer5530 is currently working on the reload animation for the Glock and Beretta, stay tuned!
Builds and upgrades
macfrog
We also had a problem with our main game build server, the issue was a dysfunctional harddrive, game builds were taking up to 16hours to complete, This had massive impact on testing and development speed, Reasontlly we had the opportunity to upgrade our server hardware, macfrog worked on moving all the files and systems we need to the new hardware and integrating it with our current infrastructure, with that problem fixed we can now do a game build in under 2 hours, we have also partnered with a server hosting company we will announce them later on.
Refactoring and bug fixing
th120
If you watched our Stream in January you may have noticed that our game server crashed a few times, that has been tracked down and fixed, On that note, th120 is refactoring the code, for those that don't know Code Refactoring is re-writing the code making it cleaner and quicker but without changing the functionality, this might take a bit of time but in the long run it will speed up development and make future changes and additions to the code easier. Furthermore, the network load of our game was reduced which results in a performance boost, since the game feels smoother, we have also increased our game speed a little to match a more arcade feeling playstyle. We also decided to use Steam's Master server because we had issues via our own and this lays a foundation for steam features like joining friends on a server from your steam friends list or their profile, we also want to use Steam groups for clans/squads, there will still be a way to use Clantags without a Steam group but we think Steam is the best way to go.
Voiceactors
chr
Firstly, this has no priority and is not part of our Early Access plan, however, some sounds are needed for the game and chr started to look for Voice actors and found a female and male vocal actor for our game. The game will have automated sounds triggered by actions and sounds you can trigger via a menu and maybe hotkeys. So you can get a feel for what we have in mind here we have mocked up a quick (not final in any way.) sample.
Please visit our website for the samples! Click me!
If you want to check some of their previous work you can check out their websites listed below.
CCC from Purple Rogue (female)
Website from Zach Stevens (male)
Music for MAP-Prelude
bluekoala202
bluekoala202 finished his edits on the Track for our MAP-Prelude and its now ready to be implemented to the game. How you like it?
Please visit our website for the audio Click me!
MP5 Navy Silenced
darksoe
You know our MP5 Navy model, we have now added a silencer for the Special Forces for those stealthy kills. Take a look!
More Rapid Waters Pictures
ssswing & bluekoala202 & chr
After the overwhelming response to our announcement on Facebook about a new map being worked on for TO4: Tactical Operations, chr has created a montage from the newly envisioned Rapid Waters map to reawaken your dreams or nightmares. bluekoala202 gave the video a jungle jingle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62uOr5IxODw
Minimap and VoIP
th120
So we added a Blueprint minimap (WIP) to the game, hopefully, this will help with tactics, If you have time to look at it while bunny hopping.
Click here to see it in action
If you would like to air your opinions on these or any of TO4: Tactical Operations features now is the time to like and follow us on one or all of our social media pages and have your say or directly join our Discord server.
Devblog #10
This is Number 10!
chr & kulan
Hi everybody, so it's the first Sunday of the month and it's time for the new devblog. This devblog is more text-based than we normally publish, the main reason is, we have been doing a lot of work on the Backend systems, cleaning up the games current content and editing code. So let's see what some of our crew has been up to.
Steam and Future
macfrog & ssswing
Well, the first steps have been made, for the last week or so the TacByte Crew has been able to play TO4: Tactical Operations on Steam and up to now our TO4 alpha testers had to play the game by downloading the game from one of our servers and loading it using our custom launcher, this has now changed and our alpha testers also have access via Steam, this a huge step towards our open Early Access. Here are some more details and the reasons why this is so important for us, and you.
Macfrog, has been working on the backend stuff for Steam and was able to create an additional Steam AppID for TO4, this means we have now got our main Steam AppID that will be used for our Early Access on Steam and will be opened to you once our closed alpha testing is complete, this will be the one you want to add to your Steam wishlist http://steam.to4.co. The new Steam branch will be a test branch and will be used for our closed alpha testing and any further Steam tests before public release.
This second steam branch has paved the way for a friendly user test. Wait, what is that?
Firstly, this test will be using the new branch on Steam and it sounds really simple but, trust me it wasn´t, Steam has allowed us to get Steamkeys for TO4: Tactical Operations on our testing branch, with those keys we can now control how many players have access to our game via Steam, if we were to go directly into open Early Access, we would have no chance of controlling the number of players and we are fairly sure our systems are not stable enough or big enough to handle that just yet, also, we are not sure that we have the manpower or infrastructure to react to server failure or a problem quickly enough for general release, we can't predict how many new players will try the game when it pops up on their Steam store. We really want to deliver a working Early Access game, nobody wants to boot up a game to be faced with an empty server list or a game-breaking bug, that would just create a negative impression of our game to people that have not followed the development process. That's why we will do a big closed alpha testing period with friendly users first. What are friendly users? Well, friendly users are Thefirst100 (we have not forgotten about you), people like you and also people in our discord group, the people that have followed us and have given their opinions, help and encouragement during the development of the game up to yet, also, those of you that have given us constructive criticism. That's our friendly user test.
We will be starting this test with Thefirst100 group in Discord soon (see told you we had not forgotten you). If this works as well as intended, we will then send out more keys to our other discord users, then the followers, members, YouTubers, and streamers on our other social media outlets. Please, remember we will still only have a limited number of keys for this closed test, so don't be too disappointed if you don't get one, more will be released at a later date.
Optimizations
th120 & ssswing & darksoe
Th120 was concerned about the performance, so he started to change the blueprints system in the unreal engine to C++, collectively they have also, reworked all the lighting on the maps from a dynamic lighting system to a semi-static lighting system, as player shadows are quite important for gameplay the team decided not to use full static lighting for the game, while testing, we also found a bullet impact effects that dropped the framerate quite drastically, they have now replaced that, while they were fixing that, they also took the opportunity to add some dedicated impact sounds that were missing. They have just finished these modifications and the first results are very satisfying. These changes have made TO4: Tactical Operations run a lot smoother and also at a higher frame rate, as with all competitive games, the higher frame rate the better. Optimization is an ongoing process and we will try to squeeze as much performance as possible out of the game without affecting graphical quality or playability.
Elvis (it's not the real one, he's still with the aliens)
So, firstly, a big welcome to Elvis (Graphical Artist), Elvis sent us a mock-up of a new UI for TO4: Tactical Operations and we really liked it, he will be working with the team to see if his vision of the UI can be implemented to the game.
What do you think?
Final Words
TacByte
There is still a lot of work left to do, but we are getting closer, Do you know any friends that might like the game? Please if you have not already done so, add TO4: Tactical Operations to your steam wishlist http://steam.to4.co and ask your friends to do the same!
Missed the Stream?
Twitch Recording
I'd really like to say our Stream went without a hitch, but, we had a rocky start, our lead PR guy CHR and Ssswing (project leader) had a few practice streams without a problem and all was going well up to the last minute, when, CHR's "new" custom loop rig decided to throw a hissy fit and stop working, CHR managed to sort the problem out but we started the stream about 30 minutes later than expected. thank you to everyone that stuck around and waited for the stream to start, We know it must have been frustrating for you. We will endeavor to make sure this does not happen again.
Once we got started, it went quite well, we managed to show you what we wanted to show you and answer most of the questions you asked, at one point we had close to 100 viewers watching the stream, we did get a bit of streamer lag (bandwidth problem) near the end of the stream which was a bit distracting, but, as you will see from the video of the stream below it was not in-game lag, I have to say that Sswing and CHR for a first attempt at streaming LIVE did a really good job of hosting the Twitch, True, it was not polished or without problems but it's sort of like our game right now, we can work on it and make it better over time with the community's help.
If you missed the stream or want to join our community and give us your input on the game, why not join us in our Discord Group [LINK], Oh, and please add TO4 to your Steam wishlist [LINK] ,it will help us gauge our player base for when we release on steam.
Lastly, A massive THANKS to our Alpha testers and the people that watched the stream, We really appreciate Your help and continued support.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpb0TomBTeo
Developer Livestream
The game is due for release to Early Access Alpha testing via Steam sometime around Q1 2018. We are dedicated to making this game with the communities help and input. there is a lot that is still broken and a lot of content missing right now, but that will change over time.
Please join our Discord group or visit our website www.to4.co for more information.
This stream will be available in a couple of days time via YouTube or another platform if you miss it.
Thank you! the TacByte Team.
Live Twitch Pre-Alpha Gameplay with the Devs
Twitch Live Stream
Please, join us tonight 21st January 2018 at 8 pm CET
We will be streaming our Pre-alpha TO4: Tactical Operations gameplay on our TO4 Twitch channel , we will be answering your questions about the game and its development.
The game is due for release to Early Access Alpha testing via Steam sometime around April 2018. We are dedicated to making this game with the communities help and input. there is a lot that is still broken and a lot of content missing right now, but that will change over time.
Please join our Discord group or visit our TO4:TO website for more information.
This stream will be available in a couple of days time via YouTube or another platform if you miss it.
Thank you! the TacByte Team.
Devblog #9
DEVBLOG #9
Back in business!
Hi everybody, we are back with our first Devblog of 2018. We hope you had a great Christmas and an outstanding new year. So let's get on with the blog.
Early Access
TacByte
We are on target for our release to Steam's Early Access, we also want to release a quality product and a solid foundation for the game. From that foundation, we the TacByte team with the help of you and the community can make the game we all really want to play. we also have to be realistic, we are developing the game voluntarily in our free time and have real-life commitments jobs and families etc. Right now we can offer a really fun playable gaming experience which will only improve over the course of the development process. Currently, we are solely focused on creating that solid foundation before we release the game via Steam's Early Access. As always we will be transparent about the development, our triumphs, and our failures. Please be aware, if we do have a very good reason to postpone the EA release to increase the quality of the game or to fix major bugs/problems that may arise, we will do but reluctantly. But if that does happen, we will let you know immediately.
So here is what we want before we release the game on Steam for Early Access, it's like a glimpse of our roadmap for this stage of the development.
The Game...
The Servers
We will launch official servers and also to have a selection of private servers (servers ran by players) to help cover more areas and so we have enough servers for player demand. We can confirm that we will have plenty of TacBytes servers located in Germany and we will have at least two servers in North America.
This means you won't be able to run a private server on Day 1 of Early Access, but, we will be releasing a server pack via SteamCMD as soon as we can. There will also be a Linux version of the server files sometime in the future.
The Animations
The game will have at least one fully animated weapon for each class, right now, we can confirm both the Desert Eagle and AK47 are completed, we have more weapons that are half done (Baretta, Glock, MP5A2, SPAS12, M4A1) and some if not all will probably make it into Early Access. The MSG90 will be added with or without animations because it uses a scope and is playable without the complete animation.
Movement Animations are very basic, they can look stuttery and will need more work, we would like better animations for movement but they can be done while we are in Early Access.
3rd Person Animations: Another one we would like before Early Access but will probably be further on in development.
1st Person Animations: Missing Weapon animations will be added one by one and get patched in with our updates these to will more than likely done after we have released on Steam.
Daily Builds and Engine Update
We have completely changed the process of building the server/game files, we now generate new server/game files every night, With this, we can directly react to the Alpha testers, implement a fix or add content and see the results the next day, this rapid iteration of builds should make the development process a lot quicker, also, The Unreal Engine was recently updated, we have also updated our game and are now developing using the newest version of the engine.
Polishing and Features
We do have more things we would like to show and talk to you about, but, as a lot of you might know we planned a live Stream a while ago but we had to cancel it, we still really want to show you the game live, So!, why not join us on our live stream on Sunday 21-1-2018 and we will talk more about Early Access and our development plans then. We will be making the Stream available afterward via YouTube, VOD by Twitch or on some other platform so if you miss it you won't have missed out.
Sorry if this feels like a slow start to the year but we are all just getting back to our normal routines and getting back up to speed with the project after the festive season.
New Footage
New Footage
Desert Eagle Gameplay
TacByte
Hey everybody, we have published a new gameplay video on youtube, we really don´t want that you miss it, so take a look! Also kudos to our alpha tester Valle for playing an awesome Victim!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgD2xME5Du4&lc=z22bu30bntnuerk5m04t1aokgqazzzvq14bh44qvmx44rk0h00410
Female Model
darksoe
The female player model has now been added to the game. We have shared a picture or two on Twitter and Facebook, If you missed them please follow us and you won't miss future announcements. However, If you did miss them here they are for your viewing pleasure, thanks to our alphas valle and hellium for helping out with the photoshoot.
https://www.to4.co/images/ScreenShot00005.png
https://www.to4.co/images/ScreenShot00011.png
https://www.to4.co/images/ScreenShot00008.png
Devblog #8
DEVBLOG #8
It´s moving!
chr & kulan
We´re back with Devblog #8. We have made some awesome progress, yet another milestone in our release plan has been achieved, we are really chuffed about this so let's get on with the Devblog!.
3rd person Animations
darksoe
Darksoe has put a lot of work in over the last week or two. In the last Devblog, we said we were adding new 3rd Person Animations to the models. They are now integrated and the new animations have vastly improved the look of the game, we still have a few missing animations and the ones which we have added still need some adjustments and tweaks, So, a little more work to do here but it's a very good step in the right direction.
AK47 Animation
slayer5530
Another handcrafted animation for TO4 is done by slayer5530. Last week he was working on the AK47 for the Terror Team. Take a look at his awesome work in the video below, give it a like and tell us what you think. I for one can't wait to get my hands on it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMEROuyYTLM&lc
Milestone!
macfrog
One of the main plans in our release strategy is to distribute TO4 through steam and this week macfrog has been working very hard to achieve that, it was hard going, he had to amalgamate our build process with the steam systems, without changing too much of it, Now this is done he can start work on something else. Great work! macfrog, also it's a great achievement for TacByte and TO4: Tactical Operations.
Developer Stream / Playtest
TacByte
We have talked about making a developer stream on twitch, For now, that idea is on hiatus and the reason being, as you know we are planning a playtest with "thefirst100" group, with this playtest we will be lifting the NDA (none-disclosure-agreement), we want to encourage people to share footage of our game. So you and the public can see a lot more than we as a development team can show. We will give you more information about it nearer the time.
We are soo sorry! we thought we could run before we could walk. We had plans to do "thefirst100" playtest this year but this won´t be happening, and we are sorrier that we still can´t give an ETA for when it will be happening. Recent developments have made opening a test branch up to "thefirst100" problematic and could cause more problems later in development. We are still working on delivering what we have promised and will keep you informed about the progress we make. Again we hold our hands up and say Sorry, and hope you forgive this mistake, We will try not to make any more blunders.
Devblog changes / Vacation
TacByte
Next Year we will be shifting our Devblog schedule to the first Sunday of every month, this will take some pressure off the team and enable us to give you better Blogs with more content. Furthermore, it´s December, we will be spending a lot of time with our families and friends over the holiday season, so sadly there will not be another Devblog until the new year. So the next official Devblog will be on the 7th January 2018.
XMAS MESSAGE
May the joy of Christmas fill your home with gifts, warm greetings and a loving family and friends. Have an amazing Christmas! And an outstanding NEW YEAR! from all of us at TacByte!