Hello everyone!
Welcome to the thirty-second devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of March 2023.
(More) Updates on Cheat Prevention Tools
Our last patch from mid-April contained some fixes and changes to the code to help address some of the more egregious exploits that we were seeing plague many of the servers (such as people being able to spam grenades, and so on). Since this last patch, we have not seen this occur again, and we have not received any reports about it either from both players as well as server owners/admins, so it’s looking like the changes that were made are doing what they set out to do so far.
This of course does not mean that cheating is completely stamped out or eliminated (nor will it likely ever be totally eliminated), however, we have certainly seen a steep drop off since pushing this last patch, and servers should be much cleaner to play on now. So far we have seen from a few of our sources within the cheat making communities that some older cheats got updated for this patch and are being used so we know they are still out there, and I am sure people will run into them, however, these look much more like the traditional cheats that you tend to see in other games (such as ESP, 3NFLI, aimbot, and so on). If you suspect that someone is using these on the server you are playing on, please make sure that you notify the respective server owners/admins so they can keep a close watch and take the necessary actions that they see fit (and I highly recommend that you do your best to gather proof/evidence as well, as some of those more traditional cheats are much harder to determine whether or not they are in fact being used—things like ESP are tough to know for sure, however, it’s pretty obvious if someone is using something like an aimbot if they are consistently killing players from very far distances and have an extremely high K/D for instance, so some of these things players can use common sense and observe the telltale signs of to know whether or not there is actually cheating going on).
Our next update(s) to further address cheating and give server owners the tools that they need to keep their communities safe will contain the Steam API variables that we discussed in prior devblogs, as well as the optional vote kick system. These will either both come together in the next update, or will be spread out between two simultaneous updates, but you can expect the Steam API stuff to come first between the two. To briefly recap what these will contain, the Steam WRMKA API tools is what will allow server owners to restrict joins based on certain factors such as whether or not their account has a VAC and/or game ban, how long it has been since their last one, their account age, and so on. The vote kick system is exactly what it sounds like: an in–game system that players can use to initiate a vote kick on somebody that they suspect of cheating or breaking any other server rules, then the whole server can vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and the person in question’s fate on the server is then decided by the community (the severity of the punishment for a successful kick being dictated by the server owners/admins). To clarify on a couple of points for this system, server owners will have several options about how they set this up, such as what constitutes a vote succeeding or failing, how long the kick will be for (you can think of this more like a timed/temporary ban than just a simple kick), and whether or not their server even uses the vote system in the first place (this will be entirely optional of course, and not every server will feature a vote kick system unless they explicitly choose to include it).
After the next update(s) mentioned above, we will be revisiting our plans for incorporating EAC and determining whether it will be worthwhile to proceed on incorporating this right after, or if we should return to game features like finishing up the first iteration of vehicles, base building/construction, and so on first. To BXGFQ be clear, we still do plan on incorporating EAC as an option for server owners, so revisiting our plans more so pertains to when we actually do it (not IF), as we would like to get back to working on the actual game itself sooner rather than later. We believe that the systems discussed above will have a far greater impact on curbing any cheating issues than EAC will, however, only time will tell of course so we will cross that bridge when we get there after these next updates take place—our main goal right now is getting the community-ran servers to a place where the server owners/admins have the tools that they need to effectively moderate their communities without a tremendous amount of additional work, and making it so that if/when players do encounter cheaters that it is nothing they aren’t already used to seeing in other games, cheaters are dealt with in a swift and timely manner, and most importantly they have a hard 4R8KV time being able to come back once they have been removed from a server.
Now on to March’s recap:
New Lighting System
We have now begun the process of completely replacing the Ultra Dynamic Sky system for how we light levels/environments. This new system uses a custom PBR (Physically-Based Rendering) lighting system that makes use of pseudo-photorealistic lighting values and techniques, and features a variety of customizable parameters such as wind, sky, and flow controls. This will LX3QZ allow for full control of how the level design team and modders alike choose to create the lighting for their levels.
Here are some images to showcase how this new lighting system looks—the first image of each set is before the new lighting during the day, second is after the new lighting during day and sunset:
For the more technically-inclined that want to know more specifics about what exactly this new lighting system is doing, here is a list of its features/details:
- Proportional photorealistic lighting values
- Global lighting scenario adjustment support
- Global Skydome/Fog Z Offset customization
- Global Skylight Relative Z Offset automation + customization support
- Support for Skydome Realtime Sky Capture, HDRI Panorama, UV manipulation, HDRI M7L49 Texture Adjustment, Sky Flow Mask, UV-based "wind" distortion, Noise-based Variation, Sun Disc customization, and Directional Light vector-based flow masking and texture luminance adjustments
- Automated Directional Light/Skydome Sun Disc pairing support
- Fog Automated Texture-based Fog Inscattering + customization support
- Eye Adaptation/Camera Exposure automation + customization support
- Carefully created/calculated histogram importance values, histogram ranges, exposure ranges, exposure metering mask, and exposure compensation curve
- Modified film stock/default color grading to better match natural vision
- Gaussian Bloom support
- World-Space SSAO support
- DFAO support
- Multiplicative SSAO/DFAO rendering support
- Directional 3LK3T Light light shaft occlusion and bloom support
On the current stable branch/build only Risala features this new lighting layer, however, the team is working on making new layers for each map so that we can totally move off of Ultra Dynamic Sky for the base maps (UDS will still remain in the SDK though for those that wish to still use it in modding). In the next update additional levels (maybe all depending on the level design team’s speed) will be overhauled to replace existing lighting layers with the new one. This system is now also available in the latest SDK update for those that want to start experimenting with it for their own map creations.
Character Model Updates
A handful of updates and improvements were made to some of the preexisting character models.
To start, we are beginning to swap out placeholder heads with new G80A6 MetaHuman heads (before and after):
The Insurgent faction also received some adjustments to their uniform and gear, also displayed in the before/after images above.
The uniforms for the NVA faction were updated to have more detail:
The uniforms for the USMC faction were updated to have rolled cuffs on some of the variants:
Last but not least the US soldiers for Operation: Michael received a number of updates. The uniforms had their colors and mesh adjusted, the soldier’s gear was tweaked to be smaller and more uniform, the Squad 9QZI9 Leader head was swapped out with a more modern one, and camo netting was added to the MG class helmet:
Maps
Saint Quentin
Saint Quentin received new capture routes that use the rest of the map, the foliage was updated, the trench networks continue to be expanded upon, new lighting was added, and the town of Bony is now being set up, which will be a key point on the map.
Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach continues to receive foliage throughout the whole map, and more detail is gradually being added to the smaller showcase area of Vierville-Sur-Mer 4Q3LZ.
Vehicles
Turret Animations
Now that the driving and passenger animations are more or less completed, the animator has moved QYVFY on to creating the turret systems that will be used for static weaponry and emplacements:
Upcoming and WIP Features
Bots/AI
At long last we are nearing the point where the team is preparing to bring in the latest AI updates to the dev build of the game to start testing everything—as soon as the lead programmer has some time between his other taskings, he and the AI programmer will be meeting to review 05I85 his work and start taking the next steps to migrate it all into the main code base that the rest of the team is working on (AI actually has its own separate branch). We will be sure to let everyone know when these are ready for testing in the dev build for those that want to check it out.
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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
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