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!
-Goomes, Lead Community Manager