Zero Hour's Operation Black Dawn consists of new animations, map, features and bug fixes. With this update, we are focusing on the quality of animations bringing in new visuals for players and other significant improvements.
Third person Animations:
We are reworking the third person animations. This was done to portray the soldiers to their appropriate movement. We are trying to recreate the authenticity of SWAT units by their gestures and motion. Before, if you were in a prone position, and when there was no space left, the character would stand up. Now, with the next update instead of standing up, the character will rotate his body as the image shown below:
The prone pose when there is not enough space for players to keep their legs. While many new animations are getting added, here are some of the new animations respectively; New Prone Walk forward animation, New Walk forward animation, New Idle animations, New Dying animations.
and yes we are also working on the rappelling animation (Will be shown with later announcement)
Living AI:
Ai's will be more interactive with the environment and be more authentic such as leaning over tables, sitting down in chairs, etc. We have planned to add new and improved voices of suspects for more variability and authenticity to bring out the characters.
New Map:
As we have mentioned before in previous announcements and interviews, we are adding a new map called "Ruins". It is a co-op exclusive map and it will be the largest CO-OP map installment along with the largest amount of AI's. It was generally supposed to be 5 times bigger but the scale has been lowered down to remain challenging and be more according to it's story. There will be several buildings so the map will be open ended. Just like Café 14, this map will be story driven.
New Improvements:
We are always improving gameplay and audio with each update; we are trying to make the gameplay smoother and improving the audio quality overall. With gameplay improvements, we are trying to bring quality of life improvements. As you can see with our latest patch, we are slowly finding the sweet spot for the audio. We aim to take that feedback and build on it.
We have plans on adding a server browser as an option along with Quick Match. It will work in a similar fashion to "Join On Going Match" option. We will be testing out internally to see if it works without any issues to ensure it's safe to use for public release. We are trying to avoid rooms that are half empty due to server browser as it will result in players not having a proper 5v5 match. We are trying at our utmost capabilities to avoid that and bring every player what Zero Hour can offer.
This new weapon will be available for attackers and provide a well balanced powerful approach for CQC
We plan to add weapon customization and bring in new cosmetics such as watches for the attackers and wristbands for the terrorists. We plan to add many variations of watches with each having their own perks. Some watches may simply state the time of the operation and some will show the count down for the bomb(In Co-Op). These cosmetics will be purchasable through new in game currency which will be earned by playing the game (No microtransactions). We will talk more about this in later announcement.
The planned release date for this update is in May. We are excited to show more updates that we have planned for the future. We really appreciate and thank the community for the unconditional support and love for the game.
Thank you for your patience, please make sure to report Toxicity, feedback & suggestions in our Discord server using the following links.
Discord Global Community : Zero Hour Official
Discord French Community : Zero Hour France