Posted on Behalf of SOF Studios President, Tom
Welcome back for more news on happening for H-Hour!
Patch News:
The development team worked through the weekend to get another large patch out for everyone. This one adds new player stats for tracking and points, improved killfeed information on a variety of in game events, the long wanted ability to cancel the plant and defuse actions and a second pass on the content from the September patch. You asked for more flexibility in setting your inputs and the team ripped apart the input framework once again so they could deliver just that for everyone. More fine tuning was also done on camera shake, the movement system and on spectate actions.
The movement system is the most challenging piece of this larger puzzle. The developers need to accommodate as wide a range of hardware as possible to allow everyone the ability to play. Input is updated every frame so a player’s FPS is a major factor in movement speed. To further complicate things, gamers tend to use high DPI mice to enhance their movement and give them precise control. The trick for the team will be finding the sweet spot that allows for a player at 30 FPS to play and move easily without those running very high FPS to have insane movement speeds. Putting this second pass in the hands of the community will allow us to gauge the results across multiple devices and frame rates to determine what further tweaking is required. Based on the early reports, expect this feature to receive a third pass.
Additional details on the patch can be found here.
Around the Studio:
I am sure some will ask what happened with the animation studio we were in discussions with. They did finally submit their work plan and costing to us early last week which showed their preferred plan was to create all new characters and animations. A very expensive and time consuming approach that we felt would delay game development and burden the studio. Keep reading below folks for more information on what we have planned to deal with the animation and other work for the game going forward.
Since April the development of this game has been in the hands of volunteers who are former staff or talented community members with skills to offer. One thing these folks have in common is a shared passion for the H-Hour vision. We all have witnessed the amazing transformation and improvements to the title these dedicated individuals have brought. Jason, Rick and Rosie have all expressed their wish to continue working on H-Hour and delivering us to final release. I hope you all will join me in thanking them for carrying the torch and keeping the dream alive for the H-Hour community.
Based on the success we have seen that comes with having passionate, skilled folks on the team, we are adding 3 more individuals who stepped forward and offered to help with upcoming deliverables. Welcome Brian, Fred and Self to the development team.
Brian will be taking on the audio and video engineer role for the studio. He was educated n music theory and the performance arts, performed in orchestras, jazz ensembles, theatre, bands, and has experience in audio/video editing and graphics arts. He is an avid gamer that has played countless hours in SOCOM 2, 3, and combined assault and wants to use his experience to capture the feeling of SOCOM and bring it to H-Hour through audio and visual design.
Fred will be responsible for animations. He is in his final year in Game Development, has excelled at character rigging in Maya, worked with human IK rigs, as well as character animation and locomotion. Fred offered up his training in the animations field to help the team and at the same time gain studio experience. While waiting for the setup of his work environment, he worked with the team last week on retargeting our character skeleton to fix the leg and knee issues we had. Once he has had time to catalogue the existing content, you can expect to see more animation fixes incoming in future patches. Then as existing content is corrected, he will begin work on the missing animation deliverables.
SelflessOne, as many are aware, is a talented level creator from the community. Self began creating content back in 2004 for a game called Second Life and found a home in the work he enjoyed. Between then and now he has created levels, fantasy props, weapons, clothing and other paraphernalia for games. Since 2014 he has been working in Unreal Engine creating models, textures and level design. He is well known in our workshop for both map creation and helping his fellow map makers in the complexity of UE4 development. Self has been working with the team on our 5th map and you can get a sneak peek in this week’s development topic.
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Developers Topic: Map 5, Modeling and Texturing has Begun
Hello everyone from the level design team! We have been working over the last 6 weeks now on the design and block-in of a brand-new map for H-Hour. The theme for this new map will be Mediterranean with SOF needing to infiltrate a coastal resort.
For those not familiar with level design, design and block-in stages were used to identify and create specific areas on the map where you are bound to find one or two snipers hiding out, just waiting for someone to run by. We also determined the main area where most of the action would occur. Then we went back to the drawing board and identified the pathways and areas for flanking and other maneuvers. Some of these may be tweaked as we build out the map but we have sufficient detail now to move on to asset identification and creation.
We want to immerse you into the environment of our selected theme so there will be a lot of detail asset creation and texture work required for this map. That work has already begun and we are sharing just a few pictures with you today of some of our unique Work In Progress (WIP) pieces. As things progress, we will be sure to share more of the plans for this map. Hope you enjoy!
This first image shows some of the modeled and textured add on components for buildings in the map. As you can see, the architecture and detail follow the Mediterranean theme.
[img=https://sofstudios.com/Art2015/2016pics/map/WIP_doors_light.jpg]
Our next image shows the beginnings of one of the key buildings planned for the map—the sniper house.
[img=https://sofstudios.com/Art2015/2016pics/map/sniper_house_render.jpg]