Posted on Behalf of SOF Studios President, Tom
Hello H-Hour Community!
I hope everyone had a great weekend and are ready to jump into a new patch we expect to release this week.
The team continued internal meetings to organize for this phase of development. I am seeing terrific collaboration within our great group of volunteers. They have learned their new roles quickly, understand the new tools and processes and have now moved into review, clean up and fixes. Some of the team’s achievements last week are noted below:
- Coding changes were completed for the WorkshopApp to prevent creators from using a name for their project that does not match their map title. This will ensure our monitors and members are aware two maps have the same internal name before downloading so fixes can be made quickly.
- The community run Workshop Monitor team has done a great job reviewing the new maps and getting excellent feedback to the creators so they can improve their content. We are already seeing very positive results from their efforts.
- We have tested and signed off on some key framework cleanup that will require full server testing to be deemed successful. Some additional adjustments are needed first before release but the team is very close. Our focus last week was on the relationship with network, audio and voice. We also looked into that hard to nail down client crash situation experienced by some while playing Extraction.
- More new community maps came out with some like X-Roads by fatalis shooting to 4 Star status in days without the need of our Spotlight server to get it attention. Well done, fatalis!
I know some are concerned with the slow pace of the investor/partner search and what that means to H-Hour. As you discuss this, I ask that everyone consider that slow progress does not mean no progress. These searches and meetings are time consuming. It is vital now that these groups continue to see the potential we all know exists for the future of H-Hour. I need your continued support to do this so please stay strong and keep those servers busy. Together we can make this happen.
I also look at the blessings that this phase has brought. The passion and talent in the H-Hour community is amazing. All of us have benefited from the skilled volunteers who stepped forward to get involved and keep development and the community moving forward. I suspect we are the only game on Steam that went into a freeze and immediately started releasing content. There has been a lot of progress because of these folks. Some improvements you have seen such as the Workshop, others you will see soon. This shift to a community driven project has also ensured the development direction is in line with the original vision and the H-Hour communities wishes. I am proud of the effort I have witnessed from all involved and I cannot thank them enough.
What’s Ahead?
The team will continue working on the last few bugs to be squashed so we can release our patch this week. Current things approved or planned for the patch:
Confirmed by testers, ready for full server testing:
- Changes to UE4 bandwidth limits to improve in game voice.
- Fix for 3rd equipment slot not working in in game Armory.
- Fix for Ready/Unready updating properly in Lobby. Confirmed by testers
- Addition of Options to Lobby menu so players can change settings
- Fix for weapons ratings missing from LMGs.
- Fix for picking up a weapon doesn’t update the weapon name on HUD.
- Limit for grenade/flashbang/smoke equipment to two slots.
- Work on assertion errors in Extraction mode that may be the cause of certain client system setups experiencing crashes.
- Potential surprise additions depending how testing goes for the new features…..
On the investor/partner search front, I have a follow up meeting scheduled this work with the interested industry group. I also have a new lead to start the introduction process with. Hopefully our game is a good fit with their portfolio and that will lead to a discovery meeting in the coming weeks.
I want to close by saying that each member of this community is important and plays a role in our ability to gain investors, partners and new players so we can continue to move H-Hour closer to completion. I want to thank each and every one of you who has helped keep this game and project moving in the right direction.
More next Monday…..