Posted on Behalf of SOF Studios President, Tom
Hello H-Hour community!
As most of you know SOFs was represented at PAX Prime this year at the Intel Booth. We had a small window to show our game. It was a tremendous experience and one that I won’t forget. We were introduced to a lot of new people from both the tech side of gaming and the hardware side. It’s very cool to talk with other indie devs to hear how they got their start. Common conversations among the indies were small teams, lack of funds, great ideas, learning new engines, decisions on platforms to use, go with a publisher or not, what trade show to go to next and the list goes on and on. The one key element to everyone I spoke with was the passion they had for their products and their communities they support.
[img=https://sofstudios.com/Art2015/2015pics/PAX/intelpic.jpg]
We also had the 1st Annual H-Hour Happy Hour event at a sports bar in West Seattle. It was a great time with over 20 folks attending, mostly from the military gaming community.
[img=https://sofstudios.com/Art2015/2015pics/PAX/happyhour.jpg]
During this event we gave away prizes and showed screen shots of our new map live streamed from the event, courtesy of TieDye and DomTron. Thank you both for your assistance with the impromptu stream!
While I was at PAX the Dev team worked with a talented group of folks to implement an anti-cheat system into H-Hour. The team ran into some issues with this implementation but continued to work hard through the weekend to advance this for everyone. We hope to start Sandbox testing today with a few of our dev testers.
So why put in an anti-cheat system when Steam has VAC? Simply put, VAC serves a purpose but bans are delayed and scans are not done frequently enough for it to be the only solution for an online multiplayer. As most of you recall we are very serious about cheaters and will work very hard to keep them out of our game. Why now? Because the anti-cheat team we are working with has a small window of time they are available to us and it just so happens to be now.
Key points….
Animations are still a work in progress. We are talking about it this week to determine the next steps to take. As most of you know, the animations are what made the early style of game play so unique. We’re also talking with other teams that specialize in animations to take a look at what we have and to see if they can come in and get it “right.”
VoIP. Another big project to get better. The implementation of voice was a big step in the right direction but we realize it’s still not working correctly. This is another issue that we’re looking for outside help to come in and take a look at what’s going on. The teams we’re talking to, when they have time away from their own game, have experience in UE4 and VoIP. The key is to find people and teams who have that UE4 and multiplayer background. We are currently talking to one studio who’s willing to have a look for us.
We are learning a lot as we go down this road, guys. We’re researching, troubleshooting and being as adaptive and flexible as we can be to ensure we get H-Hour exactly the way it was always intended to be. We’re committed to this project and we know you all are too!
What’s Kevin and crew working on this week?..................
- More content and improvements for Factory map
- Secret stuff for next map…shhhh
- 226 and pistols tuning
- Water interaction effects
- In-game music review
On the technical support side, we want to bring a few things to everyone’s attention this week. First, some are experiencing issues with their setups and the latest versions of NVidia drivers (Windows 10 updates). If you update your drivers and suddenly start experiencing problems or lag, we suggest you use an earlier version and do a clean install (tick box option on an NVidia driver install). Also a reminder that because of the ever changing code and addition of new variables in H-Hour there can be setting changes that will affect your game. So if after a new patch you have crashes, experience situations where you cannot start the game or are seeing strange visual events in game, delete your Saved folder and restart Steam. The Saved folder can be found generally under Programs (x86) in this folder:
Steam/steamapps/common/H-Hour Worlds Elite/HHourGame/
Remember, if you are experiencing issues, come visit our forums and let us know. We have a great group of technical folks within the community that are always willing to lend a hand.
More information next Monday!