Update 1.3 is live! Free weekend, new map, game mode, weapons, and more!

17 Jun 2019Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Insurgency: Sandstorm has just received even more free content in update 1.3, and new players are welcome to try the game during its Steam Free Weekend, 10am PST Thursday June 20th to 10am PST Monday June 24th. Today’s monster update includes a remake of the indoor-focused classic Insurgency map ‘Ministry’, new weapons, new weapon upgrades, a zombie-inspired cooperative game mode called Frenzy, and more!

https://youtu.be/ImaWHAyhDMU
We are super excited with the response and community reception to Insurgency: Sandstorm so far. This content follows another large free content update in May which also featured a new map, customization options, a new hardcore cooperative game mode and more. We have many more free content updates planned for the rest of this year and 2020, including modding support, game modes, maps, weapons, and more. Take a look at some of what’s due to arrive in the next six months in the recently announced Free Content Roadmap for 2019.

If you like what you’ve been seeing, please consider giving us a review or updating your review on Steam. These reviews help grow our community and inform new players what the game is all about, and we'd love to have your thumbs up!

store.steampowered.com/recommended/recommendgame/581320

https://store.steampowered.com/app/581320/Insurgency_Sandstorm/

Full update changelist below:

New Features

New Map: “Ministry”
- Features extremely close quarters fighting in the interior of a besieged ministry building with narrow corridors, a vast marbled lobby, and a crowded underground parking garage.
- Playable in Skirmish, Firefight, Checkpoint, Hardcore Checkpoint, Frenzy Checkpoint and Team Deathmatch game modes.
XP can now be earned on community servers:
- Community server admins now have the ability to allow players to gain XP and earn cosmetic unlocks as they would in official matchmaking. This provides more incentive for players to play on community dedicated servers rather than our official matchmaking servers. Please follow our guide here to learn how to register your server with the stats system for XP gain.
- Modded servers or servers with any custom rules are also permitted provided they do not unfairly accelerate XP gain.
New Co-op Arcade Game mode: “Frenzy”
- Checkpoint based mode with zombie-inspired enemies who run fast and attack you in melee or with Molotovs.
- Features special enemies like burning Flamers who explode into flames, fast moving Jumpers who teleport, and massive Bruisers who wear extra armor and soak damage.
- Playable on all maps including Ministry.
- The real April Fools’ joke is that it wasn't a joke. Gotcha.
https://youtu.be/gxbqnHw4-Ac
New Weapons:
- Chinese QBZ-03 assault rifle
- Croatian VHS-2 assault rifle
New Optics:
- 1x MRO “Micro Red Dot” for Security faction.
- 1x MARS for the Insurgent faction.
New Cosmetics:
- CROPAT camouflage for Security Uniform Camouflage, Headgear, and Hands cosmetic items.
New Video Settings
- Added a resolution scale slider allowing for undersampling and supersampling with a range from 0% to 200%. Scaling to under 100% will increase performance by running at a lower resolution, whereas over 100% will render at a higher resolution.
- Added Hierarchical LOD Transition Method option to the Advanced video options menu with a “Field Of View” option which improves the quality of further away structures in the world when zooming in on them. This option comes with a performance cost, so it is recommended to first try “Fixed Distance” for better performance.
- Added a View Distance Quality setting to the settings menu under Video.
- New update announcement popup on the main menu allowing us to share important details about new updates with users directly in the game.

Optimization

Reduced hitching from player spawning.
Optimized particles which occur frequently during gameplay including footstep dust kick up, third person muzzle flashes and bullet impacts.
Disabled dynamic shadows being created from multiple breakable components for smaller breakable props.
Halved the distance at which shell cases would spawn audio components.
Removed a few in-game Lesson videos which were causing hitches when popping up during gameplay.
Added a performance warning on the video settings tab that shows when a user is running the game at a resolution higher than 1080p due to the engine’s costly nature at these higher resolutions.
Reduced server logging to further streamline server performance.
NVIDIA Geforce Experience can now be used again to optimize Insurgency: Sandstorm. This fix was implemented and deployed by Nvidia on Friday the 7th of June.
Tweaked the Auto benchmark settings to ensure that the initial video settings set by the game do a better job ensuring performance.

User Experience

Hit detection system changes:
- Co-op now always uses client-side / server validated hit detection rather than switching to the purely server-side hit detection method when players have higher pings, so that no matter what there should always be reliable hit detection when playing against AI enemies in Co-op modes.
- Versus modes have seen a raise in the ping limit at which point the hit detection switches to the purely server-side approach, from 200ms to 250ms. The latency indicator on the HUD has been adjusted to take this into account, now going red when players are above a 250ms ping to reflect this change.
- Versus server admins now have the option to disable the server-side hit detection method for high ping users entirely, via the -NoHitValidate command line parameter.
Tutorial experience improvements for first time players:
- The game is now paused during critical lesson popups to allow players to digest the information presented.
- The player’s health has been increased.
- The weapons on the table while defending the bridge have been adjusted.
Hardcore Checkpoint is now accessed directly from the new “Featured” section of the Play menu as “Hardcore Coop” rather than through the default Coop queue.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where many players using VoIP would cause temporary audio cutouts for players.
Fixed an issue where bullets were not registering correctly with players and AI enemies when playing with a high enough (200+ ms) ping.
Fixed an issue causing vehicles and their turrets to jitter strongly while moving.
Fixed a number of issues with scopes and the scope stencil rendering over non-scoped weapons, causing “invisible circles” to block the weapon in ADS.
Fixed an issue preventing first time players progressing to the end of the tutorial.
Fixed an issue where the “Bug Hunter” pre-order Tattoo item was not appearing in the Appearance menu.
Fixed an issue where particles were playing back at a greater speed than intended.
Fixed an exploit for Competitive Firefight where the opposing team’s score and points were showing on the Scoreboard.
Added a potential fix for an issue where weapons could continue playing looping audio after the player or AI enemy was killed.
Fixed an issue where the on-screen ammo display for shotguns could occasionally misrepresent how much ammo they had.
Fixed an issue with gloves being rendered inside of scopes.
Fixed an issue where multiple foregrips could be seen in the loadout menu for certain weapons such as the AKM.
Fixed an issue where the TM-62 Mine, Mosin 4x PU Scope and 1.5x PK-AS scopes were not available for the Range Master class in the Range under Tutorials.
Fixed an issue where the Tutorial Level’s Gunship would be on cool down during the period you were prompted to call it in.
Fixed an issue where gas masks could occasionally be seen on character’s bodies instead of their heads.
Fixed a UI scaling issue with the matchmaking progress dialogue.
Fixed an issue where magazine upgrades such as Extended Magazines and Drums were not being applied correctly in-game.
Fixed an issue where the vest and gear would be seen offscreen if you went to the Customize menu on the post match screen.
Fixed an issue where footsteps were not reliably being generated correctly on inclined surfaces such as stairs.
Fixed an issue with the laser attachment socket orientation on the third person G36K model.
Fixed a bug where Supply Crates in Coop modes were not granting any launcher ammo when resupplying.
Fixed an issue where drum magazines were avaliable for certain weapons in Hardcore Checkpoint when they shouldn’t have been.
Fixed an issue where “Community Server Name” would show in the Scoreboard during official matchmaking.
Fixed an issue where if you dismembered a ragdoll’s head and it was wearing a gasmask, the gasmask would not be hidden.
Fixed an issue where Security faction Eye Color was not being applied properly to Character heads.
Fixed clipping issues with Insurgent Hands Cloth Fingerless gloves item.
Fixed incorrect animation assignment causing one of the crouch leaning directions to be broken when using iron sights.
Fixed infinite reload bug in Hardcore Checkpoint.
Fixed and issue with the side mounted alignment of the third person SVD socket for the OKP-7 optic.
Fixed a bug allowing players to deploy bipods on weapons and rag dolls.
Fixed backpacks not hiding in vehicles.
Fixed various cosmetic issues:
- Fixed Patrol headgear and Combat Glasses eyewear clipping with each other.
- Fixed clipping with Balaclava Open and Balaclava Closed headgear.
- Fixed Covered hair option clipping with Headband headgear.
- Fixed the Boonie Hat camo orientation to be horizontal.
- Fixed facewear clipping with the covered hair style and headgear.
- Fixed the morph targets and weights for Battle dress blouse
- Fixed morph target issues with the track pants.
- Fixed some morph logic issues with gear items.
- Fixed clipping issues with the combat goggles.

Gameplay Improvements

Weapons
- Reduced LMGs standing and crouching recoil by 10%.
- Slightly increased reload speed for the M240B, MG3, and PKM.
- Reduced L106A1 and L85A2 supply cost by 1.
- Removed Laser Sight weapon upgrades from Versus Marksman and Competitive Sharpshooter classes. This was felt to be a CQB attachment that was inappropriate for the class’s role in being a long range shooter, especially given the new anti-materiel rifles. This attachment remains available in Coop modes.
- Doubled Gunship and Support Helicopter body health. This will not affect rotor health or other areas of the helicopters.
- Added the M99 7x scope to Coop Marksman classes
Fire Support
- Explosive Drones now spawn above the target on which they were called in and fly down, preventing them from getting caught on buildings as they path towards their designated target.
Hardcore Checkpoint
- Added more Primary ammo for players who respawn.
- Increased speed of the 1P Hardcore sprinting animations by 20% to make it look more natural. This does not affect player speed, just the speed at which the animation loops.
AI
- Retreating AI enemies will no longer abort the retreat behavior to shoot a close range target. This was causing issues after a counter-attack where an AI enemy would retreat with a spawn zone en route, encounter players, and open fire.
- AI enemies will now only throw molotov/incendiary grenades at targets with direct line of sight. This ensures players have some time to react, as they detonate instantly. Normal frag grenades will still be thrown at targets behind cover.
- Reduced accuracy of bot grenade throws by 10-20%.
- AI enemies with heavier weapons (marksman rifles and machine guns) will always rush to cover instead of firing en-route.
- Ambushing AI enemies will go into sighted mode if they hear a threat coming.
- AI enemies will take longer to zero in when using marksman rifles and machine guns, and be less accurate.
- Security AI wear the Facewear cosmetic less often. It’s harder to fight like that anyway.

Visual Improvements

Third person weapon cache planting animations should now be visible to other players.
Improved the prone deployed crawling animation when transitioning to prone and also moving.
Improved “muzzle thump” melee attack animation blending for various weapons.
Created new IED and C-4 third person melee animations.
Improved grenade melee attack animation blending.
Improved RPG-7 melee attack animation blending.

Levels

Outskirts
- Improved a pillar collision box on Firefight West Objective B area so that throwables can be reliably thrown around a corner and not impact with an invisible wall.
- Blocked west window in final weapon cache room on Push Insurgents to prevent destruction by rocket.
- Removed lower northwest room from capture zone on Objective C on Push Insurgents.
- Doors are now closed on ambulance at Objective A on Push Insurgents.
- Doubled up a shipping container at Push Security Objective A to mitigate Insurgents camping outside the southwest corner of the objective in the building. There is no line of sight from here to the northeast entrance to the objective any longer.
- Moved Insurgent Objective D Supply Crate from bad location on Push Security.
- Fixed a missing restricted area for Insurgent spawn on Push Security Objective C.
- Smoothed out player movement in various areas.
- Fixed floating Supply Crate on Push Security Objective D spawn.
- Fixed not able to capture Objective D while aiming in a specific direction on Security Checkpoint.
- Fixed Insurgent A spawn partially not restricted on Push Insurgents.
- Fixed minor issues throughout the map.
- Fixed Insurgents A spawn being partially not restricted on Push Insurgents.
Crossing
- Improved AI navigation.
- Fixed an issue where the player could get stuck inside a barrel near Objective C on Push Security.
- Fixed a small window blocking grenades at Objective C on Firefight West.
Summit
- Reduced playable area for Firefight East to funnel players more towards the objectives.
- Fixed an issue where players could get outside the level at the far end of the market area.
- Fixed an issue where the player was able to get stuck in a certain rock formation.
Refinery
- Made several gameplay adjustments across the whole map to improve readability and make it more clear where players are shot from.
- Unmerged numerous merged actors to take more advantage of automated instancing to improve performance.
- Created HLOD clusters to improve performance.
- Moved the insertion vehicle closer to Security starting spawn on Push Security.
- Tweaked an HLOD near Security start spawn that was transitioning too aggressively.
- Added nav modifier for second row of barricades to avoid AI enemies from getting stuck near Checkpoint A Security.

UPDATE 6/18/19:

We are releasing a hotfix today to address several issues from the 1.3 update. This is a server-side fix which does not require a client reset, but it will require server resets from community servers.

Fixed overuse of Molotovs by AI enemies in Frenzy. Molotov use by AI is meant to primarily prevent players from camping in places unreachable in melee. However, there was a bug where they were wrongly determining when a player is unreachable, and thus using their Molotovs way too much.
Fixed an issue where Frenzy AI would shift between behaviors sometimes while flanking a target.
Fixed an issue where newly released Camo cosmetic CROPAT was not being unlocked correctly when purchased.

UPDATE 6/19/19:

We are releasing another hotfix today to address other issues from the 1.3 update. This hotfix will require downloading a game update.