Hello Drakelings!
Welcome to the twentieth devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of March 2022.
This will be a shorter devblog, as most of the work that went into O:HD in March was final polish and preparations for the singleplayer demo, so there isn’t a whole lot of content to show off for that.
Singleplayer Demo Statistics
Now that the demo has been out for a few weeks, we wanted to recap some of the stats and feedback/bug reports that we have been getting so far.
To start, here are the overall player count and play time metrics that we have seen so far for the singleplayer demo (as of 12:00PM PST/3:00PM EST on April 19, 2022):
As you can see here, since the demo release on March 30th, we have had over 90,000 downloads with over 56,000 unique users. The average daily active users over the past 7 days since taking this image was 2,324 players, and their median time played was 23 minutes.
Looking into some more stats:
Lifetime average daily active users is 3,813, the lifetime average daily peak concurrent users is 150, and the max daily peak concurrent users we saw in one day was 628. In addition, the maximum daily active users was almost 11,000. As far as current players go, we have seen that number floating around 50-80 each day now that things have settled down and everyone has more or less gone through all of the content (the first few days was around 250-350 concurrent). Also, apparently two people have played the demo on a Steam Deck which is really cool to see!
Last but not least, here is the geographic/regional breakdown of players that we have seen so far:
The list of countries continues below Romania, 0H0HQ-73AJY-ZLL0T, but that is where they start to drop to <1% of total players, so I cut the image off there to save the space
As you can see, roughly ⅓ of all players are in the United States, another ⅓ are in Western/Eastern Europe, and then the final ⅓ is a mixture of Asia, South America, and so on.
All in all we are very happy with the results so far, and we are very thankful for everyone who took the time to check out the demo and leave us their constructive feedback/criticism here on the Steam forums, as well as the Discord. Receiving all of this information and data from such a large quantity of people during these early stages of development is invaluable to us and the project!
Singleplayer Demo Feedback and Bug Reports
In terms of overall feedback and bug reporting, the following are the major points that we have consistently seen thus far, and some of our plans to improve and/or correct everything:
- Toggle ADS, keybinds, and options in general: Keybinds and extended options overall are a high priority for us, and it will be something that we work on soon. This will include, but is not limited to toggle ADS, toggle lean, rebinding braced aim and secondary optics, changing rate of fire, and so on. Unfortunately, this is not as easy as simply adding in these options right away, as it will require the programmer to complete more UI work and further coding to make sure these systems work properly. This was something that we simply did not have enough time to get done before our internal deadlines to hit the demo release window. This will all come in due time though, so rest assured it will be included!
- Magnified optics breaking with resolution scale: This should already be fixed and coming with the next update.
- Vaulting and mantling: We know everyone wants to be able to climb up/over objects, through windows, and so on—this has been on our roadmap and planned features for ages. This will be coming as soon as we are able to get to it.
- Bots/AI are very basic and not so smart: This has of course been known to us, and we have been very clear about the status of the bots/AI since they were included—we are under no illusions that they aren’t that great right now (you can look back on months worth of devblogs where we have explicitly explained all of this). As we have stated many times, the bots/AI right now are basic, day 1 first implementation/iteration, and they don’t really know how to do a whole lot more right now other than capture flags and shoot at enemies when they see them. The most important step here was getting them into UE4 in the first place (the AI framework that we use—GOAP, aka Goal Oriented Action Planning—is not native to UE4, so we had to code it in from scratch). The real value of the AI that we have in right now is that they dynamically generate their navmesh on the fly, which means they effectively work on just about any map whether it is modded or official. That being said, we do have a dedicated AI programmer, and this is all he works on, so you can expect them to improve over time as they are taught how to do more things, and overall made to be more intelligent. This is just the start!
- SDK related fixes: Currently, custom factions are not functioning properly in the SDK. This is due to the new system that we created to have different character models for different kits so everyone doesn’t look the same, which is still a WIP feature. The solution to this will be coming alongside a greater update that will include the ability for the game to scan for and recognize things like custom/modded maps, factions, and so on. Until then, modders will still be able to test out their custom factions and kits in the SDK itself, but you will have issues packaging and getting the mod to work on the client.
- General optimization and polish: Bots/AI and scopes will probably be first up on this list of things to optimize. There are already some more immediate fixes that the team is working on to make these a bit better. Other items that we have seen the community bring up and that we are aware of are grenades/bandages needing to be “reloaded” to function properly (these are placeholder systems that we implemented long ago and they will eventually be overhauled), weapons clipping through walls and objects (something we will get to when the programmer has time, however, he simply has had other higher priority tasks to work on), issues with the game being in fullscreen (I am told this is an issue with this version of UE4 in particular and this should be resolved when we upgrade engine versions—for now please just use windowed borderless; if you wind up getting stuck just hit F11 to go windowed and then go change your settings), and no options to quit to the main menu when you are in between rounds (we will figure something out with this in due time).
- Nights are very dark: We have already brightened up or removed some of the night time layers entirely for the time being. Eventually, once we upgrade engine versions in Unreal Engine, this will all be configurable from the menu, and players will be able to select things like time of day, weather, and so on. With our current engine version, however, this is just not an easy option for us to include.
Thank you again to everyone who took the time to check out the demo and leave us their constructive feedback/criticism! Let’s move on to what the team worked on last month:
Maps
Omaha Beach
Last month the level design team continued with their work blocking out Omaha Beach for the Operation: Overlord expansion:
Omaha Beach is a 4x4km map, and will be the first official map for the Overlord expansion. For those wondering, Monte Cassino will either wind up being deprecated and released as a “modded” map, or we will make a proper expansion for those battles at a later date, but it would not be proper to include this map with Overlord (I have covered this in a previous devblog as well, so this should be nothing new to those that have been following along).
Risala
Risala received more detailing and polish:
Animations
The G36 shown off in the last devblog was animated:
Objects, Models, and Textures
World Props and Environment Assets
A bunch of world props and environment assets were created for the blockout phase of Omaha Beach:
These will of course eventually be swapped out for proper assets once the map is blocked out and the team is ready to start actually finalizing what the areas on the map will look like.
Foliage
New foliage was also created for use on Omaha Beach, as well as other Normandy-based maps that will appear in the Overlord expansion:
Upcoming and WIP Features
Content Scanning System
The lead programmer is currently working on a system that will make it easier for the game client to recognize and load modded content into the game. This system is essentially a “scanner” that will identify maps, custom factions, game modes, and so on from your mod folder, which will make it easier to mix and match the modded content that you want to play with in a similar fashion to how you are able to select which faction you want to play with on all of the official maps right now. This will be an important step for future Steam Workshop support as well.
Voice Acting
Some revisions and new voice lines were done for the US and German factions for WW1 and WW2.
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That’s it for this month. We should hopefully have some more content to show off next time, however a lot of our work right now is focused on bug fixes and polish after the singleplayer demo release. This isn’t always the most exciting stuff to cover, but it of course needs to be done regardless. We will continue to keep everyone informed of what is going on in development every month as usual though!
Make sure to join the O:HD Discord, and be sure to follow our Steam announcements to track updates. See you all next time!
-Goomes, Lead Community Manager