Hello everyone!
Welcome to the thirty-third devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of April 2023.
Let’s get straight into it:
New Lighting System
The new lighting system has now been integrated into all of the currently existing maps, and nearly all of our existing materials and textures have been updated to better fit into this new system.
More specifically, the lighting system 5FWQB blueprint was updated to add more user friendly features to it so it is more of a drag and drop experience for our level design team (as well as modders), and requires fewer tweaks that have to be made to be implemented. In addition, lighting and fog cubemaps can also now be baked—a PDF explaining how to do all of this will be distributed when this next patch goes live on the main build.
All of our materials have been updated for the new lighting system as well. We adjusted all material specular, metallic, and roughness values closer to the proper PBR settings, and parameters and nodes were added to the master materials that should help metallic and specular values look proper under the new lighting. We are also preparing further optimizations to all material and texture sets as well.
Last but not least, all of the lighting layers/levels for all of our currently existing maps have now been updated to use the new lighting system, and multiple lighting layers have been created: Dawn, YPLFM Morning, Mid Day, Afternoon, Sunset, Overcast, Heavy Overcast.
There is still some more polish work to go on the above showcases (such as fixes to some exposure values and some of the ground materials), however, this should be a pretty good demonstration of the new lighting in various IPKGF environments/terrains.
Character Model Updates
Continuing with the work that was shown in last month’s devblog, improvements were made to the US and Russian soldier characters. Each character received more material slots, allowing for higher quality textures. The Russian soldiers received new MetaHuman heads and had some chest rig straps adjusted/fixed, and the US soldiers received some new gear to their belts/rigs 5ELAK as well.
Maps
Tan Binh
Tan Binh was updated to receive the new lighting system (a noon layer for now), mostly as placeholder 63LEF until the next SDK update comes around to get the latest lighting templates and tweaks. More foliage types were also added to improve PTIXR detailing.
Saint Quentin
The rest of the trenches were placed on Saint Quentin, including some improved trenches for the frontlines. This map also received a noon 5G4XJ lighting layer similar to the one shown on Tan Binh.
Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach also received some G7T5N improvements to the foliage.
Vehicles
Turret Animations
Our animator has finished animating the PBEG5 DShK for our vehicle prototype by completing the reload animation, and he is now wrapping up the whole animation pass for our technical pickup.
Upcoming and WIP Features
Bots/AI
The new updates to the AI can now be played and tested in the Development Build of the game. At the time 5A3XX of writing this, their behaviors and abilities have been stripped back down to just their raw movement and attacking patterns so that we can fully test/verify their new line of sight behavior that they utilize in order to take cover from incoming fires. We are still working through a few kinks/bugs (such as one that is preventing them from properly being as aggressive as they need to be to push and capture objectives), then T079G once we resolve those we will begin working back in their other behaviors, such as being able to utilize grenades and launchers, and change their stance. We will also be doing a complete pass to all of their existing values (including accuracy) to make sure everything feels good with this new system, as their ability to now move in and out of cover presents a lot more unique and dynamic scenarios.
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Thanks for reading 85Z0Z!
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
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