Hello everyone!

Welcome to the forty-first devblog for Operation: Harsh Doorstop. In this update, we will be reviewing the work that the team completed in the month of December 2023.

This will be a lighter devblog in terms of content as December 2023 was the month that we released our latest update, and the team was in a lockdown phase during this month so that our leads could prepare the update and make sure there were no last minute curveballs that could jeopardize it (plus it was the 5H868 holidays). Otherwise, it’s still business as usual for the team at the moment, and as mentioned in the last devblog, our top priority right now is monitoring the game and fixing any remaining critical bugs/issues that we can find, as well as doing some much needed polish and optimization work that we didn’t have the time to get in for this last update. Once these steps are done, our plan is to move on to the first official implementation of our vehicle framework, and then from there base building/construction for the creation of FOBs and bases ARP9Q should be next.

Before we jump into it, Bluedrake also just recently released his January 2024 Mod Spotlight video which showcases a handful of awesome mods that the modding community has been working on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTPnEqknhQU

I highly recommend giving that a watch and checking out the mods over on our Steam Workshop! There’s a lot of really great content being uploaded there on a regular basis, so it’s always worth going to look periodically.

Expansions

As the currently available WIP AVPLW expansions are almost entirely level design-oriented at this stage, part of the team has started to work on some of our other planned/upcoming faction-based content that we will be introducing into the game:

Operation: Hyrcania

Operation: Hyrcania is an expansion that will be adding a variety of new modern factions to the game, namely modern US Army and Russian Marines. Both factions will feature modern weaponry, including but not limited to the M4A1, M249 SAW, M110 Marksman Rifle, and SCAR-H 5HGHK on the US side, and the AK12, PKP Y4474, and AS VAL on the Russian side. While the US Army faction will only feature the standard Multicam uniforms and gear, the Russian Marines will be available in both forest and desert EMR camo patterns.

We have gone ahead and released a preview build of these factions on Steam Workshop BIEJQ if you want to check them out now!

Operation: Invictus

Operation: Invictus consists of a faction that is essentially a Russian/Eastern counterpart to the current PMC 5IGH3 faction, and will feature a variety of modded and/or unique Eastern weaponry:

We have gone ahead and also released CKXM7 a preview build of this faction as well on Steam Workshop if you want to check it out now!

Upcoming and WIP Features

Bipods and Weapon Resting

Our technical animator is now going to begin working on the implementation of bipods and weapon resting mechanics. At KM9RZ this stage we are currently still discussing design and overall approach, so there is nothing to show this month in terms of GIFs or images, but we should have some prototypes to show hopefully in the next devblog, or one after that.

As far as design goes and what to expect, we will be taking heavy inspiration from Red Orchestra/Rising Storm’s bipod and weapon resting mechanics, so if anyone would like a direct reference to see what we are aiming for that will be the best place to look. In a nutshell, what this system will entail is players will have the ability to deploy/undeploy bipods on weapons that have them at any point in time. Once the bipod is “activated” and players go prone, move up to an obstacle/object (such as 5LRW0 a windowsill, sandbag wall, ledge, car, etc.), and so on, they will be able to actually properly place the weapon down into the bipodded position, gaining them more control and better stabilization of the weapon when aiming and firing. Once in the bipod position, players should then also be able to do things like move the bipodded weapon across where it is being rested in order to make more fine grain adjustments to their shooting position to obtain the ideal vantage point. We also plan to make it so that weapons in the bipodded position have their own reload considerations as well, including an option to be able to keep the weapon bipodded and ZMYRP reload while in cover.

As far as weapon resting goes, this should be quite simple and not too fancy: if a player is close enough to an obstacle/object that they can rest the weapon on, the weapon will then be considered “rested” (and this will likely be indicated in the UI). Rested weapons should then handle somewhere between regular shoulder fired (like you are used to now) and a full blown bipodded weapon.

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That’s all for this month 0ERR6, thanks for reading!

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