We’re releasing a patch today that includes new limited time Halloween content, gameplay improvements, bug fixes, and more. As stated in our last patch earlier this month, we are still planning to make improvements to the playlist system. Stay tuned here for more, as we will be releasing our third State of Production post soon.

• Limited time Co-op playlist: Task Force 666, Oct. 24th - Nov. 4th
  
  • We found an old VHS tape of some Australian indie horror film called “Task Force 666” in the basement of our new Calgary office.
    
  • We watched it. Turns out it was cursed.
    
  • Our team started getting sick and delirious. Lots of blood.
    
  • Everyone came to and suddenly we had a new Co-op playlist scheduled to go live today.
    
  • It’s Hardcore Checkpoint against Frenzy enemies at night.
    
  • Available on night time version of Farmhouse map with only weapon flashlights to guide you.
    
  • Supply points are increased from 20 to 30.
    
  • Players respawn with Mk 18 CQBR.
    
  • Both you and Frenzied enemies steal health when you deal damage equal to the amount of damage you dealt, with a maximum of 300.
    
  • We are unsure at this point if the playlist is also cursed.
  
  
  
  
  
• Limited time Versus playlist: Vampire Team Deathmatch, Oct. 24th - Nov. 4th
  
  • Kill the enemy more than they kill you with whatever weapons you like.
    
  • Steal health when you deal damage equal to the amount of damage you dealt, with a maximum of 300.
    
  • Available on all maps during the day.

• During an official match, when the map changes, players will be rearranged and assigned to teams based on individual performance. This is to encourage more enjoyable matches where teams feel more evenly matched. The system will not split up players together in a party, and instead will treat them as a unit.

• Fixed a frequent and persistent crash caused by skeletal mesh merging, which is a system that optimizes character cosmetic rendering.

• Reduced default acceleration so players do not reach full speed instantly when moving, instead feeling their weight a bit more.
  
• Reduced acceleration when sprinting slightly, so players feel the inertia of their fast movement when side strafing and turning, thus making it harder to quickly change directions while sprinting.
  
• Reduced friction slightly, so players no longer decelerate instantly.
  
• Reduced speed when ascending or descending steeper surfaces such as hills, stairs, etc.
  
• Increased the recoil for the FAL.
  
• Decreased recoil for machine guns when firing while aiming down sights.
  
• Decreased recoil for the Galil.
  
• Decreased recoil for the Galil SAR.
  
• Reduced the supply cost by 1 supply for the following weapons:
  • M16A2
    
  • M16A4
    
  • G36K
• Added the Greased Bolt weapon upgrade for the Insurgent Commander class in Co-op.
  
• Added the Tracer Ammo weapon upgrade for the Alpha AK in Versus and Co-op.
  
• Increased speed of weapon switch animations to and from underbarrel grenade launchers by 20%
  
• Added new drum magazine speed reload animations for the Galil and Galil SAR.
  
• Added the M82A1 CQ to Insurgent Marksman class in Co-op.
  
• All underbarrel grenade launchers now utilize the correct “muzzle strike” animation when performing a melee attack.

• Updated the pistol sprint animations for first and third person to keep the pistol pointed forward.
  
• Updated the pistol sprint melee animations. They no longer use an open hand, and now start and end in the new sprint position.
  
• Updated the first person M203 underbarrel grenade launcher models to be barrel mounted instead of rail mounted.
  
• Updated the M16A2 third person model with a new barrel mesh.
  
• Updated all AK variants with new third person grenade launcher component animations.
  
• Updated the generic first person walk cycle animation to match the speed of Hardcore default run speed.
  
• Created a new first person ready animation for the VHS-2 when equipped with a grenade launcher.
  
• VHS-2 smoke rounds for the grenade launcher are now blue and white to match the ones used by other weapons.

• Fixed an issue where the laser sight weapon upgrade was not replicating correctly for other players.
  
• Fixed an issue where the player’s leg would not be visible during the door kicking animation.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Mk 18 CQBR would receive too many magazines.
  
• Fixed an issue where the RPG-7 when dry fired would animate the weapon’s sight instead of the trigger.
  
• Fixed an issue where reloading the M24 or Mosin when prone or crouched would result in the arm not animating correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug with the shell moving slightly during the start of the first person VHS-2 grenade launcher reload animation.
  
• Fixed an issue where if you rebind the lesson pop up key to anything other than the “L” key, it would not show this updated binding in the UI when the player was prompted to press it.
  
• Fixed an issue where the VHS-2 and QBZ-03 weapon icons would not always reliably show in the stats and end of round screens.
  
• Fixed an issue where the QBZ-03 would not transition correctly when swapping mid reload between drum and standard magazines, or standard and drum magazines.
  
• Fixed an issue with the third person M16A2 where the barrel mesh would be attached to the magazine.
  
• Fixed an issue where players would not see the correct movement animations if joining a Hardcore Co-op match late or playing on a server running the Slow Movement mutator.
  
• Fixed an issue where the first person AKM magazine would flicker during a speed reload. Y’know because it was so fast.
  
• Fixed an issue where the player would see the rocket disappear then reappear, without reloading it, on the RPG-7.
  
• Fixed an issue where the incorrect animation pose would play when discarding the AT4 in first person.
  
• Fixed an issue where the incorrect animation would play if viewing an Insurgent character rigging a weapon cache objective in third person.
  
• Fixed an issue where the characters arm would become displaced during the third person mine preparation animation.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Flamer enemy in Co-op Frenzy would not always be on fire for some players in the server.
  
• Fixed an issue where the 4x PSO-1 scope could potentially clip with the camera when the weapon it was attached to was fired in full auto.
  
• Fixed an issue where the G3A3 bipod was not animating correctly.
  
• Fixed an issue where the L85A2, VHS-2, and QBZ-03 could not scavenge mags from the Mk 18 CQBR.
  
• Fixed an issue where the drum magazine would not show correctly when resuming a staged reload with the VHS-2.

• Hillside
  • Fixed a collision issue on a snowbank which would allow players to hide inside of it.
  • Fixed an exploitable sight-line to the weapon cache objective on Push Insurgents.
    
  • Added a set of wooden fences to a balcony on Skirmish to prevent the weapon cache objective from being destroyed from a distance. These fences are built to be extra sturdy and can take multiple rocket rounds without buckling in the slightest.
• Ministry
  • Fixed an issue where players were able to exit the playable area.
• Crossing
  • Fixed an issue where the lighting in the Loadout room was over exposed.
    
  • Fixed an issue where certain ground textures were flickering.
    
  • Fixed an issue where a rock could be seen through, allowing players to defend objective A on Push Security.
    
  • Fixed an issue where ground textures were clipping with one another near the E objective on Checkpoint Security.
    
  • Fixed an issue where players would be required to jump to get over numerous ground obstacles instead of being able to walk across them.
    
  • Fixed an issue where players were able to access an unintended room on Skirmish.
• Hideout
  • Fixed an issue with a specific door that would become stuck when destroying the hinges in Push Security objective A’s building.
    
  • Fixed a clipping issue with a particular wall hole that players could become stuck in at Security spawn on Firefight East.

Hello everyone!

We are looking to expand our current volunteer moderator team! Our team is looking to add 3-5 active moderators to manage our Steam and Discord platforms. If you are interested in helping out, we'd love to hear from you! Down below is a form that you can fill out. Applications are now open from today (October 18th) till November 1st. After that, we will not be accepting any further applications.

Insurgency Sandstorm Community Moderator Application


Brief Details About This Position

Insurgency Sandstorm Moderators are a major pillar of the community. Mods maintain peace within chatrooms, forums, and elsewhere. They are able to tune out emotions and logically analyse a situation. One key elements of a moderator involves actively checking in with the team, regularly interacting with the community, and monitoring flagged UGC items (User-Generated-Content). Moderators lead by example; they behave professionally on duty and off duty.


If you have any additonal questions about the application, please contact Captain Price#7229 on Discord. Good luck, and we look forward to hearing from you!


- Insurgency Sandstorm Moderator Team

Given feedback to update 1.4, we’ve decided to make some further changes to the playlist system. We’ve been listening closely to the community’s thoughts and opinions, and we are actively working to iterate on the system in a way that is healthy for the community and its playerbase. Please continue to share with us your feedback, and know that we will be making further changes as necessary as we did with this patch and the hotfixes before it.

It is important for us to understand our playerbase better and learn what experiences our players want the most. Do note that these experimental changes are not set in stone, and we will be closely listening to the community’s feedback. As mentioned earlier, we do welcome constructive feedback to these changes. We just made a new Suggestions/Feedback forum on Steam, and encourage the community to post feedback there. Please read the pinned post to ensure the best results to your feedback and suggestions.

In the interest of remaining open and transparent, here are our motivations behind each change:

To remain committed to the overall health of our game, we have decided to remove Skirmish from official matchmaking to help better populate matchmaking, decrease queue times, and addresses the issue of splitting the playerbase. This mode isn’t getting as much attention as we had hoped it would as its own playlist, and has been historically less popular than our other Versus modes both in Insurgency 2014 and in Sandstorm. As we evaluate different systems and modes, we’re focusing on ones that we have the time, bandwidth, and resources to support fully, and Skirmish is not on that agenda right now. The low player count and overall experience of this mode is not representative of the experience we want for players, especially new ones. We want players to get into games playing on fun game modes quickly. It is important to note that Skirmish will not be entirely removed from the game. It will still be available in community servers for anyone to host.

In addition to removing Skirmish to better support the player queues and overall health of the game, we have also decided to merge Push and Frontline. These two modes are the most popular and similar in flow, so we feel it makes sense to combine them and let players vote in between matches what they want to play next. While Push is the most popular mode, we are hoping that by adding Frontline to this queue, it will give the mode more exposure so we can better evaluate the degree to which the community enjoys it.

To evaluate the health of the Firefight mode, both in Competitive and Casual, we will be adding a perpetual double XP boost. We are hoping this motivates players to play Firefight and helps us better evaluate the interest in the Competitive scene as a whole. We will continue to explore data, and make decisions based on these changes and what we’re discovering there going forward.

Additionally, we have added a Steam group specifically for Competitive Player Feedback. We hope to start a dialogue next week with Competitive players to give updates on what our plans are in supporting and facilitating Competitive going forward, and to invite constructive feedback from the community on how to improve the Competitive scene.

To improve the overall experience of Versus Firefight, we’ve increased the amount of players. This is seen to be better gameplay and makes it more distinct from Competitive Firefight, which was 5 v 5. Our 8 v 8 change did help address player population issues, but given the other changes in this patch we are hoping that 12 v 12 can still provide a healthy playlist population.

As we have been exploring Limited Time Playlists, we have made the decision to reduce their weekly releases to a more gradual cadence in an effort to limit the amount of playlists featured at any one time. We hope that by reducing the frequency at which we introduce new modes, it will make them feel more exclusive and special as well as prevent unnecessary splitting of the playerbase. We still have plenty of new playlists to come, but we feel we need to be more conservative with how many and how often we show them.

We will continue to monitor and evaluate the impact of all these decisions. Thank you for bearing with us through these iterations of the playlist system. We hope that this patch and the hotfixes before it demonstrate our commitment to improving Sandstorm’s first time player experience and adding new game mode content in a way that does not split the playerbase. We cannot thank you, the community, enough for your continued support and positive feedback and suggestions. It is as it has always been since the Insurgency mod: critical to our development and direction we take the game. We will continue to monitor our social channels, forums, Reddit, etc and listen to the community. In addition to these changes above, our team will continue to work on bug fixes, new content, optimization, and other improvements based on community feedback. In this latest patch, we address a collision issue that caused grenades, players, or other large projectiles to properly pass through broken windows, added new first person Melee, Sprint, and Run animations for Mines, and more.

See the full changelist below:

• Fixed a collision issue where it was not possible for players, grenades, or other large projectiles to correctly pass through broken windows.
  
• Fixed an issue where occasionally, on lower end systems, it was possible for the Tutorial Level to become blocked during the Scavenge waypoint and associated Lesson pop up, making it impossible to complete the level.
  

• Fixed an issue where, when Steam Cloud was enabled, Loadouts were not being correctly saved after creating them in the Customize menu.
  
• Fixed an issue where Foregrip Bipods or Foregrips were not positioned correctly on certain weapons in first person.
  
• Fixed an issue where the M16A2, M16A4, M4A1, MK18, QBZ-O3, and the VHS were not compatible with other 5.56 weapon magazines when scavenging.
  
• Fixed an issue where RPG-7s dropped on the ground would show the rocket warhead beside the weapon.
  
• Fixed an issue where the left hand would not correctly move to the Bipod or Bipod Foregrip if you deployed it while sprinting in spinting in Hardcore Checkpoint or with the Slow Movement mutator applied.
  
• Fixed an issue where when choosing the Light Carrier and any armor in combination with a female character would cause one of the pouches to slide around the body in third person.
  
• Fixed an issue with audio event timings for the first person VHS-2 speed reloads.
  
• Fixed an issue where the first person Insurgent leather gloves would clip into the hand.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Uzi base reloads were not resetting the arm position properly at the end of the animation.
  
• Fixed some extreme camera rotations during the Uzi empty reload sequence.
  
• Fixed an issue where rounds were visible in the magazine still during the Uzi empty reload sequence.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Headband cosmetic would clip with certain male hairstyle cosmetics.
  
• Fixed a clipping issue with the Watch Cap and Neck Gaiter High cosmetic options.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Neck Gaiter cosmetic would clip with the Beanie cosmetic.
  
• Fixed an issue where both the top rail and side-rail mounts were available for the 2x PK-AS with AKS-74U combination. It now only utilizes the side-rail as designed.

• The Community servers in the Play menu will now sort by most populated servers by default.
  
• Increased the draw speed of mines by 20%.

• Created new first person Melee, Sprint and Run animations for mines.
  
• Mines now have the correct third person jumping animation in third person.

• Hillside
  
  • Fixed an issue allowing players to gain access to a closed off building by vaulting through a window near Push Security D.
    
  • Fixed an issue where it was possible to spawn kill the Security team as they left their spawn area on Skirmish.
    
  • Fixed an issue where it was possible for Insurgent team players to exit the map in a certain location.
• Summit
  • Fixed an issue where it was possible to spawn kill the Insurgent team as they left their spawn area on Skirmish.

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Hey everyone, my name is Michael Tsarouhas. I am the lead game designer on Insurgency: Sandstorm. Today we’re gonna talk about update 1.4's new tug-of-war inspired PvP game mode Frontline that was added to the game a couple weeks ago. We’ll cover what it is, how it plays, the challenges we encountered in its implementation, and its history in our previous games. Frontline is available now on the live version of the Sandstorm and can be found under the PvP “Versus” section of the Play menu.

Though we’ve only just added the mode to Sandstorm, Frontline has actually been around for a while. It first started as a game mode called “Battle” way back in the Half-Life 2 mod version of Insurgency, which was called Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat. It played pretty similar to as it does today, like a two way Push mode, where both teams progress linearly through the map one objective at a time trying to push each other back. There was, however, no weapon cache as there is today in Frontline. The mode had a special flavor to it. It was unpredictable, hectic, and high in intensity, but still had that tactical hardcore Insurgency feel to it.

https://youtu.be/WDbrv1shNgQ
Our WWII shooter Day of Infamy in 2017 saw Battle’s official return, but this time with its new and current name “Frontline”. This version introduced a radio objective that needed to be destroyed as the final defense objective for either team if they were pushed back to the edge of the map. Our aim with Day of Infamy was to create a more “war-like” experience as opposed to the security operation feel of Insurgency, so Frontline was a perfect fit. It was a great big world war after all, and we were excited at the idea of seeing the fire support drop as teams shoved each other back and forth on a map like Bastogne or Foy.

https://youtu.be/wTp5mUjE21c?t=318
Frontline, like Push, saw a lot of popularity. Players took well to the higher speed action, the shifting of tide of combat, the objective trading, and the overall atmosphere. We decided the mode might have a place in Insurgency: Sandstorm, and set it up for internal testing as early as the pre-alpha version. As we went along in Sandstorm’s development however, we determined that we needed to cut down on game modes and focus on the ones we had. Push, Firefight, and Skirmish were felt to be the stronger most popular Insurgency experiences, and if Frontline were ever to be added to the game, it would require more work than we had time for.

But what is Frontline exactly, and how does it play? The quickest way to explain it is that it’s two way Push. In a Frontline match, there are either 5 or 7 objectives depending on the map. Objectives are laid out in a long linear fashion, as opposed to in Firefight or Skirmish modes where they are contained in certain areas of the map. Every objective in Frontline is captured in order and one at a time, much like Push or Checkpoint. At the start of a round, the middle objective is neutral, and the rest of the objectives are split half and half between the two teams, represented below as red and blue.





When a round begins, only the neutral middle objective is active, and so both teams must scramble to capture it. This is the most dense part of a round, with up to 28 players piling into a single building, hill, or whatever other landmark it’s been decided they must vye over. When a team finally captures it, it becomes theirs that they must defend while simultaneously attacking and capturing their enemy’s next adjacent objective. In Frontline, after the neutral middle objective is captured, there are always two active objectives: one to attack and one to defend.



In the image here, you can see that the blue team has captured objective C, and now must capture objective D while also defending C from the red team’s attacks. If red takes C, then blue is forced to fall back and defend B. Both teams are in a constant struggle to move this frontline forward and not get pushed back themselves. It’s expected that a round will involve trading objectives back and forth across the map. Regularly spawning reinforcement waves keep the action flowing, and a wave is added to the wave count every time a team captures an objective.

Each team’s final objective, the blue and red diamonds at each end of the line, is a weapon cache that the other team must destroy to win. If a team gets pushed back to their weapon cache, they’ll lose all their remaining reinforcement waves and be forced into a last stand, just like in Push mode. This last stand has two key differences however. First, in Frontline, vehicles will spawn in, giving a better chance for a comeback and a successful weapon cache defense. Second, unlike in Push, a team can gain ground back by capturing their enemy’s objective, saving their weapon cache and pushing back toward the enemy’s. This is, of course, a tough scenario to come back from, but it’s possible, especially in the later stages of a round when waves on both teams are mostly depleted. An alternate win condition is to simply kill off the enemy and their reinforcement waves. When all of the enemy are dead, regardless of where the line is, your team will win.

In our early stages of testing Frontline for update 1.4, this secondary win condition actually presented a problem. Our vision for Frontline was to have back and forth and objective swapping that took place all across the map. In practice however, it was just a brawl at the center. Both teams would slug it out over the neutral middle objective, and whoever won that objective typically won the match without even capturing anything else. This is because of a few reasons:

• Capturing an objective originally gave you too many reinforcement waves. Once a team had a lead in waves, they could dig in and bleed their enemy of all their waves.
  
• Reinforcement wave respawns would be triggered quickly. This meant there would always be people occupying an objective preventing its capture.
  
• Capturing objectives took too long. Enemy players would make it to the objective too quickly even after you had cleared the objective and thought you secured the area.

To address this, we reduced the amount of waves gained from a capture, first to 2 waves and then to just 1. We also made reinforcement waves wait a little longer for more players on your team to be dead until a respawn was triggered, and upped the amount of reinforcement waves a team had at the start so rounds wouldn’t end so quickly. Finally, we made objectives able to be captured faster, so people could more easily move the line.

These changes made it less important who captured the middle objective and more important who was actually playing all the objectives and pushing the line forward throughout the whole round. Simple as those changes may sound, it took a lot of playtesting, iteration, and feedback to identify and address those problems. The Community Test Environment was a huge help in realizing what changes needed to be made to Frontline, and we thank all of you who took part in that testing for sharing your feedback. Even with that though, as with any of our modes, we are always open to feedback on how to improve. If you’re liking Frontline, then please, let us know on the forums or on Reddit. If you aren’t, then let us know it can be improved.

Thanks for reading everyone and take care!

We are releasing a hotfix today that improves the playlist system, improves movement animations, fixes improper AI loadouts in Co-op, potentially fixes the Hillside Firefight West crash issue, and makes other changes.

We are aware of the current player population issues with Versus playlists Firefight and Skirmish. We are currently working to address this and we welcome your feedback and suggestions on the Steam forums, official forums, and Reddit.

See the full changelist below:

• Fixed a rare case where a player could potentially spawn under the map if they initially idled after joining a Frontline or Push match and spawns were disabled between them joining and accepting their loadout.
  
• Added potential fix for an edge case where players and AI enemies could fall through the map after dying and respawning.
  
• Fixed an issue where suicide bomber AI enemies were not spawning during counter attacks.
  
• Fixed issue where AI enemies were being equipped with RPGs more than intended.

• In response to community feedback and to address player population issues, we are making the following changes to the playlist system. Please be aware we are still strategizing and considering other changes. We welcome your feedback.
  • Normal and Hardcore playlists under Co-op will always start on a Checkpoint Security scenario. Checkpoint Insurgent scenarios are still available in both of these playlists, but they will only be played if the players within an ongoing match choose to vote to switch to one. This change was made because our community demonstrated a preference for the Security Co-op experience over the Insurgent one.
    
  • The Firefight playlist is now set to 8 vs 8 players instead of 14 vs 14. This lower player count target is intended to make it easier to start new matches, improve the mode’s gameplay, and bring a better parity with the 5 vs 5 Competitive Firefight experience.
    
  • Firefight, Skirmish and Competitive Firefight playlists will receive a triple XP bonus for the next 7 days. This is a temporary measure intended to entice players to try out these less populated modes and kickstart their populations. As said above, other changes are being considered, but this is our first step. We will be watching the numbers and listening to your feedback going forward.
    
  • Added new descriptions and images for Firefight, Push, and Skirmish in the playlist menu for better clarity on their experiences.
• Reworked the “Steam Authentication Failed” message to properly communicate the reason why the kick occurred.
  
• Players who join a match but never select a class will now be kicked for being idle.

• Fixed an issue where the first person animation would not play when planting a bomb on a weapon cache.
  
• Fixed an issue where if you didn’t move after switching your weapon, the weapon audio component would not update its position correctly, which resulted in hearing the distant version of the weapon in first person and missing weapon foley audio.
  
• Fixed an issue where the dry fire animation and audio would not play on bolt-action or pump-action weapon.
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause the explosive "pull pin" event to re-play when changing stances with all grenades.
  
• Fixed an issue where the equipment physics would abruptly begin simulating upon first being shown in the Loadout menu, Customize menu, in-game, or after moving the character between spawn points.
  
• Fixed a bug where selecting an empty preset in the Loadout menu would not immediately hide the weapon preview at the center.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Shell Camo in first person would not match the third person version.
  
• Fixed an issue where the player’s weapon could show up attached to their feet when using the DShK.
  
• Fixed an issue where the M99 could be fired before it had fully completed its shouldering animation.
  
• Fixed an issue where chest gear would occasionally clip into other clothing cosmetics and/or the player model on first spawn.
  
• Fixed an issue where the M99 was misaligned on the weapon table in the Range level, which made it difficult to pick up.
  
• Fixed a Level of Detail issue where the Covered cosmetic would look incorrect at various distances
  
• Fixed an issue with the camo materials on the Uniform Camo Torso variations

• Weapon Upgrade Fixes:
  
  • Added the 2x Kobra sight to the Insurgent Competitive Flanker and Assaulter classes.
    
  • Added the 2x Kobra sight to Uzi for the Insurgent Competitive Flanker.
    
  • Added the 3x QBZ-03 scope to the Insurgent Competitive Assaulter class.
    
  • Added the 1.5x PKAS sight to the TOZ and AK74U for the Insurgent Competitive Flanker class.
  • Added the 7x scopes to the Competitive Sharpshooter class.

• Added new first person run, walk, sprint, Hardcore sprint, and Slow Movement mutator sprint animations for all primary, secondary, and launcher weapons, which will now sync visually with their relevant footstep audio events
  
• Improved the visual appearance of pistols, melee weapons, and grenades in the Loadout menu.
  
• Improved the visual appearance of the Molotov rag physics.
  
• Added new slide animations
  
• Added new mine planting and mine priming third person animation sequences.
  
• Fixed a clipping issue involving the combination of the Covered and softshell jacket cosmetics.

• All
  • Updated soundscape overrides for all player spawns so when spawning in any location other than outdoors, you will automatically receive the correct environment sounds and weapon switch.
• Hillside
  • Potential fix for Firefight West not loading correctly and causing server crashes.
    
  • Fixed an issue where you could capture Checkpoint Security objective F from outside of the building.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the Checkpoint Security objective F capture area was not fully including all parts of the room as it should.
    
  • Tweaked exposure to make it less dark when looking straight into a bright light source.
• Summit

[/b]

• Fixed an issue where you could capture Frontline objective F by laying prone behind a certain set of sandbags that blocked the window.
  
• Fixed an issue where crouch jumping and landing on a specific set of walls may have caused the character to land incorrectly.
  
• Fixed an issue where the player could get to an exploitable position in the rubble on the market side
  
• Fixed an issue where the player could get stuck between an awning and cliff near objective B on Firefight East.
  
• Fixed an issue where the player could reach an exploitable spot near objective A push Insurgents.
  
• Fixed an overlapping mesh at objective C on Push Insurgents.
  
• Fixed an issue where the player could reach an exploitable spot by pixel-walking near objective E on Summit Skirmish.

Precinct

• Fixed an issue where the player could become stuck on a ledge of a wall after vaulting.

Hideout

• Fixed an issue where the restricted area for Security was not fully covering objective A

[/list]

Greetings!

I hope this post finds all of you well and in good spirits. If you’re new to the State of Production posts, this is the second edition. You can review the first one here.

As I hope you are all aware of and happily experiencing, we recently released Update 1.4, and so far, we’re receiving a lot of positive feedback. Of the negative feedback we received, we were able to be immediately reactive, via a hotfix, and the changes have since been well-received. We are also aware of the playlist population issues, and we are working on ways to improve those populations (feedback is welcome!) Overall, the studio is really pleased with the way things have been going, and we continue to introduce, optimize, and re-evaluate our internal production processes. I have a lot of exciting new developments to share with all of you, so I’m going to dive right into it.

Since my first post, we’ve continued to build the studio; both in terms of infrastructure, as well as in terms of personnel.

Infrastructure:
We’ve now got a dedicated meeting room (the construction was actually completed Tuesday, September 10th, the same day as the update!). Check out the picture; it’s not too fancy yet; we’re still adding carpet, some sound-proofing/echo paneling, getting a bigger and more appropriate-sized table, and preparing to hook up a big-screen television for digital conferencing. Additionally, the rest of the office is starting to come together! We’ve installed dividers, started partitioning off different sections of the building to help compartmentalize teams a bit, and built quite a few more new computers for the team. We’re actively shopping and preparing to get some streaming equipment so that we can re-initialize measures like having the team live-stream with the community. Speaking of which…

Personnel:
I’m super excited to announce all the additions to the team!

Since I last posted, we’ve hired a dedicated Community Manager, /u/NWI_DaraDef! As she acclimates and continues to take over the reins of community development and community outreach, she’ll likely become a more omnipresent force on this sub. We love her, and we’re sure you will too!

We’ve built out our internal Quality Assurance team; we now have dedicated internal manual testing capabilities, and over the next few weeks, the infrastructure to support and utilize automated testing will come online as well. Our QA Engineer started on Monday, September 16th. Along with him, we’ve hired 2 additional QA testers to help refine and sharpen our internal test efforts. Additionally, one of these testers will be bolstering our player-support efforts, as we continue to flesh out an internal support division to help our players troubleshoot technical issues and create documentation and a knowledge base on how to resolve common problems.

Along with building up an internal support division to help us better understand how we can best serve our players and customers moving forward, we’ve additionally been scraping feedback and data from across various forums and mediums across the internet. The most common, singular feedback item observed and reported, generally speaking, has been heard loud and clear.

“Fix the game’s performance problems.”
“The game doesn’t run well on my machine.”
“The game needs to be optimized to run better.”

When I first started with New World Interactive, I had a hypothesis that performance was the biggest obstacle faced by the studio. In the 3 months I’ve been here, that talking point has only become louder and more prevalent. I want to be 100% clear on this: We have heard you, and we are making optimization our number one priority over the next 3 months. I’d like to dive into the details to assuage potential concerns or fears, as well as use this SoP post to address the scope of impact that this decision will have on our roadmap, on our prior commitments that we had hoped to achieve in 2019, and on our path forward.

First, I had anticipated the need for this type of initiative. One of the reasons I began with building a support division up was so that we would create and establish better telemetry and reporting mechanisms. By building up our Quality Assurance division, we will now have more bodies and more eyes dedicated to manual testing; this will help us to slowly-yet-steadily re-evaluate pre-existing features and systems within our game, as well as to more thoroughly test future content additions to the game. We will be able to utilize automated testing to help us capture more complex aspects of testing; at night, we’ll be able to run configuration and settings testing 1000’s of times per evening. We’ll be able to automate performance testing captures on dozens of machines with numerous scripted conditions to better understand where we are over-budget in-game, and to identify where we can recover potential performance losses. Effectively, we’ll be able to maximize the amount of testing we can carry out on a day-to-day basis, which should provide us with meaningful data (over time) on where to best focus our efforts for initializing optimization efforts.

Second, with the arrival of our community manager and the additional assistance of our testers to assist with player support inquiries, we’ll be able to start collecting, organizing, and tracking player feedback. This will allow us to cross-reference the data we receive from our analytics and testing division, and to weigh it against the more human and personal side of player feedback we receive from our community. Over time, we’ll be able to analyze this information and create action items for our art, design, and programming teams. We should also see a substantial uptick in our scope of support, such as faster response times to troubleshooting inquiries, more activity and dialogue on our forums across the internet, and more relevant and thorough troubleshooting documentation and techniques to ensure that our players aren’t blocked out from being able to play our game.

Third, as a result of this initiative, we’ve been re-evaluating our roadmap to make sure that, moving forward, when we make a commitment to our playerbase, that we can deliver. If we can’t deliver, at the very least, we’ll be able to message so more accurately, more directly, more quickly so that expectations can be managed accordingly. We’re beginning to ramp up our production team as well, and we recently just put up postings for Game Producers. This will help us to ensure that bugs and tasks are being distributed, messaged, and tracked more accurately and efficiently, as well as to ensure that we are staying on time, within budget, and within scope. Plus, you can work with me! :)

Lastly, we’re working with NVIDIA to help us with performance analysis and evaluation. Given that we’ve seen several references to people having performance challenges with high-end graphics cards, we’re sending off a few builds to evaluate GPU optimization for these top-end cards. While it's too early to determine what the results will be, we'll be able to get a better handle on where in our optimization process specifically we need to focus to improve performance. While we already know we have a lot of drain on the CPU end of things, we're hoping to get more information on that and other factors through this testing. We’re optimistic that we’ll get some great starting points, given that the last time we had this game reviewed by a leading rendering expert was actually right before we initially launched nearly a year ago!

As I mentioned in my original SoP post, the console version is coming. At the time of my previous post, I wasn’t comfortable releasing the details related to our console release. Now, I have all my ducks in order, and I’m ready to present the news to the community.

Insurgency: Sandstorm will officially be coming to consoles in the Spring of 2020.

After evaluating the scope of concerns regarding optimizations, back in July, we began a dialogue internally and with our publisher, Focus Home Interactive (FHI), about how to best proceed forward with releasing on console. Given the studio’s history, we didn’t have a lot of pre-existing experience internally relating to console porting, optimization, navigating console TRC (Technical Requirement Checklists), etc. Our CEO, Jeremy Blum, began exploring co-development partnerships earlier in the summer with FHI. The hope was that we could work alongside some talented developers who could help us navigate these challenges and the process itself, while simultaneously freeing up some bandwidth internally to continue generating new content + optimizing the game further for our PC audience. Effectively, by finding a partner to assist with console development, we can substantially expedite our own efforts at optimization while also getting some fresh eyes/additional perspective on recommended adjustments and changes.

We recently finalized our agreement with a console co-development partner. We’ve chosen to move forward with Black Tower Studios, and we are super excited to announce the partnership! We’re also pretty excited to announce a few select things regarding the console release. We’ll be releasing a time-sensitive, console-exclusive map for approximately 2 weeks when we launch. After 2 weeks, we’ll release this map on PC as well, but we thought this would be a fun way to give console players something to “own” and get excited about when paired with the release. We will reveal more information about this map in the near future :) Furthermore, as we close in on the release date, we’ll be doing all sorts of contests and giveaways within our community, ranging from things like an Insurgency Console, signed copies of the game, and merchandise! We’re hopeful that the community is as excited as we are to finally be able to talk about this. I fully anticipate a load of questions, and I’ll be fielding those questions on this topic specifically.


The short answer? In the best way possible! As we make a huge push towards optimization, some of our creative content has been pushed back and delayed to be released later down the road. As a result, we’ll be steadily releasing all sorts of new content to the community, and in a better state, that should keep everyone excited. If you look at how much content we’ve released since the game first launched, we hope it will become clear that we stand by our titles beyond a release date. For example, we’ve introduced over half a dozen new weapons, 3 maps, 4 new game modes, and a large quantity of new cosmetic items and camouflages... and we have many more additions yet to come!

As we don’t believe in annualizing editions of our game from a philosophical standpoint, all the changes and adjustments we make over time are done so with the belief that we’re going to expand and improve upon our pre-existing product. We’re super committed to our players, and we want to reinforce our continuous support to our fans. As more and more production guidelines are rolled out, we should have tighter, cleaner production cycles pertaining to future sprints.

This wraps up the second SOP blog. It’s not as wide-scale or as robust as the first one, but a lot of my next month is simply going to entail the creation of new processes, the refinement of old processes, training, and working on some more under-the-hood initiatives. We’re all pretty excited with the way things are shaping up.

Comments. Concerns, or questions? Leave them here and I’ll address them as best as I am able. We’ll also be hosting an AMA tomorrow, Thursday, September 19 at 1pm MST, to discuss this blog in more detail with all of you :D Here is a link to the AMA thread!

P.S: Wanted to share some pictures of the team as well. This is roughly ¼ of the team as we still have many re-positioning to join the core group, but I thought it’d be cool to share with the community to remind everyone that we’re a super small team! :D Check it out here.

Although we are posting this announcement on Steam for visibility, we would like to direct all users to our post on Reddit if you would like to comment or be involved in the discussion. Our team will be actively monitoring that thread, and we will also be hosting a live Q&A tomorrow, so go subscribe to https://www.reddit.com/r/insurgency/

Hello all. Today we are releasing a hotfix ahead of the weekend to address some undesired results we’ve seen with the new PvP queues that have been rolled out with the new playlist system. In particular, we’ve noticed that the Point Capture playlist has not been well received, and as a result those who like Firefight or Skirmish modes have been unable to play on official servers supporting these modes. Because of this, we’ve decided to update the playlists to be game mode specific rather than going with the previous ‘playstyle grouping’ approach. This should allow people to more clearly identify the mode they want to play, and hopefully result in a better distribution of players throughout all of the different modes. One of the strengths of the new system is our ability to modify the playlist queues relatively on-the-fly based on results and community feedback like we’re doing today. We will continue to monitor results and feedback, refining the playlists over time accordingly.

• “Ground Battle” & “Point Capture” combined playlists found under Versus in the Play menu have now been replaced with the following individual PvP mode playlists based on community feedback:
  
  • Push
    
  • Firefight
    
  • Frontline
    
  • Skirmish

Update 1.4 is here, bringing even more new game modes, a new map, weapons, and cosmetic content, all of it free for everyone who owns Insurgency: Sandstorm.

Experience a total overhaul to the Play menu with playlist based matchmaking, map and game mode voting, and limited time playlists that feature special game modes with a twist and new update content. Check out new tug-of-war inspired PvP mode Frontline which plays like a two way Push mode match. See our new snow map Hillside, a reimagining of the classic Insurgency map Sinjar with support for all game modes. Play Gunner in a more mobile role with the new Insurgent Galil and Security Galil SAR weapons. Equip new Security Shell jacket and Insurgent Winter jacket cosmetics for the Torso slot.


Full update changelist below:



We’ve done a complete overhaul of the Play menu and official matchmaking which now uses playlist based matchmaking, where a playlist is a grouping of game modes or a single game mode we set for every playlist. This decision was made to give us room to add more new game modes to Insurgency: Sandstorm both this year and in 2020 without concern for splitting the playerbase as well as keeping our own official server hosting costs manageable. It also allows us to add new game mode content without game updates, even as often as on a weekly basis. Read more about our reasons for the playlist system and details on limited time game modes here.





A playlist contains one or more similar game modes. A player selects a playlist, searches for a match, and is put into a game in one of the game modes that the playlist features. When a match ends, a map vote starts, and players can vote on a new map and mode within their current playlist’s supported game modes.



“Limited time playlists” that can offer unique game modes or new content from the latest update will be featured regularly in both Versus and Co-op. These can be cycled through as often as once a week, and will not require you to download a game update.

• Limited time playlists are meant to be an iteration of the Arcade system. They will often feature “Arcade-inspired” game modes that are usually existing game modes with modifications to gameplay.
  
• Examples include bolt-action rifles only, headshots only, steal health when dealing damage, drop a live hand grenade on death, etc. More than one may apply. Each modification is referred to as a “mutator”.
  
• Mutators are also available to community servers, so community server hosts can apply and combine mutators to their servers as they wish. For more information, see the “Modding” section below in the changelist.
  
• While they won’t necessarily be as unique or fully produced as Arcade modes like Frenzy Checkpoint or Team Deathmatch, they will come much more rapidly and outside major content updates.
  
• We aim to have one limited time Co-op and one limited time Versus playlist available at any time, staggered so that a playlist switches out every week.

“Community Servers” is now a fourth button in the Play menu. This is meant to bring better visibility to our community run servers.[/list]

Co-op

• Normal
  
  • Checkpoint Security
    
  • Checkpoint Insurgents
• Hardcore
  
  • Hardcore Checkpoint Security
    
  • Hardcore Checkpoint Insurgents
• Frenzy
  
  • Frenzy Checkpoint

Versus

• Ground Battle
  
  • Push
    
  • Frontline
    
    • New PvP mode, see the “New Features” section below for details.
• Point Capture
  
  • Firefight
    
  • Skirmish
    
    • Both modes have been brought to 28 players as opposed to the 24 of Firefight and the 32 of Skirmish. Skirmish also now has smaller, tighter objective layouts. These changes were made to improve game flow, improve performance, and make the game mode experiences more consistent, especially within the Point Capture playlist.
      
    • This playlist currently excludes the larger layouts of Precinct Skirmish, Refinery Skirmish, and Hideout Skirmish scenarios. We intend to improve these three scenarios for a future update and add them into this playlist once they have been changed.

Competitive

• Firefight
  
  • Competitive Firefight

[/list][/list]
Co-op

• Hillside Co-op
  
  • Checkpoint Security
    
  • Checkpoint Insurgents
    
  • Features new snow map Hillside only
    
  • Runs from September 10th - 25th

Versus

• Frontline
  
  • Features new Frontline game mode only
    
  • All maps
    
  • Runs from September 10th - September 18th
• Hillside Ground Battle
  
  • Push
    
  • Frontline
    
  • Features new snow map Hillside only
    
  • Runs from September 10th - 14th
• Hillside Point Capture
  
  • Push
    
  • Frontline
    
  • Features new snow map Hillside only
    
  • Runs from September 14th - 18th

After these September playlists are finished, new playlists with unique gameplay modifications and mutators will be added, including bolt-action rifles only, supply point gain by player score, and many more.[/list]
[/list]

• New PvP game mode “Frontline,” a tug-of-war inspired two way Push mode
  
  • Capture all enemy objectives one by one, and then destroy the final weapon cache objective to win. Defend your own objectives and weapon cache from being captured or destroyed.
    
  • After the neutral middle objective is captured, your team must defend your own objective and also attack the enemy’s objective.
    
  • Every time a team captures an objective, they will gain respawn waves and respawn their team. A team loses all their respawn waves when the enemy team reaches their final weapon cache objective.
• New snow map “Hillside” with support for the following game modes:

Versus

• Push Security
  
• Push Insurgents
  
• Firefight West
  
• Firefight East
  
• Skirmish
  
• Frontline
  
• Team Deathmatch

Co-op

• Checkpoint Security
  
• Checkpoint Insurgents
  
• Hardcore Checkpoint Security
  
• Hardcore Checkpoint Insurgents
  
• Frenzy Checkpoint

[/list]

• Official matchmaking games will now allow players to vote on the next map within their playlist and continue playing with the same players in their session instead of returning to the main menu between matches.

• New light machine gun assault rifle hybrid weapons for the Gunner class
  
  • Insurgents
    
    • Galil
  • Security
    
    • Galil SAR
• New Weapon Upgrade
  
  • 3x Type 03 scope for QBZ-03
• New Cosmetics
  
  • Security soft shell style jacket
    
    • Shell
      
    • Shell Rolled
      
    • Shell Camo
      
    • Shell Camo Rolled
  • Insurgent winter sport style jacket
    
    • Winter Black
      
    • Winter Blue
      
    • Winter Red
      
    • Winter White
• Equipment (backpacks, vests, pouches) will now shift and jiggle with movement. This is enabled and disabled based on your “Effects” setting, where it is disabled on low and medium and enabled on high and above. We recommend users on minimum and medium spec machines disable this by setting their Effects setting to Low or Medium as this has an impact on performance.
  
• Added Competitive rank decay where in Diamond and Platinum ranks your rank will slowly decay if you do not play often enough.
  
• Audio
  • Added Panning rule dropdown which allows selection of speakers or headphones to provide the best positional audio experience for your hardware.
    
  • Added Effects slider which controls the volume of all in-game sound effects.
    
  • Added an option to mute the ear-ringing layer of the explosives and flashbang shellshock effects.
    
  • VoIP no longer uses auto-ducking, and now uses side-chaining. This provides a more natural ducking of game audio when VoIP is used, and also fixes an issue where even if VoIP volume was set to 0 that game audio would still be ducked when VoIP was transmitted.
• Spectator and Replays
  
  • New camera controls and options added with bindings available in the key binds menu.
    
    • Camera zoom
      
    • Hide HUD
      
    • Disable camera smoothing
      
    • Decrease and Increase playback speed bindings for Replays which default to the “Home” and “End” keys respectively.

• Removed character animation ticks triggered by movement which reduces CPU usage in higher player count situations.
  
• Fixed a frequent crash caused by skeletal mesh merging, which is a system that optimizes character cosmetic rendering.

• Fixed a potential edgecase with hit registration, caused by legitimate bullet hits being discarded when packets were received out of order by the server.
  
• Fixed multiple potential causes for invisible bots occuring. If you experience any further instances of this occurring please report them in the following thread here HERE.
  
• Fixed a potential cause for players falling through the map and becoming desynced to other players caused by vaulting. If you experience any further instances of this occurring, please report them to us on the forums, providing as much information as possible HERE.
  
• Potentially fixed an issue that could cause endlessly looping weapon audio, caused by an event that could trigger the looping fire event after a weapon had become un-equipped, such as firing on death. If this is still occuring for you after this update, please report it to us HERE.
  
• Fixed an issue where first person footsteps would sometimes stop playing entirely. This was caused by the significance manager, which handles optimization, wrongly adding these footsteps to the global pool when near larger groups of players or AI, and marking them as unimportant to hear.

• Fixed a bug where the Observer had an unintended effect of increasing capture speeds when on the objective.
  
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to deploy a bipod on another player and remain deployed even once they have moved away from you.
  
• Fixed an issue where the various items attached to backpacks would be visible in the insertion vehicle, even though backpacks are not intended to be shown during insertions.
  
• Fixed an issue where the player could utilize the gunner position of a vehicle to gain access to the outside of the map in some specific situations. If this still occurs, please report to us on the forums.
  
• Fixed an issue where third person jumping and landing surface reactions were not being replicated to other players, making them inaudible.
  
• Fixed an issue where it was not possible to deploy a weapon’s bipod when inside a smoke cloud from either artillery, 40mm or smoke grenades.
  
• Fixed an issue where helicopter crew members would T-pose in certain circumstances, clipping through the helicopter model.
  
• Fixed a bug where spectating a player who had recently been in a vehicle would alter your own soundscape (ambient level audio) on spawn.
  
• Fixed an issue where soundscapes would be updated by the last player spectated even once the player had respawned.
  
• Fixed an issue where vehicles could become desynced if they were driven during the “waiting for players” state. Vehicles now will not spawn during pre-game.
  
• Potential fix for an issue where if you threw a deployable item such as C-4 and another player picked it up and threw it back to you, and then you picked it up again, you would not be able to select any of your weapons or items. Please let us know on the forum if this issue persists.
  
• Fixed an issue where the character’s knee would snap into position during the third person rifle walk animations.
  
• Fixed an issue where bots were running into fences in the Tutorial Level.
  
• Updated player rows on the scoreboard if a player has developer status or XP changes. This should solve issues where a player row is created before that info has finished being queried, and would not be updated until the player’s position on the scoreboard changed.
  
• Fixed issue with arms in third person while swapping weapons.
  
• Fixed a minor visual bug with the Mosin and M24 when bolting.
  
• Fixed an issue where sniper rifles and rocket launchers would disappear when being reloaded in third person.
  
• Fixed a morph issue with the military boots and cargo pants cosmetic combination on Insurgents.
  
• Fixed a bug where the laser sight attachment was clipping with the rail cover on the M16A4.
  
• Fixed animation assignment issues with foregrip shotguns.
  
• Fixed an issue where first person sprint animations were not playing initially on spawn.
  
• Fixed an issue where the metal detectors on Ministry were not triggering audio correctly.
  
• Fixed an issue where no infographic icon was shown for the "slide" action in movement Lesson.
  
• Fixed an issue where entering the headshot state would not mute the auxiliary busses leading to some odd audible feedback.
  
• Fixed an issue where the default soundscape was not audible on the firing range.
  
• Fixed an issue where vehicle mines could be attached to players, even though it’s hilarious.
  
• Fixed an issue where the player class icon was shown as a white box on the scoreboard if a player had not yet selected a class.
  
• Fixed an issue where third person gear LODs (Level of Detail) were not generated correctly resulting in textures on gear changing at various distances.
  
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to toggle the Foregrip Bipod during the deploy sequence, leading to odd visual results.
  
• Fixed an issue where certain small visual elements of gear were still visible on players during the insertion truck sequence.
  
• Fixed an issue where the M82A1 CQ, VHS-2, QBZ-03 and M99 weapons had missing icons and would not be accounted for in all cases on the UI, including in spectator and the Profile menu.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Scoped Kills or Magnified Optics Profile stat were not being updated correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug with entering a vehicle with the hands being offset from the steering wheel.
  
• Fixed an issue in Spectator mode where if you change from first person to third person while a Commander had their binoculars out, the binocular overlay would persist when moving to another camera.
  
• Fixed an issue where replays would not run smoothly if the replay speed was set too high.
  
• Fixed an issue where draw and holster animations would not blend fluidly when sprinting in first person.
  
• Fixed an issue where when opening the Scoreboard for the first time, you would see “Spectators” at the bottom with no spectators listed.
  
• Fixed a very rare issue where the Security Heavy Backpack and Light Armor could potentially become warped.
  
• Fixed an issue where when reloading a drum magazine into an AK platform weapon, interrupting the reload, then resuming it, would allow players to shoot before the end of the reload sequence.
  
• Fixed an issue where two suppressors were available for the Tariq pistol in the Loadout menu.
  
• Fixed an issue where entering a resupply or spawn zone area would remove the player from the AI’s line of sight.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Commander’s left hand position would be incorrect when equipping their binoculars in third person.
  
• Fixed an issue with Lesson popup not showing the aim down sights key.
  
• Fixed an issue with Lesson popup not showing the crouch key.

• Weapons
  • Increased AKS-74U fire rate from 652 rounds per minute to 720 rounds per minute to give it closer parity with the Mk 18 CQBR.
    
  • Increased SVD Extended Magazine upgrade round count from 15 to 20 rounds at 2 supply points.
    
  • Set supply cost of the Compensators for Competitive Security Sharpshooter class to 4.
    
  • Set supply cost of Flash Hiders for Competitive Insurgent Assaulter class to 2.
    
  • Set supply cost of 4x SU230 for Competitive Insurgent Flanker class to 3.
    
  • Set supply cost of the Uzi Flash Hider upgrade to 2.
    
  • Increased the supply cost of pistol extended magazines from 1 to 2 supply for all competitive classes.
    
  • Uzi extended magazine supply cost for Insurgent competitive flanker class increased from 1 to 2 supply.
    
  • Mp7 extended magazine supply cost for Security competitive flanker class increased from 4 to 5 supply.
• Friendly fire damage reflection is now disabled in Local Play.
  
• Drum Magazine upgrades will now properly show that they affect horizontal recoil in the Loadout menu UI.

• Added new speed reload animations for drum magazine for AK style, M4A1 style, QBZ-03, and L85A2 weapons.
  
• Added new idle animations for the character Customize menu.
  
• Third person Hardcore Checkpoint sprint animations (and the newly added SlowMovement mutator) now have a unique animation for each weapon category.
  
• Added a scrolling text widget which applies to level, game mode, scoreboard and server names when the character amount is too high to display them in full.
  
• Third person free look animations while reloading are less restricted.
  
• Damage effects are now no longer shown when an attack failed to deal damage. Friendly fire messages are also not shown to players when attacks fail to deal damage.
  
• Improved quality of arm animation movement in 3P when reloading.
  
• Added weight to different menu idles, to control how often they play.
  
• New first base and foregrip draw animations for rifles.
  
• Insertion vehicles in Co-op now slightly restrict first person vertical movement.
  
• Changed the “Find Match” text to “Waiting For Leader” when the local player is not the leader of the party.
  
• Added support for replay events on the timeline, allowing the player to see colored event markers for the following:
  
  • Round Reset
    
  • Objective Capture
    
  • Objective Destroyed
• When throwing an explosive or grenade in third person, the grenade will now be removed from the hand when the throw animation completes.
  
• Update localization for all supported languages for new UI and menu elements.
  
• Added special idle animations for insertion truck bed sequences in Co-op.
  
• Improved sliding animation where character can turn their camera and head more while sliding.

• Gameplay on a community server can now be altered through the use of officially created “mutators”.
  
  • Mutators change gameplay in various ways including modifying player speed, increasing or decreasing supply points, disabling features like aim down sights or free-aim/aim deadzone, creating new classes with custom loadouts, and more. Multiple mutators can be applied to a server at once.
    
  • The limited time playlist system uses various mutators to create its unique game modes. See here for more information on the playlist system.
    
  • More mutators will be added over time.
    
  • Instructions on how to use mutators on your server can be found here.
• Available mutators:
  
  • Pistols Only - Only pistols are available along with normal equipment and explosives.
    
  • Shotguns Only - Only shotguns are available along with normal equipment and explosives.
    
  • Bolt-Actions Only - Only bolt-action rifles are available along with normal equipment and explosives.
    
  • Anti-Materiel Only - Only anti-materiel rifles are available along with normal equipment and explosives.
    
  • All You Can Eat - Start with 100 supply points.
    
  • Special Operations - Start with 30 supply points.
    
  • Warlords - Start with 10 supply points.
    
  • Guerrillas - Start with 5 supply points.
    
  • Strapped - Start with 1 supply point.
    
  • Broke - Start with 0 supply points.
    
  • Soldier of Fortune - Gain supply points as your score increases.
    
  • Headshots Only - Players only take damage when shot in the head.
    
  • Hot Potato - A live fragmentation grenade is dropped on death.
    
  • Ultralethal - Everyone dies with one shot.
    
  • Vampirism - Receive health when dealing damage to enemies equal to the amount of damage you dealt.
    
  • Bullet Sponge - Health is increased.
    
  • Locked Aim - Weapons always point to the center of the screen.
    
  • No Aim Down Sights - Aiming down sights is disabled.
    
  • Fast Movement - Move faster.
    
  • Slow Movement - Move slower.
    
  • Slow Capture Times - Objectives will take longer to capture.
    
  • Frenzy - Fight against AI enemies who only use melee attacks and enemies with special abilities.
    
  • Hardcore - Slows down movement speed and makes capturing objectives take longer. This is a combination of Slow Movement and Slow Capture Times mutators, and while mutators can be combined by the server operator, this mutator was still added for convenience.
    
  • Competitive - Equipment is more expensive, rounds are shorter, and capturing objectives is faster
    
  • Competitive Loadouts - Player classes are replaced with those from Competitive.

• Skirmish layouts for the following maps have been reduced in size and rebalanced:
  
  • Crossing
    
  • Farmhouse
    
  • Summit
• Outskirts
  
  • Adjusted white building near gas station to improve layout flow near Firefight Objective A.
    
  • Added Skirmish scenario.
• Crossing
  
  • Fixed an issue with the out of bounds area on Skirmish near objective D.
    
  • Fixed a rogue restricted area being placed below the C objective for Insurgents.
    
  • Added a bit more cover for Security approaching Objective A on Push Security.
• Farmhouse
  
  • Fixed an exploit where the player could capture Objective C from an unintended spot on Skirmish.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the restricted area covered an unintended position on Checkpoint Security B objective.
    
  • Fixed an issue with the playable area restricting players after B Push Security was captured.
    
  • Blocked a long sight line that could prevent a fair Insurgent approach to Objective D on Skirmish.
• Summit
  
  • Fixed an exploit where players could crouch jump into an unintended building.
    
  • Adjusted the C objective for Skirmish to be larger.
• Ministry
  
  • Adjusted playable area to have a bit of a safety net when players end up outside the map due to dismounting vehicles.
    
  • Added extra blocking volume for a few buildings with thin walls to avoid players from dismounting vehicles inside buildings.
    
  • Added new ambient sounds for the destroyed corridor on the upper floor.
    
  • Rearranged Firefight and Skirmish team spawns. Moved Security spawn forward to balance run-up times.
    
  • Prevented vehicles from entering the ministry building. Vehicles can now only access the parking garage.
• Precinct
  
  • Fixed an issue where players could jump on the cloth overhang in the market area and not be reached by bots in Frenzy Checkpoint.
    
  • Fixed an exploit where players could gain access to the top of a door frame on the main street.

• [Visual] Combat Goggles Security Eyewear cosmetic glass may be visible through smoke on certain settings. In addition, translucent surfaces behind smoke grenades can reveal player silhouettes.
  
• [Connection] Some players have reported issues with server connection or pings showing as '0'. If you experience this or have information on this issue please post here.
  
• [Audio] If the same level is loaded twice in a row online, the default soundscape (ambient level audio) stops working.
  
• [Visual] [AI] The insertion truck driver can sometimes T-Pose.
  
• [Appearance] In very rare cases after a level switch or team swap, some characters may render incorrectly and be displayed as the opposite team for specific players.
  
• [Animation] Cycling from your Secondary to Primary weapon while sprinting in Hardcore Checkpoint or using the SlowMovement or Hardcore mutators will cause the left arm to glitch when it returns to the weapon for certain weapons.

We are releasing a hotfix today for content update 1.4 which was released yesterday. This hotfix includes fixes for Frontline mode’s wave counter and timer as well as multiple crashes. See below for the full changelist:

• Fixed a major issue on Frontline where the wave counter was not being set to 0 correctly when it should have been on the final weapon cache objective.
  
• Fixed incorrect timer on Frontline.
  
• Fixed a crash on Outskirts Frontline caused by a corrupted restricted area UI element.
  
• Fixed a second crash caused by skeletal mesh merging, which is a system that optimizes character cosmetic rendering.
  
• Potential fix for a persistent crash caused by ragdoll creation.

• Fixed an issue where pressing “Mute All” to mute VoIP was not working as expected.
  
• Fixed an issue where both dead and living players on a team could not communicate in VoIP in Competitive Firefight.
  
• Fixed an issue with VoIP in competitive where the correct rules for VoIP were not being set.
  
• Fixed an issue where M24 or Mosin bolt-action rifles were not being granted to players when respawning in Hardcore Checkpoint after death.
  
• Fixed an issue where if the same map was loaded again the default ambient sounds would not play.
  
• Fixed an issue where throwing a mine to another player would deploy their bipod.
  
• Fixed an issue where cycling from your Secondary weapon to your Primary weapon in Hardcore Checkpoint or with the Slow Movement mutator enabled while sprinting would temporarily break the players left arm in first person as it transitioned back to the weapon.
  
• Fixed an issue where the forearm of the character in third person could glitch slightly when rotating.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Auto-cannon Strafe would be reported through Station’s voice over as completing twice.
  
• Fixed an issue where invisible walls were not correctly blocking vehicles, allowing them the possibility to gain access to the outsides of maps.
  
• Fixed a bug with the third person Galil not having the correct collision mesh which could potentially lead to it falling upright when dropped.
  
• Fixed a minor visual bug with the padding for the news popup button UI.

• Frontline matches will now last two rounds with a team switch after the first round.

• Allow server admins to disable special counter-attacks when mixing mutators such as Bolt-Action Rifles Only. This is set by enabling or disabling bUseRandomCounterAttackTypes. This can also be overridden using the travel URL as well.
  
• Update the minimum & maximum average match length for the following official playlist game modes to better reflect their estimated play-times.
  
  • Push
    
  • Frontline
    
  • Skirmish
    
  • Firefight
    
  • Hardcore Checkpoint

• Tweaked shading of the Security Shell jacket cosmetics.

• Hillside
  
  • Fixed an issue where players could become stuck between a minibus and a wall next to the gas station.
    
  • Fixed an issue where players could utilize a ledge above a staircase to camp the stairs.
    
  • Added a blocking volume by some lockers on the Firefight East B objective.
• Ministry
  
  • Fixed line of sight issues on Firefight and Skirmish spawns.

• [Visual] Combat Goggles Security Eyewear cosmetic glass may be visible through smoke on certain settings. In addition, translucent surfaces behind smoke grenades can reveal player silhouettes.
  
• [Connection] Some players have reported issues with server connection or pings showing as '0'. If you experience this or have information on this issue please post here.
  
• [Visual] [AI] The insertion truck driver can sometimes T-Pose.
  
• [Appearance] In very rare cases after a level switch or team swap, some characters may render incorrectly and be displayed as the opposite team for specific players.

Hey everyone, my name is Michael Tsarouhas. I am the lead game designer on Insurgency: Sandstorm. Today’s Community Update is about our upcoming new snow map Hillside, which is available right now on the Community Test Environment. Hillside is a recreation of the classic Insurgency map Sinjar and will be coming in our next content update. Sinjar has been around since the original mod release back in 2007, and was originally created by Jeroen van Werkhoven who is today, our lead level designer. To play Hillside, go to your Steam Library and download “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment” if you own Sandstorm.

Sinjar was one of our most brutal, challenging, and to some even outright unfair maps, as our community wouldn’t hesitate to tell you. Funny enough, our stats indicate Security wins a Sinjar Push map in Insurgency 2014 48% of the time, almost an even 50%. Even though there was this bile, Sinjar was one of our most popular maps, sitting as the third most popular Push mode layout in Insurgency 2014. Despite the difficulty for half the server, Sinjar always seemed to get the votes come map voting time. People loved to hate that Omaha beach style assault on objective A. We knew we had to have it again for Sandstorm, but this time with a bitter cold to accompany the bitter defeat.

We took some time to talk to our developers on our level design and art teams working on Hillside. First we have its original creator, Dutch lead level designer Jeroen van Werkhoven, now moved and sitting pretty in our Calgary studio. Jeroen will be answering questions on Sinjar’s design and history for a map that has seen the test of time since he released it over 10 years ago. Then we have Brian Birnbaum, originally a community mapmaker and the creator of Kandagal for Insurgency 2014 in our Gamebanana mapmaking contest. We liked Brian’s work so much that we hired him shortly after his submission, as we’ve been wont to do with many other developers on our team. Since then, he’s been an integral part of our level design team for every one of our projects, and is now heading up development of Hillside. Finally we have Matthias Schmidt, one of our environment artists who you might remember us mentioning a few Community Updates ago. Matthias helped beautify Ministry’s interiors, and now has helped create a completely unique new snow environment to serve as the backdrop for Hillside.


Jeroen: Pain in the ass!

Brian: Unauthorized health examination.

Matthias: Brace yourselves, winter is coming.




Jeroen: The original layout of Sinjar was created more than a decade ago when I joined the Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat mod team back in 2005. I remember while I was doing a rough design of the map an idea popped into my head to create something that was different, and very challenging for the Security team...Almost impossible.

While I was connecting the dots to find the gameplay and setting to fit in this criteria, I started visualizing a “D-Day” experience. I started with creating the hill and everything kinda fell into place for that area pretty quickly, but it wasn’t enough. It just didn’t feel complete, and I wanted to give the player a lot more freedom. So to achieve this, I had to make it a lot larger. It became this behemoth of a map that almost didn’t fit on the grid anymore inside the level editor. After a long period of finding ways to get around engine limitations, the map was ready for release shortly after the mod came out. It wasn’t so popular at the start, but I remember after a while more and more people started playing it. Eventually Sinjar became one of the most popular maps in the mod. Many years went by and Sinjar stayed very popular, and was even running on servers 24/7, which was an awesome feeling and quite surreal. Something I never expected!

I joined New World Interactive just after the release of Insurgency 2014 standalone. At that time Sinjar was one of the most requested maps to be recreated for the standalone version. It wasn’t a question of if we were going to do a Sinjar remake, but more when! The map wasn’t very long in development, I think we finished it in about two or three months, which was a very short development time. We wanted to release it as soon as possible to keep the momentum of adding fresh and significant free content to the game. It was interesting and kind of scary when the map was done to release it to the public. This version of Sinjar was on the gameplay side, not that different from the original, except for the bunker, which we removed. We noticed not many players went down in the bunker, and without it we could add more detail in the areas that had a higher player exposure. The art on the map however received a huge upgrade, and turned it into a more believable environment with improved performance. It didn’t take long until it became one of the most popular maps in the game, and this time it supported a lot more game modes.

Because of this continued popularity, remaking Sinjar yet again in Insurgency: Sandstorm made a lot of sense, and it’s been something we’ve wanted to do for a while since Sandstorm launched. We have so many more possibilities with Unreal Engine 4 compared to the Source engine on which the previous two Sinjar maps built. We hope it stays as popular as it has been!






Top: Sinjar remake “Hillside” in Insurgency: Sandstorm
Bottom left: Sinjar from the Insurgency mod, 2007
Bottom right: Sinjar from standalone Insurgency, 2014


Brian: Jeroen and I have been working together for some time now. I honestly always enjoy working with him, Jeroen is an excellent level designer. I loved hearing him talk about designing Sinjar for the mod, his ideas for the level when creating it, and his struggles. I’m glad to have gotten to work on a level he made. I didn’t want to mess up his baby, but I think we did a great job on the remake.

Jeroen: I really enjoyed working with Brian on the map, and not only designing it based on my vision and ideas. Of course we had to stay true to the vision of the original design, but there was still plenty of room to be creative and try new things. Brian took those opportunities and pushed it to ahum…the next level! We iterated a lot on the map until we were satisfied with the result. Brian and Jan Huygelen, (one of our other talented level designers who joined just after the initial gameplay pass) turned this map into something that I hope a lot of people will enjoy for a long time!


Brian: The hill (HELL) is longer and bigger than before! We had to make some changes for the different gameplay we have for Insurgency: Sandstorm. Now that we have Fire Support call-ins and vehicles, we needed to expand that area. But just in case the players find they don’t want to use those, we also added additional cover to the hill. The objective area itself is really close to the original. We added a roof area on one of the buildings in the objective which will make it a little harder to capture, but will also be a good place for snipers to use for the B objective after.

Jeroen: The hill was the main subject of many of our playtests. We definitely wanted to recapture that “How the hell do I get up this hill!!” feeling, but also try to add more options for Security to provide cover fire while their teammates are desperately trying to capture objective A. I think we added a few nice extras. There are more sniper spots this time around for Security to counter the hill’s defenses and call in fire support. Also, we added a bit more protection when exiting the spawn area.




Jeroen: We made quite a few adjustments to the map on the gameplay side, but I think the change of setting to snow makes it feel like a completely different map. Early in development while we were working on the blockout I felt the map was too similar to the Insurgency 2014 version. I have to thank the community for this. I remember reading the forums where multiple people asked for a snow map, and it popped into my head “Why not change Sinjar to a snow map?!” This also justified the name change to Hillside, to make the map fit better in our naming scheme of not using real world locations. Also, the interiors look so much better in Hillside. Jan and Brian made it feel and look more like an actual place.

Brian: From a gameplay standpoint when I blocked it out it was almost 1:1, but we ended up having to make some areas slightly larger for vehicles. We also had to expand the town area for a five objective layout. Visually there are a lot of changes. We wanted to have a mixture of our mud/old building styles with newer looking buildings as you go further into the town area of the level.

Matthias: I believe originally the map was supposed to be a straight recreation of the original, and a typical dry middle eastern environment. So when I started working on it there was no snow and ice, just our regular assets. Then someone came up with the idea of a snow environment. For me as an artist, this was a welcome change. Transforming the map into something different visually was a super fun task.


Jeroen: Gameplay is for me a lot about feeling and story. When the player spawns on this map, and especially when they spawn at the bottom of that hill, they will immediately notice a unique feeling. There is no time to sit back and plan your approach. It’s a full on attack, and once you make it up that hill, well you still have to plow through the cold, make it to the village, and finally destroy that beloved cache. Defenders on the other hand can enjoy the view and wait for their opponents to desperately try to crawl up that hill in unbearable cold.

Brian: Besides the hill and most players being in pain? Hillside is very vertical and there are a lot of places for players to sneak and use sniper positions. Because the level is linear it is also easy to tell where players will be coming from. Though don’t let that fool you, I added some fun flanking routes.


Matthias: The fact that it is our first snow map is of course the most obvious difference. It required us to create a lot of new level art. Our environment artists made a whole bunch of new modular sets and props, such as snow piles, icicles, etc. that really help selling the environment. I also created a new set of rocks/cliffs that fit the scenario as well as shaders for the snow and ice. Overall this makes it a drastically different map visually compared to anything that we have done before.




Matthias: First i did some research about how other games deal with winter landscapes and what people have done in UE4. There is some truly spectacular work out there, for instance the winter area in Red Dead Redemption 2. Unfortunately many of the shaders that make things look awesome in single player games or beautiful in portfolio scenes are too expensive for a multiplayer game where people are extremely aware of even slight performance hitches. So for instance, highly tessellated and dynamic snow effects on the ground were not an option.

Early in the development I began with creating a set of unique tiling materials, but soon I realized that I would have to recreate almost our entire material library for winter to give level designers a high degree of flexibility in their artistic choices. There was also the bigger issue of how we deal with making winter textures for all our props. Then I had the idea that I could just repurpose a snow shader that I was working on for the rocks/cliffs for pretty much everything. And with some trickery (blending just whitish color instead of a second actual snow material onto many things) that came at only a tiny performance cost. Not super fancy, but it does the job well. It had the welcome side effect that I could reuse our complete material library instead of having to make everything from scratch. From there our workflow was that level designers worked on the map like they would on any non-winter map, and then I would go in and “snowify” all assets that they have picked.


Jeroen: One challenge was to improve on the map and keep it balanced and fun, but still maintain the difficulty level of the original design. It has always been hard to win Push mode on this map as Security, and we wanted to keep that sense of difficulty. But at the same time, we still had to make sure it wasn’t totally unforgiving. So we made some changes to make sure it didn’t feel totally unfair as some players in the past have complained. This includes the extra cover on the hill itself, a building at the bottom, and also of course non level design related things like fire support and drivable vehicles. Even if the Security team doesn’t win, it’s important the player has a great experience and still feels willing to give it another shot next round. It’s a tricky balance though. We will continue to monitor how balanced and fun the map is, but our playtests so far internally and on the CTE have had positive results.

Brian: Creating a remake of a level from Half-Life 2 and Insurgency 2014’s Source engine is not easy. You have a few options. You can use a third party tool that can convert bsp (the Source level format) into meshes and import it into Unreal 4. Or you can go my route: Use a stop watch and time your run times from objectives to buildings and other things. This is harder and more time consuming, but will allow you to have more freedom and have a better feel for how the level will play in Unreal 4 and in the new gameplay of Insurgency: Sandstorm compared to Source.

Recreating the terrain was also an interesting process. How high do I make the hill, is the slope long enough, is the slope high enough? It took a lot of running around and tweaking to get it right. It was also a little difficult trying to fit vehicles when I was working with the version from Insurgency 2014. There were no drivable vehicles in our previous game, so I had to expand road areas and make routes for them. We also didn’t have a five objective Push mode layout before, only four objective. So coming up with a slightly expanded area for the level was a challenge. We had to make it feel like it fit.

Having to work on this level with multiple people is a challenge at times. There is a lot of communication involved when working on a level together. We had to split up Hillside into sections so Jan (another level designer), Matthias, and I could all work together at once. Jan and Matthias are in the Netherlands and Germany respectively, and I am in our Denver studio. Most of the time our work days wouldn’t overlap too much, and we could each be free to work on it without interruption. Other times someone might be working on an area you also need to work on, and you would need to just find something else to do in the meantime. Besides that, working with Jeroen, Matthias and Jan has been a lot of fun.


Jeroen: Hard to pick, everyone did a fantastic job on this map! The hill is still one of my favorite parts because it’s very iconic and I have a lot of fond memories designing the hill in the original version.

Brian: I loved working on the hill area. Sculpting that and making it feel right was a lot of fun. Adding extra cover on the hill up to Push mode’s objective A was an interesting task trying to balance right. Getting some rock meshes from Matthias was also something I fondly remember. Going around and placing them and making that entire area look pretty was a lot of fun!

Matthias: The area around the bridge came out really nice. It’s always a good feeling when others take something that I had a hand in (assets or materials) and turn it into something even better by being creative with it.




Jeroen: Many games inspired me to create Sinjar back in 2005. One of the games was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. I remember playing that for the first time and had goosebumps when I landed on that beach and had to fight my way up the hill. Another game was Deus Ex. Even though it’s very different from Insurgency, the amount of options the player has in Deus Ex to simply enter a room made it so much more immersive and fun! Also the Battlefield franchise, mainly Battlefield 1942, and Joint Operations are big inspirations for the original Sinjar design.

Brian: There are so many games I love to play. Recently I’ve been getting into racing and single player games. Detroit: Become Human has me glued to the TV, Same with Star Wars Battlefront II. Playing some of DICE’s games and looking at their level design is quite inspiring. Other than that, I like wasting my time in Dirt Rally.

Matthias: I love analyzing the art in other games, particularly materials, since this is my main occupation. In recent years games by Naughty Dog have been a huge inspiration as well as Assassin’s Creed games and Red Dead Redemption 2. I always try to stay in touch with what’s on the market, what gamers enjoy, and what new tools and workflows other developers use. AAA games have gotten a bad rap recently, but it’s still where the magic happens in regards to technology and art production. Artists in small teams like ours can learn a lot from bigger productions.

Thank you Jeroen, Brian, and Matthias for taking the time to answer these questions. Hillside will feature support for all game modes: Push, Firefight, Skirmish, Checkpoint, Hardcore Checkpoint, Frenzy, Team Deathmatch, and our upcoming new Versus mode Frontline. Plus, all of the mutated game modes we have planned with the limited time playlist system. We appreciate you taking the time to read this update, and be sure to follow us here and on social media for more info!

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Thanks!

Today we’re patching our Community Test Environment (CTE) to test the content in the upcoming version 1.4 game update. You can try out update 1.4’s new snow map, new game mode, new weapons, new cosmetics, and a brand new playlist system right now on the CTE by going to your Steam Library and downloading “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment”.

Please be aware that this is a developer test build of the game and you may encounter unexpected bugs or issues. Content shown in the CTE is not final and may or may not be implemented into the public version. There are no restrictions on recording, streaming, or discussing the CTE, however, it’s important to disclose that any footage or feedback is in relation to the test. The CTE will close at the end of the testing phase. Please see our blog or social media for details. Information on the CTE can be found here. We welcome your feedback on the CTE, so please direct any bug reports or general opinions to the CTE sub-forum here.

• Fixed an issue where Gravity Scale had been reset to 1.0 instead of the intended 1.2, this was the cause of floaty jumping.
  
• Potentially fixed an issue that could cause endless looping weapon audio, caused by an event that could trigger the looping fire event after a weapon had become un-equipped, such as firing on death. If you experience this in the CTE after this patch, please report it to us HERE.

• Frontline
  
  • Reduced round timer from 30 minutes to 20 minutes. As before, if the timer runs out, the team that owns the most objectives wins the round.
    
  • If there is one player on each team as the last one standing, zero reinforcement waves, and both objectives are contested, there is a forced respawn of both teams. This is to prevent an objective lockout situation in 1 v 1s where neither player has reason to leave an objective they’re capturing or else they will lose.

• Weapons
  
  • Increased SVD Extended Magazine round count from 15 to 20 rounds at 2 supply points.
    
  • Set supply cost of the Compensators for Competitive Security Sharpshooter class to 4.
    
  • Set supply cost of Flash Hiders for Competitive Insurgent Assaulter class to 2.
    
  • Set supply cost of 4x SU230 for Competitive Insurgent Flanker class to 3.
    
  • Set supply cost of the Uzi Flash Hider upgrade to 1.

• Friendly fire reflection is now disabled in Local Play.
  
• Drum magazine upgrades will now properly show that they affect horizontal recoil in the Loadout menu UI.

• Third person Hardcore Checkpoint sprint animations now have a unique animation for each weapon category.
  
• Added support for replay events on the timeline, allowing the player to see colored event markers for the following:
  
  • Round Reset
    
  • Objective Capture
    
  • Objective Destroyed

• Removed the following color variations from the Security soft shell jacket cosmetics for better visual recognition between the two factions:
  
  • Shell - Ranger Green
    
  • Shell - Dark Brown
    
  • Shell - Ranger Green
    
  • Shell Camo - Ranger Green
    
  • Shell Camo - Dark Brown
    
  • Shell Camo Rolled - Ranger Green
    
  • Shell Camo Rolled - Dark Brown
    
  • Shell Rolled - Ranger Green
    
  • Shell Rolled - Dark Brown

• When throwing an explosive or grenade in third person, the grenade will now be hidden from the hand when the throw animation completes.
  
• Updated the seat positions for Checkpoint insertion trucks.
  
• Update localization for all supported languages for new UI and menu elements.

• Fixed an issue where vehicle mines could be attached to players even though it’s hilarious.
  
• Fixed an issue where the player class icon was shown as a white box on the scoreboard if a player had not yet selected a class.
  
• Fixed an issue where third person gear LODs (level of detail) were not generated correctly resulting in textures on gear changing at various distances.
  
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to toggle the Foregrip Bipod during the deploy sequence, leading to odd visual results.
  
• Fixed a bug where spectating a player who had recently been in a vehicle would alter your own soundscape on spawn.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Customize screen where the new animations would play when customizing, sometimes hiding whatever option you were trying to customize.
  
• Fixed an issue where certain small visual elements of gear were still visible on players during the insertion truck sequence.
  
• Added missing LODs for the cold breath particle effect.
  
• Fixed an issue where weapons such as the M82A1 CQ, VHS-2, QBZ-03 and M99 would not be accounted for in all cases on the UI.
  
• Fixed an issue where the scoped kills or magnified optics Profile stat was not being updated correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug with entering a vehicle with the hand being offset from the steering wheel.
  
• Fixed an issue with Lesson popup not showing the aim down sights key.
  
• Fixed an issue with Lesson popup not showing the crouch key.

• Hillside
  • Fixed an issue where supply crates were not activating or deactivating correctly on Frontline.
    
  • Moved the B objective spawn point a little further back from the hill on Frontline.
    
  • Moved the D objective spawn point a little further back for the Insurgent team on Frontline.
    
  • Moved the supply crate closer to the new D objective Insurgent spawn on Frontline.

• Precinct
  
  • Fixed a line of sight spawn camping position into the Security spawn on Frontline.
    
  • Moved the following spawn points slightly further back on Frontline:
    
    • Insurgent objective E spawn point
      
    • Security objective B spawn point.
      
    • Insurgent objective F spawn point.

• Summit
  
  • Adjusted the C objective for Skirmish to be larger.
    
  • Set vehicle spawns to only spawn when final weapon cache objective is active on Frontline.

• Ministry
  
  • Added a new soundscape volume and data set for the destroyed corridor on the upper floor.

• Crossing
  
  • Fixed a rogue restricted area being placed below the C objective for Insurgents
    
  • Fixed a line of sight spawn camping position into the Insurgent spawn on Frontline.
    
  • Moved the C objective defender spawn a little further back to make it possible for the Security team to flank the cave objective on Frontline.
    
  • Moved the E objective Insurgent spawn slightly back to balance run-up time with the C objective Security spawn.

• Refinery

[/b]

• Reverted vehicle spawns to only spawn when final weapon cache objective is active on Frontline.

[/list]

• Farmhouse
  • Fixed an issue with the playable area restricting players after B Push Security was captured.

• [Visual] Combat Goggles Security Eyewear cosmetic glass may be visible through smoke on certain settings.
  
• [Connection] Some players have reported issues with server connection or pings showing as '0'. If you experience this or have information on this issue please post here.
  
• [Audio] If the same level is loaded twice in a row online, the default soundscape stops working.
  
• [Visual] [AI] The insertion truck driver can sometimes T-Pose.
  
• [Party System] Should a Party Host leave an on-going matchmaking game, the party members are not able to perform a seamless transition to the next server.
  
• [Appearance] In very rare cases, after a level switch or team swap, some characters may render incorrectly and be displayed as the wrong team.
  
• [Bots] There is a small percentage chance for a bot to spawn with a missing torso cosmetic.
  
• [Audio] Sliding sounds may sometimes not play. This was fixed for footsteps as written above, but still remains for sliding.