In anticipation of our Spring update, we will be previewing some upcoming content on the Community Test Environment. Go to your Steam Library and download “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment” to play. The CTE will be open from Thursday, March 5 from 10:00 AM MST until 1:00 AM on Monday, March 9.

We’ll be running a “Play with the Devs” event on the CTE on Thursday, March 5 (in Versus Matchmaking) & Friday, March 6 (in Co-op Matchmaking) from 11:00 AM MST - 1:00 PM MST.

We’ll be testing on the US East servers in the official matchmaking, NOT on a server under Community Servers as we’ve done in the past. To join us, just boot up the CTE, please set matchmaking regions to US East, go to Play, select Versus (on Thursday) and Co-op (on Friday), and Find Match. All of the devs won’t necessarily be in one game, but you’ll see us floating around your matches!

During the CTE we will be restricting the playlists to focus solely on the new content. On Co-op there will be one playlist called New Map: Power Plant and on Versus there will be two options, New Map: Power Plant and New Domination Maps

• Precinct
• Outskirts
  
• Refinery
  
• Summit
  
• Power Plant

• ACE 52

• Tavor 7

Please note that the Tavor 7 is currently not textured, but we want player feedback on the feel and balancing of the weapon

• Improvements to Spectator and Replay System: Improved spectator camera after being killed to point in direction of killing shot or explosion
• Improved Main Menu Communication
• Improved Controller Support
  
• Map Voting: Selecting "Random" during map vote will no longer launch the same scenario
• Show XP boost on Playlist UI
• Improvements to Insurgent fire support

In addition to the content above, our team continues to focus on optimisation.

Once the CTE goes live, we will have a survey linked in the Message of the Day, you can also post your feedback in our Steam CTE Sub Forum here. We will NOT be collecting feedback anywhere else but these two places. Please ensure to use the search function in the Sub Forum to see if your feedback/question has already been posted, and stick to ONE topic per thread.

See you on the CTE!


- DaraDef
Community Manager

Hello,

For PAX East 2020, we are excited to announce that Insurgency: Sandstorm will release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on August 25th, 2020. With over one million players in the game’s first year on PC, the award-winning tactical shooter is renowned for its realistic depiction of modern warfare focusing on lethal close-quarters combat, objective-oriented multiplayer and cooperative gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74iltAzkcmo

Insurgency: Sandstorm invites console players to prepare for a hardcore depiction of combat with deadly ballistics, destructive artillery, and unprecedented audio design that puts the fear back into the genre. Death comes fast, ammunition must be carefully managed, and the environment must be tactically navigated at every step towards victory.



“The console market has been craving a hardcore modern-day tactical shooter for a long time. Expanding our tried and tested PC formula to the console market is a huge step in our company’s evolution and we are excited to bring our signature style of tactical FPS to the console market for the very first time” - Keith Warner, President.

Insurgency: Sandstorm is now available on Steam and will launch on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on August 25th, 2020. Stay tuned for more information.

Meet us at PAX East on the Focus Home Interactive booth (#29017).

Hey all! We have noted that there could be some more communication from the team beyond the State of Production posts. So I'm resurrecting the community blogs that were produced a few times before I came on board with NWI. To differentiate from the SoP posts, these blogs will be more community-focused. This could include promoting community events, sharing content - screenshots, videos, etc., community spotlight interviews with members, and more!

First off, I don’t think I ever did a proper introduction! I’m DaraDef. I’m the Community Manager for New World. I was born and raised here in Calgary (where New World HQ is). I grew up playing Nintendo 64 (GoldenEye 007, Gauntlet Legends, and Mario Party FTW), Goosebumps books, and watching Pokemon - Classic 90s kid! I got into PC games when a friend introduced me to Counter-Strike 1.6 when I was in 8th grade, which I quickly became obsessed with. Since then, gaming and pop culture have been an integral part of my life.



I graduated from Mount Royal University with a degree in Communication and even made a gaming club while I was there called Club N3Rd. My favourite weapons in Sandstorm are the VHS-2 and the QBZ-03. Being community manager for NWI so far has been awesome! I’ve met a lot of great community members, and I'm looking forward to the future, and making more of these blog posts!

We recently rolled out the first phase of our alpha level editor to a group of 200 awesome modders. This is the full Unreal Engine editor that we use internally. It allows you to create maps, custom gamemodes, mutators, and theaters.

Since we released the alpha build of our level editor, we have already received valuable feedback on the current state of the tools and documentation. We included a quick-start guide with our tools to allow everyone to create exciting new levels for Insurgency: Sandstorm.

The initial rollout has been primarily focused on custom maps, but the tools are capable of a lot more than that. We’ve included a custom Blueprint which you can use as an example of how to create custom gamemodes. We’re looking to expand the capability of the tools over time and expose more functionality through Blueprint scripting.

When we’re ready to release mod support to the public, you’ll be able to browse, subscribe, and automatically download mods through our in-game mod menu. In addition, you will automatically download any mods required to play customized community servers.

We're looking forward to publicly rolling out the first phase of our mod tools this Spring which will feature the level editor, mutators, and custom gamemodes.

Here is a sneak peak of a couple of maps being worked on by the community!

From @iTomBass


"In terms of the actual map, it's coming along nicely, it still super early but the main theme I am aiming for is a heavy urban environment with my main inspiration coming from the Battlefield 3 DLC “Aftermath” I've also taken inspiration from many real-world locations with areas of conflict; watching a couple [of] documentaries always tends to give me some cool ideas."



"Right now, a lot of the map is super basic and blocky. I'm generally just trying to get an idea for the space, and I haven't really gotten into many small details nor really meshing interiors. I'm generally just having fun! I think progress isn't too bad especially considering I missed out on the first wave of keys and had to jealously watch others in the discord channel for a week before I could start."





"That's about all I can say right now, I'm really loving the mod tools ATM and back when Sandstorm was announced a few years ago I made a promise to myself that I'd hopefully try to make myself at the forefront of the mapping scene for it when it was to release...so we will see how things go. And I'd just like to thank you and the rest of NWI for creating such an amazing game!"

From @invalid_nick
Map: Wolf-Land

"Ever since I first got my hands on Insurgency I've wanted to play in a forest environment, this map takes inspiration from the Caspian Hyrcanian forest in northern Iran. It’s very lush, very green, with 40-50 meter high beech trees. I started designing this map when I first heard that the Sandstorms tools were coming, so far I've spent about 10 hours playing around with the Insurgency tools and roughly 20 hours creating the map. The map is divided into three distinct themes: pasture farmlands with stables and cabins, dense forest with rocks and creeks, and a clear-cut logging area."


This vista image shows some of the surroundings. Another layer of high snow covered mountains will be added in the distance.


This image shows a road leading through the forest. On this humid morning, the fog lies dense in the forest.


This image was grabbed close to the river at the bottom of the valley where the fog is most dense.

"The fog is based on height; the higher up you are in the map the further you can see. [it] also plays an important part in the uniqueness of the gameplay. Dense fog means shorter distance and easier to sneak past enemy defences."

Currently, the map only has firefight-mode implemented, but I'm aiming to support all major game modes. It's very early in development and I've only tested it with bots, I'm looking forward to at some point releasing it to the community and hear what everyone has to say!

Having recently rolled out our Partner Program, it’s time to showcase one of our partners! Meet streamer and content creator, xSinpaiix. I had the chance to ask Sinpaii a few questions about getting into gaming, Sandstorm, and content creation.



Q: Let's start with who you are - a brief introduction. How did you get involved in gaming, and how did that transition to streaming/content creating?
A: Hello everyone my name is Sinpaii (pronounced Sin-Pie) I’m a Twitch/Youtube content creator & also dabble in neon animation. I got my start in gaming with the Sega Genesis and have been in love ever since. My first game was Mortal Kombat so I was essentially raised to be Kompetitive.

Q: Are there any content creators that you look up to?
A: I look up to small content creators who work for their goals. Those streamers & content creators with the Mamba mentality the ones who love what they do and never give up. There are tons of dope big content creators as well that I love to see succeed. But Sinpaii is more of a started from the bottom now we here sort of guy. Speak anything you want into existence.

Q: When did you play your first FPS? What was it, and why did you like it?
A: I honestly cannot remember my very first FPS, I want to say it was GoldenEye, But my most vivid memories are that of my brother and I playing Time splitters 2 and me being the ape running around the arena killing things. I think I’ve been in love ever since.

Q: How did you get into Insurgency: Sandstorm?
A: I played source around the same time sandstorm was in beta. At the time if you owned source you could get Sandstorm at a discount. So I bought it and immediately fell in love.

Q: What is your favourite mode?
A:Competitive firefight without a doubt. My runner up is Push.

Q: What keeps you coming back to the game?
A: It’s the gunplay and immersion that I just can’t get away from. I play other fps, but there always seems to be something missing. I love how grounded in realism it is. And those moments where shit hits the fan.

Q: What was your biggest accomplishment in the game?
A: Probably some of my weapon review videos! All of which I record in Max fidelity, & in 4k for the community, hope you guys enjoy! Insurgency Sandstorm - AK-74 Weapon Review (4K)

Q: What upcoming content are you looking forward to?
A: In order:
1: As-Val (please gibs)
2: Mod support
3: More official Maps

Q: What do you get up to when you're not streaming or gaming?
A: I’m practicing neon animation that appears in my gameplay & other videos, brewing coffee, EATING FOOD & falling asleep, then waking up to a random YouTube video that has nothing to do with what I was watching.

Q: Will we see you in the upcoming DGL Tourney?
A: Possibly! That all depends on my schedule. If I am unable to participate in this one, you will eventually see Sinpaii competing in a DGL tourney. !So Linkypoo

That’s it for now! Be sure to check out Sinpaii’s content below.

Twitch: http://twitch.tv/xSinpaiix
Youtube: xSinpaii
Twitter: @xSinpaiixTV
Instagram: @xSinpaiix

As an effort to further improve our communication, we have fired back up our regular Twitch live streams. We will be streaming every 2nd Wednesday of the month. I’ll feature some gameplay if there’s new content or limited modes to show, and then follow with a Q&A with Mikee, our Lead Game Designer. We’ll answer questions from the chat as well as some pre-made questions collected from the Steam Forums. For the next stream on Wednesday, February 27 at 2:00 PM MST, I'll be away at PAX East! So Mikee and Lead Level Designer, Jeroen Van Werkhoven will be taking over the stream, giving a sneak peak of the new upcoming map Power Plant, and continuing to field questions from the chat. Be sure to follow us on Twitch and turn notifications on to see when we go live! You can check out our last live stream here.


The Digital Gaming League (DGL) is hosting their second International Insurgency: Sandstorm World Cup on Saturday, March 7 and Sunday, March 8. For more information and to sign up click here.

The Sandstorm Esports League (SEL) season 1 kicked off on February 15. Be sure to check out a few matches tomorrow on their Twitch channel.
Match Schedule:
1st game: TAW vs RAGE :: 5 PM CET
2nd: Spice Boiz vs MOLOT :: 7 PM CET
3rd: SoB vs ERROR :: 8 PM CET

If you’re planning a competitive event or would like to promote your league, please reach out to me at ddefreitas@newworldinteractive.com


Lastly, I'd like to announce that we will be adding double XP across all playlists the last weekend of each month, starting at 11:00 AM MST on Friday, February 27 - 11:00 AM MST Monday, March 1.

That's it for now folks! Thanks for being a part of the community, and talk to you soon!

- DaraDef
Community Manager

Double the hardcore. Double the pant-shitting. Jump into our next limited time Co-op playlist, Double Hardcore. Everyone dies with one shot! On until March 3.



Let us know in the comments what limited time playlist you'd like to see next!

Greetings!

My name is Derek, and I am the Head of Production at New World Interactive. I hope that the new year is treating everyone well thus far, and that everyone is feeling refreshed after the holiday! This month’s SoP will be a little lighter in terms of content, but I’ll be sharing some details about what we’re working on and working towards throughout the Spring. Without further ado, let’s jump right into it!


Key Points of State of Production #5

• PAX East presence + details of where and who will be there from NWI.
  
• Hitreg/De-Sync issue commentary + where we’re at in resolving this issue
  
• Player Reporting Features: Expansion of basic support
  
• Tournaments, prizes, competitions, partnership program, and more!
  
• New content + new map + next update teaser
  
• Adding Domination layouts to all maps to expand mode accessibility
  
• A.I. overhaul to improve the co-op experience in terms of consistent behaviors

If you weren’t aware, New World Interactive will be attending PAX East in Boston with our publisher and partner, Focus Home Interactive! We’ll be demoing a playthrough of the game in a co-op capacity, and on controllers. A large part of this will be related to publicly testing some adjustments we’re making to our controller support for the PC version, in anticipation of our console release. What you play at PAX East will likely serve as the foundation for controller configurations for the console release later this year, but we are also looking to hear feedback on what we have so far.

PAX East will include several key members of staff whom the community likely knows and loves, including our Communication Director Jon Higgins, and our Community Manager DaraDef. If you’re attending PAX East, make sure to swing by and check out our booth (#29017), and meet some key members of the team!


While we’ve received reports of this in the past, the inconsistent nature of this bug has made it extremely elusive to track down for our development team. Unfortunately, I am sad to report that this bug seems to have re-emerged, both in terms of prevalence and frequency. Internally, we’ve created a dedicated strike team to track down and identify the root cause. We have explored numerous solutions to this problem, but thus far, our initial hypotheses and testing hasn’t revealed a definitive cause. Our Technical Director, Steve Swires, has also opened a support ticket with Epic, just to ensure that this issue isn’t an engine-level conflict.

Additionally, we’ve enlisted the help of the community, and thanks to the community’s efforts, we’ve been able to hone in on a few likely start points for the problem. We have been aware of this issue since last week, but at my discretion, we have not deployed a hotfix at this time. There are multiple reasons for this:

• Initial regression tests related to proposed hot-fixes were unsuccessful, and in some cases, exacerbated the issue
  
• We have been experiencing a slew of illnesses within the studio, likely related to weather changes and the fierce Calgary winter
  
• I did not wish to deploy an experimental hotfix on Friday that may not have fixed the issue, but COULD have further complicated the issue/added additional problems.

I’d also like to take a moment to apologize for the impact that this issue has created for all of our players. I’d also like to take a moment to apologize for the disruption that these bugs have had on our ranked queues, on tournament planning and league-based play, and on our general players’ quality of life experience in-game. I know both the SEL and the DGL have been forced to postpone defining some key dates for some tournaments they want to conduct in the Spring. I fully accept the responsibility for how this has been addressed and handled, and quite frankly, we’re learning a lot from this experience, too. We know this is an extremely frustrating problem, and we’ve already reached out to Epic Games to see if they can clarify if this is an engine-related conflict. I wish there was a better explanation for why this is such a timely endeavor, but we had to work our way through this process, which unfortunately has taken a degree of time longer than initially anticipated.

As for resolution, it is impossible to know for sure if this will impact the issue at-scale, but we are planning to deploy a hotfix this week. Based on initial waves of testing, it appears to be a successful fix for the issue. If it doesn’t fix the issue, we’ll spin up a community “Mega-thread” and try to collect as much information as possible, and proceed forward with working the problem more completely.





Firstly, I’d like to thank our community for taking full advantage of using our 1.0 version of the player reporting tool! Participation rates were significantly higher than we expected for our first iteration, and it highlights the value of this implementation for us as a company. From the first month we introduced this feature into the game till today, we had over 51,000 reports, with an average of 870 reports a day!

I thought it might be fun to share some of the stats related to this with the community, so I asked our Lead Automation Engineer, Phen, to scrape some data and stats to share publicly.

• The most reports we saw in one day was 2075 during the free weekend in December, or 1.5 reports per minute of that day.
  
• We saw a drastic increase in the average number of “Team Killing” reports during free weekend, with a peak of 269 counted teamkilling reports in a single day. We suspect this is due to the volume of new and returning players.
  
• Out of all the reports 52% of them contain comments about what happened
  
• A little over 90% of the reports with a comment can fit in a SMS Text Message (160 Characters).
  
• Our highest reported players are due to hacking/cheating reports, with the worst offender having 135 reports - this user has since been banned!
  
• We receive two times more reports during the hours of 2:00 PM MST to 10:00 PM MST.

We’re planning to expand upon the capabilities here later in the year, but for the interim, this early version is serving its purpose well-enough that we can shift development efforts to more critical studio needs.



Back in October, we had a few open meetings with the competitive community on Discord to collect feedback as well as explore ideas to improve the competitive scene. We have since created a competitive leaderboard where players can keep track of their score/placement in Competitive.

Additionally, we have increased the visibility of our community's competitive events by better supporting and promoting tournaments through all of our social media platforms. This month, we were excited to support The Digital Gaming League’s first tournament of the year. The Newblood PUG tournament was catered to players new or less experienced in the competitive scene. Congratulations to the winners: Nate.cr, LsteveTM, werewolf, papadeuce, and Toasty Joe!

Quick Stats:

• Number of teams: 8
  
• Twitch Average Viewers (on DGL Channel): 148
  
• Live Views: 8,783
  
• Time Streamed: 4 hours and 39 minutes
  
• Average Chatters: 77
  
• Average Match Length: 25-35 minutes

You can watch the Newblood tournament vod here. The next DGL tournament is the World Cup on February 22/23 1:oo PM - 7:00 PM EST. Those looking to find teams can join the DGL Discord. The Sandstorm Esports League is another community league that we have been working closely with to support. Registration for the SEL Pro League Season 1 is open now. Register here! If you are interested in the SEL and upcoming events please join their Discord.

We rolled out the Sandstorm Partnership Program for content creators on January 15th! The goal of the program is to help creators build their channels and communities around Sandstorm to continue to grow across Youtube and Twitch. The perks the partners will be getting are ingame cosmetics, codes for giveaways, partner merch. With a focus on growth opportunities such as streaming on the steam store page, and networking opportunities with other partners. Some of you may already know some of the partners as they are well known in the community, but some will be fairly unknown as we look in bringing new channels to Sandstorm from competitors. We’ll be announcing the first wave very soon!


We know it has been awhile since we’ve released a content update. Our last content update occurred on September 10th, 2019. Rest assured our next major content update will be coming in the Spring.

Originally, we had planned to release a console-exclusive map for a limited time period. The map in question, “Power Plant”, would be released with a 2-week exclusivity window for consoles, and would then be released on PC a bit later. We thought this would be a great way of generating some excitement, hype, and a degree of ownership amongst console players, and would grant them temporary access to a map that they’d have the chance to experience slightly earlier than our PC community. However, after consulting with our porting and publishing partners, they suggested that we not proceed in this direction. As such, we’ve been working on a perfectly new, functional, ready-to-go map. Instead, we’ve opted to release this map in our Spring update. We’ll continue testing it over the next few weeks to have it in a better state before deployment. We hope you’ll like it; it takes place in a unique setting that you haven’t seen before yet in Sandstorm.



Furthermore, the community has been asking for new weapons for awhile. We’ll be shipping 2 new weapons in our Spring update as well. Additionally, we’ll be putting out a few new cosmetic items, for both the Security and the Insurgents, including the headset, leather jacket, and mask.


Given how well-received the introduction of our Domination mode was when we deployed it last year, we thought the community might enjoy being able to play the mode on every map in the game. As such, in our Spring update, players will be able to play Domination on all existing maps, as well as any maps we release in the future.

Additionally, we made several improvements relating to spawn locations based on your feedback. We had several reports from players where they were spawning in the wrong direction, looking away from the objectives, as well as spawning too close to objectives or in the middle of a room directly in the line of fire.



For a long while, the co-op enthusiasts within our community have been hankering for some updates and changes geared towards the PvE side of gameplay. Your pleas have been heard. With our biggest update ever planned for later this year (codenamed “Nightfall”) we’ll need to implement and re-factor certain aspects of the AI to ensure they are able to behave intelligently within the context of this release. This includes improving the consistency of AI behavior for both day and night maps, better-supporting new and community-created Co-Op modes, and future modes that we release to the community.

I know this is just a bread-crumb trail, but I still wanted to share it, even if it is a bit early, so that co-op players know that we’ve not forgotten about them!



Many players in the community have been asking for more communication from the team beyond these State of Production posts. Now that our office setup is completed and streaming gear acquired, our Community Manager DaraDef will be livestreaming on our Twitch channel playing Sandstorm and doing a Q&A every second Wednesday. Our next stream is Wednesday February 12, 2:00 PM Mountain Time and the one after that on February 26th. If you missed the livestream from this past Wednesday, you can check it out here.

Additionally, Dara will be starting a Community Blog, differing from the State of Production posts in that it will be community focused - announcing contests, promoting community events, sharing community content, and more.

That’s all for this State of Production, we’ll be back with more information soon! Be sure to follow @InsurgencyGame on social media for regular bite-sized updates.

Note: This Steam news version is tailored for PC players, the full version is available on our website.

• Fixed a frequent crash encountered by certain players during the splash screen sequence or shortly after arriving at the main menu.
  
• Fixed a potential server crash caused by the code that checks for spawn locations.
  
• Fixed a potential server crash caused by the soundscape system if it encountered an invalidly set soundscape.

• Fixed an issue where after firing an underbarrel grenade launcher, then reloading, should the player immediately resupply, equipping the grenade launcher again and firing it would not result in projectiles being shot.
  
• Fixed an issue that would allow players to slide just as they landed from a jumping crouch which was not the intended behavior.
  
• Fixed an issue where launchers could always get an additional +1 to ammo no matter their carrier level.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented the “Grounded” achievement from being obtainable when using a rocket launcher to destroy a helicopter.
  
• Fixed an issue where during modes such as Domination if you immediately respawned it was possible to see the killer information panel fade out twice.
  
• Fixed an issue where grenade particles would remain on round start even if thrown during the “Game Starting” phase.
  
• Fixed an issue where during the last frames of the M24 dry reload animation the left arm would move in an erratic manner.
  
• Fixed an issue where the third person reload animation for the Mosin would not show the hand following the bolt correctly at the end of the reload animation.
  
• Fixed an issue where the lesson panel popup would not have the text correctly aligned if running the game in certain languages.
  
• Fixed a visual issue with the M45 and M1911 that would show any barrel attachment as floating slightly in front of the weapon in the loadout menu.
  
• Fixed an issue where first time players would not see the correct key bindings prompts displayed for the crouch and vault lessons.

• Infinite resupply in spawn zones either from the loadout menu or resupply crate is now only available for 45 seconds after the round has started and the player has remained inside said spawn zone.

• Created a new set of unique third person standing reload animations for the Mosin-Nagant.

• Summit
  • Fixed a major player collision issue near to the E objective on Checkpoint Security which would allow players to pass through the geometry.
    
  • Fixed an issue where certain rocks were clipping with a building.
    
  • Fixed an issue allowing an unintended sight line into the spawn area on Firefight East.
• Hideout
  • Fixed a large number of clipping issues that would allow the player to become stuck if vaulting over certain props.
    
  • Adjusted the playable area for Firefight East.
• Refinery
  • Fixed a major player collision issue which would allow players to fall through a specific metal catwalk.
    
  • Fixed various minor prop clipping and texture stretching issues.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the player could vault through a chainlink fence prop.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the player could pixel walk on the ledge of a building.
    
  • Fixed an issue where a number of floating street lamp props could be seen throughout the map.
    
  • Fixed some ground texture seam issues.
• Hillside
  • Fixed an issue on Push Security where the vehicle would not spawn for players due to its spawner being invalid.
    
  • Fixed an issue allowing players to capture the A objective on Domination while hidden behind a curtain.
    
  • Fixed an issue where players on the B objective on Domination could capture the objective from an unintended place.
    
  • Fixed a number of misleading door props that look like they could be opened by the player.
    
  • Fixed an issue that would allow the player to get under a specific surface when deploying their bipod.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the player could become stuck when jumping in areas near to the Insurgent spawn or Security spawns.
• Ministry
  • Fixed various spots where the player could become stuck between geometry.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the player could pixel walk on the ledge of a staircase leading to the underground parking lot.
• Outskirts
  • Fixed an exploit where players could spawn camp the enemy team at the C objective on Security Push.
• Precinct
  • Fixed a camping spot that would allow players to obtain an unfair advantage.
    
  • Fixed an issue where a number of floating street lamp props could be seen throughout the map.
• Crossing
  • Fixed an out-of-bounds path that was not included in the playable area.

• Addressed a number of additional console commands and ini variables that players could exploit to gain an unfair advantage during public matches.
  
• Addressed a console command exploit that would allow players to kill themselves before a match began to provide dropped weapons and gear for their team mates.

• Reworked rankings to more accurately represent top players

• Corrected an issue for most players that could cause desync and ghost bullets when firing relating to the resupply interaction.
• Fixed an additional number of console and ini based foliage exploits.

In the next few minutes, we will be rolling out a small server-side fix for an issue affecting purchased cosmetics not showing until the game was restarted.

This very small patch will take effect the next time you relaunch the game, this should not cause disruption to games already in progress.

Enjoy the Free Week!

This week marks one year since the PC launch of Insurgency: Sandstorm during this time our team at New World Interactive have been busy continuing to build and expand the game.

To celebrate our one year anniversary on Steam, we are excited to give all players an opportunity to experience our immersive team-based, tactical FPS during our 1 year anniversary Free Week which kicks off December 10th until December 17th.

Since release, we've added free new content through several updates including 3 new maps, 4 new game modes, 10 new weapons, dozens of cosmetics, player reporting, and more.

There's never been a better time to hop into the game. Check out our anniversary trailer below for a recap of the past year and a preview of what's still to come in 2020!

Greetings!

My name is Derek, and I am the Head of Production at New World Interactive. I am happy to share this holiday season update with all of you! This month we’ll be discussing several key development decisions related to our game, some of which many users have likely been waiting to hear about for quite some time. Our efforts at optimization are well underway, and I’m excited to have some guest commentary from our Level Design Director pertaining to these efforts.

Firstly, we’ll be hosting a FREE WEEK for Insurgency: Sandstorm from December 10th - December 17th. This will fall on the heels of our most recent update, Update 1.5. We wanted to be able to showcase how far our game has come since we released nearly a year ago and given our success related to free weekends, we thought we might try a longer duration for the event. Secondly, over the past month, we enrolled the assistance of Altagram to further our localization efforts. Insurgency is now localized into 15 additional languages, which further improves our reach to players from various regions around the world. This is the perfect time to give our game a try or to recommend it to friends!

Additionally, we’ll be taking our first shot at rolling out a leaderboard feature, which will be further supplemented with a reset to rankings, as well as some adjustments to decay rates. We’ve created and rolled out a brand new support website, which should drastically improve our forward-facing service capabilities for troubleshooting, bug reporting, and providing feedback to the development team. In an effort to help better enforce our community guidelines, as well as to improve our player’s general experience, we have also rolled out an alpha version of a player reporting system. This should help us to slowly and steadily document toxic behavior that is prevalent in our game, and to identify the worst offenders for eventual removal from our ecosystem.
I’ll be closing with some announcements pertaining specifically to our alpha rollout of modding tools, some prior commitments we have determined we will not be supporting moving forward, and some updates on the console release. Without further ado, let’s dive into SoP#4!

Key Points of State of Production #4

• Optimized map performance for Outskirts, Precinct, Refinery, and Summit
  
• Introducing localization to 15 new regions for Insurgency: Sandstorm
  
• Introducing a competitive leaderboard, competitive rank reset, and adjustments to rank decay
  
• Introducing Support Desk 2.0; Getting help when you need it
  
• Introducing a prototype “Player Reporting System” as a means of measuring, messaging, and tracking of toxic behaviors within our community
  
• Alpha rollout of our first wave of modding tools for content creators and enthusiasts
  
• Redaction of select commitments
  
• Console Updates

Optimized Map Performance

In a continuous push to improve our game’s performance, one of the first necessary elements was to try and improve the memory requirements and frame rates of some of our most demanding maps. As mentioned in the previous SoP, the 4 maps we chose to focus on were Outskirts, Precinct, Refinery, and Summit. In order to best detail some of these changes, I’ve invited our Level Design Director, Jeroen van Werkhoven, to provide additional commentary and detail on this month’s SoP.

“Over the last couple of months we have been working on improving the performance in the four maps Derek stated above. Our main goal was to improve frame rate and peak memory usage. We noticed in our benchmarks that, even though we previously conducted optimization passes, that some of our maps are still using a high amount of memory, and the frame rate isn’t always optimal and inconsistent. The first map we conducted our optimization pass on was Outskirts. We went through the map with our Art Director, Michael Grills, and the art team was able to find opportunities to optimize the level further. We didn’t look at it directly from a technical standpoint, but more from how the player would experience the level. We repeated the same steps for our other maps.

Sometimes it would mean simply cutting things from the maps, like reducing grass or removing props that were barely visible for the player and don’t have an impact on gameplay. Also, we had a large number of merged meshes in our levels. A merged mesh is a set of modular assets combined into a single mesh. We used this technique to improve the frame rate, but at the same time, this leads to increased memory usage because each mesh is unique. Precinct’s peak memory was close to 6GB, which had a significant performance impact on lower spec machines. We reduced it to nearly 5GB. Outskirts average FPS was previously 69, and now in our latest benchmark it climbed to 92. On Refinery and Summit we improved the FPS stability; less severe frame drops should occur. Of course, we have to wait for the results on different machines when the update goes live, but the numbers so far look very promising.”

Insurgency: Sandstorm: Now Available in over 20 Languages!

One of our biggest initiatives within Insurgency: Sandstorm is to expand the visibility of our title to numerous new regions and demographics across the globe. In the original Insurgency, our translation efforts were predominantly done by community volunteers. This helped us to improve our reach, but at a quality level that left a lot to be desired. We recognized the value of this community initiative, which is why we recently collaborated with Altagram to help localize our game in over 15 new regions. Insurgency: Sandstorm is now available in the following languages:

• Czech
  
• Danish
  
• Dutch
  
• Finnish
  
• Hungarian
  
• Japanese
  
• Korean
  
• Norwegian
  
• Polish
  
• Portuguese (Portugal)
  
• Portuguese (Brazilian)
  
• Swedish
  
• Thai
  
• Chinese (Simplified)
  
• Chinese (Traditional)
  
• Turkish
  
• English
  
• French
  
• German
  
• Italian
  
• Russian
  
• Spanish (LATAM)

Leaderboards + Rank Reset + Adjustments to Ranked Decay

Over the past 30 days, we have made a concentrated push to start talking with our competitive community. We hosted several community discord sessions, began a dialogue with the leadership of the DGL, and have even discussed plans to collaborate with competitive organizations to expand tournament participation and visibility. These talks are on hold while we act on the first wave of feedback. As we continue to assess and evaluate what we’d like to do vs. what we are actually able to do, we chose a few of the highly-requested features to implement in the holiday update. We’ll resume our dialog with these organizations in the beginning of 2020.

Some of the feedback we’ve discussed related to a lack of queuing and participation. There were many attributable factors at play here, but one commonly recurring statement related to competitive rank decay being too minimal to encourage people to regularly queue and play. Given that we’re hosting a free week from December 10th - December 17th, which may appeal to players who also have a competitive mindset, we decided we’d like to reset all rankings in an effort to measure participation from a day-1 perspective. This will give us the ability to identify participation rates and the impact of reducing ranked decay. In an effort for players to have better visibility into participation rates, their standing within the community, and their overall ranking, we’re also introducing a competitive leaderboard that will be available via your web browser. After we collect and weigh said-feedback, we can determine what additional development time (if any) would be dedicated towards fleshing it out more comprehensively.

Introduction of our New Support Site

One of the most persistent problems we’ve experienced as a company historically was a lack of bandwidth to provide comprehensive troubleshooting solutions to our user base. Previously, we were using Happyfox, but we experienced a myriad of issues related to administrative controls and the distribution of tasks within the desk. As a result, players who were reaching out to us with feedback on gameplay issues, technical problems, or feature requests to improve the quality of life of our ecosystem went unheard. I am pleased to announce that our Support Manager, Nick Ward, has been working tirelessly over the past two months to completely overhaul and re-design our support capabilities.
We decided Freshdesk was the right decision for hosting our support suite over the next 12 months. We based this decision on its capacity for easy scalability, user-friendly nature for filing troubleshooting requests, and ease of navigating knowledge base articles. The support website can be found here: https://support.newworldinteractive.com. This page will not be limited only to Insurgency: Sandstorm, but will also provide support for all of our titles in our portfolio. This is a new initiative for us and will be continuously improving over the next six months. We welcome all feedback regarding layout, flow, and proposed documentation suggestions.

Introduction of a Player Reporting System

A somewhat prevalent complaint that we’ve observed and received emails about pertains to players who are engaging in activities and behaviors that go against our established Community Guidelines. In an effort to reduce toxicity within our pre-existing player base, as well as to better message to players when they are engaging in disruptive behavior, we’ve introduced a prototype player reporting system. This system is accessible via the scoreboard on a drop-down menu, and can be accessed mid-game.
Player reporting will work in a variety of ways. Reports will carry a certain “weight” threshold; this weight is identified based upon the number of reports a player files vs. the number of reports that are accurately filed where action can be taken. Players who accurately report players the majority of the time will have more impactful reporting weight; players who attempt to use the system to troll or as a means of harassment will have a “lighter” weight, meaning their reports will be less impactful/actionable as a whole. If you are reported repeatedly, you will receive a text-box notification informing you of your intolerable behavior. When an accurate report is filed and action is taken, the reporting players will also receive a notification alerting them to the fact that they were helpful in identifying and reporting toxic behavior, and that their efforts have helped to improve Sandstorm’s community as a whole.
As this is our first implementation of this feature, some degree of bugs may exist; we are welcoming constructive feedback to improve our system. This addition should help us to better understand what types of offenses are most prevalent, who the worst offenders are, and in time, help to refine and tighten our Community Guidelines to be more representative of the type of play experience we’re seeking to establish as a standard for Insurgency: Sandstorm.

Modding Tools: Part 1

I know everyone here has been waiting for news on when NWI is planning to roll out mod support. I’m happy to announce that our first wave of mod tools has entered a closed-alpha state with this update. We’re sharing our tools in a level editor with basic functions that will be similar to the options our team currently has available at their disposal. We are currently accepting sign ups from experienced community level designers to help our team bug fix and gather feedback. Community members who are interested can sign up at the link below: https://steamcommunity.com/app/581320/discussions/0/1744512174760308602/
We’re doing this in a graduated rollout capacity to ensure that what we have is working as intended and functional, as well as to limit initial participation to experienced modders. In turn, this will allow us to focus our efforts to best determine where we will need to commit development time to the refinement of these tools, so that when we eventually deploy an “open” rollout that it is accessible, easy to use, and working as intended.

Redaction and Confirmation of Null Commitments

In the previous SoP, I had mentioned that we were re-evaluating our roadmap that was drafted earlier in the year. It was a very long and thorough meeting, but we emerged with a clearer picture of what we were and were not able to commit to in the new year. I know many users across various mediums have been asking us about some of these originally-promised features for some time, and I want to speak on the things that we will not be committing development time towards in our path forward. Here are the features we have decided do not make business sense for us to pursue in the future:

• Story mode/Campaign
  
• Mac Support
  
• Linux Support
  
• Local Play on PvP modes
  
• Weapons on Back
  
• New foregrip upgrade options

We did not take this decision-making process lightly; all nominated cuts have been reviewed, re-reviewed, and discussed numerous times internally. At the end of these discussions, our criteria came down to “Does this proposed content present a reasonable business case in exchange for the additional development time required to deliver these features?” and in these cases, the answer was “No.” We recognize that these were things that, at some point or another, were promised by the studio, and we apologize for mismanaging expectations. Moving forward, we will be more deliberate in our messaging and our commitments to our players. We’ve grown a lot with Insurgency: Sandstorm, and we’ve learned a lot throughout that process. These lessons will make up our future projects going forward.

Console Updates

In closing, I wanted to share with the community that our team is plowing full speed ahead with our efforts at bringing Insurgency: Sandstorm to console. Over the past few months, our partner, Black Tower, has been helping us to define and navigate timelines to deliver a release candidate which will be used for the TRC (Technical Requirements Checklist). We’re happy to report that everything is on track, and in the next State of Production in January, I’m hoping to be able to share more concrete details on when you will be able to play our game with friends on console ːinsfistː