Oct 30, 2020

Insurgency: Sandstorm - baddspella

Hello Gamers™,

As you may have noticed, things got a little… weird at New World. I wasn’t here for Halloween last year, so no one warned me about the Cursed video that was for some reason in my personal basement. Not even COVID can stop curses it turns out.

Anyway I watched it, everything got weird, I wanted to drink blood, and now the main menu has been taken over by bats and a red moon and some spooky music (shout Out to our boy Mark Winter).

I am really enjoying the changes to the main menu we have been making with releases. Although they’re minor, they’re refreshing to see. What do you all think of them?

Our next Developer Livestream is coming soon and I would recommend tuning in. SeriousLy, don’t miss it, we have some things to talk about.

Our next minor release (1.8.1) will be coming in November and while there aren’t maps or weapons, we are including a couple of small things I often see requested. We’re trying to balance having minor releases interspersed with our major releases, but that doesn’t happen automatically.

I will have more info to share in the next few weeks, but as the SoP and the stream last week mentioned we are going to be limiting the scope of upcoming releases a bit to really focus on the poLish of existing and upcoming content.

With that being said I wanted to speak on a handful of things that are brought up by the community fairly often. These are things that I brought up with Michael Tsarouhas (our Lead Game Designer) and discussed before we decided they won’t be something we dedicate development time to right now.

I’m thinking a peek into *why* we decide things may help to show that changes aren’t always as simple as they seem to implement into the game. Join us behind the curtain.

1. Disable Team Damage Reflection on CommanDers from their Fire Support call-ins:
Ok, so the reasoning behind this not being implemented is explained by one major scenario, and it’s a good example of a bad apple ruining it for everyone:

You have a Commander who is a turd. This player waits until a bunch of team mates are in range and then calls in a missile barrage on their heads. Not fun, and they deserve the reflected Damage. There are cases where the Commander doesn’t deserve the reflected damage, but to discourage trolling we think this is the better option.

2. The ability to cancel commander calls:
There are a few factors involved in us not introducing this:
New voiceover lines would need to be recorded, and that is an expensive and involved process - especially when we don’t have a studio at the moment
There is a complicated question of ‘until what stage do we allow the cancellation of the call’?
Does this change justify the development time we would need to dedicate to it? Currently we don’t think so.

3. Adding Binds for voice commands:
This one is fairly simple; in an effort to not bloat the settings menu we don’t think this is a smart idea. There is also of course development time involved. These two factors steer us in the direction of prioritizing something else right now.

4. Daytime flashlights:
While this seems super simple, (flashlights are already in the game, just add them to day time!) there are gameplay implications. Maps that have day Lighting have been balanced without consideration for the inclusion of flashlights, so there would have to be a new round of balance testing on every map. It would also likely change a lot in PvP with players having a new way to blind both their teammates and enemies. A simple addition like a flashlight ends up necessitating a lot of testing hours and introduces potentially negative or just plain frustrating situations when it comes to PvP.

5. Quickdraw Grip should be sling, Reload Grip should be a special magazine, etc.:
This is a great example of a slight concession in realism being made in the favour of improved gameplay. If we made the Quickdraw Grip a Sling and the Reload Grip a magazine they would no longer be in the same weapon upgrade category. We deliberately put all these options under one category because as you can see with our supply points mechanic, we have built our weapon upgrade system around the idea of opportunity costs and tradeoffs.
6. Change the colour balance on Tell or Tideway:
That's just, like, your opinion, man.

Digital Gaming League’s (DGL) Season 4 will be starting soon and they have just finalized their ladder structure. If you have any interest in competitive Sandstorm this is a great opportunity to get your foot in the door.

More information on the DGL is available here on their website: https://www.thedgl.com/, but I’d suggest also joining their DiscOrd, which is available here: http://discord.thedgl.org/

On a personal note I will be doing my 4th year of Extra Life in 11 days! I’m streaming for 24 hours and will be raising money for the Alberta Children’s Hospital. If you’d like to stop by the stream (you can even dOnate if you feel like it) I will be live on http://www.twitch.tv/fatherHank from 10am MST on November 10th. Sorry for the self promo, but it’s all for the children. 100% of donations during this stream will go directly to Extra Life.

Finally this month - I want to expand the ‘Favourite Community Video’ section we started last month, so I’m going to start by giving it a GREAT name. Here are some ideas I got from fellow NWI employees:

Hank’s Hunks
Hanky Wanky's Poggy Woggys (???)
Mikee Fan Club (always accurate if we’re being honest)
Hanky Panky's Content Hub (they like to rhyme)

There were some solid ideas as well, but I want the final choice to be up to the people filling the section, so I decided to put it to a vote. Click here and let me know what you think we should call it.

Vote here!

This section will appear with every blog and will showcase some content created by all of you.

First off this month, someone had the great idea of creating their Security character on Heroforge. Honestly I didn't think it would work this well, but it looks great. Sadly I've been told there is no Welrod option.

Secondly - OK, so we may have a bug with some Insurgents dressing up as Security right now (it’s being worked on as you read this, unless you’re reading this in the future, then it’s already fixed). This sums it up nicely. Thanks Vodka.

We will also show off my favourite community video of the month. Problem is I chose three, so here are three great videos .

Anyone Else Want Some?
This made me actually laugh out loud, too good to not show off.

Stormtrooper Syndrome Is Real
This man has embodied how I feel during a PvP playtest. Thank you, soldier.

AUG A3 Gun Guide
Great production, great info, one of my favorite weapons lately. Solid 5/7.

Thanks for all the posts, threads, tweets, and other feedback throughout the month, you’re the reason I have a job! Keep it coming. Increasing the quantity of memes would be appreciated too.

I look forwarD to seeing you all during the next stream, and can’t wait to show you… something.

fatherHank

Oct 22, 2020

Update 1.8: Hotfix 3

Insurgency: Sandstorm - fatherHank

We've released a hotfix for update 1.8 that addresses the following issues:

Fixes:

Fixed an entitlements crash caused by Unreal Engine that could happen on launch
Fixed an issue with the Chemical Mortars gas that was missing an appropriate texture causing large gray polygons to appear
Fixed a bug where the player’s hand would block all 1x Optic weapon upgrades and iron sights on the MP5A5, MP5A2, Sterling, ACE 52 and G3A3 with the Aiming Grip upgrade
Fixed a bug where the Loading Grip increased pump speed of the TOZ-194 shotgun
Fixed a bug where night-vision goggles were disappearing after resupplying
Fixed a bug which would cause the player’s arms to disappear during the ready animation
Fixed an issue where remote explosive or mines will have a left elbow clipping into itself and the body during the third person Hardcore sprinting animation
Fixed a bug that caused weapons to float instead of falling to the ground when a Masterkey, M26 MASS or Buckshot Launcher weapon upgrade was attached
Fixed a bug where the iron sights of the Mosin-Nagant could be seen floating around the weapon
Fixed a bug where the same animation played when checking ammo while aiming down sights and without aiming down sights for the AUG A3 and G36K
Fixed a bug where the deployment of the Bipod upgrade while standing was not showing on other players
Fixed a bug where the crosshair was missing on 2x magnification and higher Optic weapon upgrades when the scope setting was set to Picture-in-picture
Fixed a bug when spectating a player their hands and weapon would be missing if an Underbarrel weapon upgrade was equipped
Fixed an issue where player’s rank was showing as zero on the scoreboards in dedicated servers
Fixed an issue where the client version text was obstructing the back button on the in-game menu
Fixed a bug that was showing the Outpost rule descriptions incorrectly on the loading screen, escape and loadout menu
Fixed an issue when playing as a Commander with a friendly Observer nearby where the Observer’s class icon would gray out even though you are in range of them
Fixed a wall collision issue which allowed players to exploit an area under the market in Tell
Fixed a bug where the Supply Crate on Tell Checkpoint objective E spawned inside a dumpster
Fixed a bug that caused AI to spawn without refreshing their appearance to match their class on Outpost mode
Fixed an issue where the Customization page was empty upon launch
Fixed an issue where the Shell Camo Rolled and Shell Camo Security Torso cosmetics would clip through the Urban Warden Net Headgear cosmetic

Known Issues:

The objective status at the top middle of the screen seen when in an objective is missing or shown incorrectly
Equipment color option selected under Appearance section is only applying to vest area and not the rest of the Light or Heavy Carrier
Community hosted servers will show a player as level 0
Mosin Stripper Clip weapon upgrade does not push in properly when reloading
MP5 has a slight clipping of mag during dry reload
VHS-2 and AK-74 magazines disappear for a moment during a dry reload
AUG A3’s loading animations will have broken fingers in first person
AI vehicle can get stuck in the Tutorial Range
When you first load the game, there’s a chance your character may be shown without a vest; going to customize and selecting the faction will load all the correct cosmetics
There is a broken texture on the Aiming Grip affecting the M16A2, M24, M870, Mosin-Nagant, SKS, TOZ-194, AKS-74U, G36K, FAL, MP7, and Mk 14 EBR
The background of the main menu flickers
Autocannon Strafe no longer damages weapon caches
In the Competitive game mode Loadout screen, some weapons will have the option of two Recoil Grips, one at 3 supply points and the other at 4 supply points. These upgrades function the same way.
Mods showing as 'Download Pending' are actually downloading in background
Known Editor Issue: Attempting to use material instances with parents set to another modded material currently will result in a unloaded texture in-game

Oct 16, 2020

State of Production #13

Insurgency: Sandstorm - baddspella

Hello everyone, my name is Tim Perreault and I’m the Executive Producer at New World Interactive. I’m happy to share this latest State of Production with all of you. Operation: Breakaway is now out. The studio has started work on our next update but we wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the elements that went into Operation: Breakaway. This SoP is a bit longer than normal but that’s because I managed to wrangle five of the key developers responsible for two of the biggest parts of this update to talk about their experience bringing them to life. Don’t worry, there’s lots of pictures.

Key Points of State of Production #13

Operation: Breakaway Retrospective
Outpost Mode
Tell
1.8 Minor and Beyond

Operation: Breakaway Retrospective

During the development of Operation: Breakaway we learned some good lessons about how to refine our overall approach to updates and the amount of content we commit to per release. Moving forward we’re tightening up on the scope and focusing on increasing quality. As those of you who played the Open CTE event noticed, some content had to be cut late in the game. This was because it wasn’t working quite the way we wanted and we didn’t want to rush it out. Moving forward, we’re being a lot more cautious with how much content we’re including so we can ensure everything that goes in is polished and ready by the time we want to release it.

In addition to the content we released, part of our development effort was spent expanding certain tools to be used internally. We should all be seeing the fruits of these efforts translate into improved quality moving forward with our future releases.

Outpost Mode

Operation: Breakaway introduced the newest game mode to Sandstorm, Outpost Mode. To discuss some of the development efforts behind Outpost, I sat down with three of the chief architects: Lead Game Designer Michael “Mikee” Tsarouhas, Level Design Director Jeroen van Werkhoven, and Technical Director Steve Swires.

Tim Perreault: Outpost Mode was a mode in Insurgency 2014. What sets it apart from what we’ve created in Insurgency: Sandstorm? What did we need to keep in order to retain the spirit of that mode, and what did we need to change to suit Sandstorm?
Steve Swires: Well in Insurgency 2014, Outpost was a pretty simple mode. The players are just defending a single supply cache, and when it blows up, they lose. I don’t think there was even a wave limit.
Michael Tsarouhas: There wasn’t, it went on indefinitely. There was even an easter egg voice over line that went something like “You know this mode is endless, right?”.
SS: I think the implementation of Outpost in Sandstorm takes more cues from the mode in Day of Infamy called Entrenchment. It was kind of similar to Checkpoint, but on the defender’s side. The players would regress through various objectives depending on how long they could survive. There were some interesting things in DoI such as defending multiple objectives at once and the more controversial regroup mechanic.
MT: Admittedly, at first with Outpost it was a little shallow. Entrenchment expanded on that with having the regression, but the regroup mechanic was very difficult. It was very hard to get players to understand “Oh, I have to go somewhere else to try to get my teammates to respawn”. I was actually just playing DoI last weekend with some of my friends and I had to tell them over the mic “Hey you need to fall back now. Oh, remember, you’ve gotta regroup.” We’ve really tried to refine the mode and expand on it a bit in Sandstorm by creating a synthesis of these previous two modes while bringing some new elements to the table.
Jeroen van Werkhoven: We went for a more narrative approach with Outpost in Sandstorm. The objectives make more sense in a way where the player is defending a strategic building at the beginning all the way to a small military base like you see in Crossing. It makes it really interesting from that perspective. The players are defending valuable locations and not just random objectives.

TP: What were some of the biggest challenges, from each of your perspectives, in bringing this mode to life?
JvW: I think from a level design perspective that it was mostly figuring out what are good locations. We went really extreme at the start by just adding a ton of objectives, but then refining them down, then doing another pass to eventually end up with only the most fun objectives. We really had to figure out what makes each map fun and also what makes each map feel fair so players don’t feel overwhelmed by enemies. We also had to figure out how to make two active objectives work at the same time. It’s not something we use in every map, it depends a lot on the location of objectives. Adds a strategic element to it, where the player can either choose to defend one objective or both but has to split up the team.
SS: It was the whole iteration process. Trying different things out, trying different ways of implementing them. When we started out, it was pretty simple. Pretty much the same as Insurgency 2014. But there were a lot of little things we had to do: supporting multiple objectives, tweaks to the HUD, making sure bots would ignore players during the prepare phase. Once we were able to rapidly iterate on that, we made pretty good progress and I feel like Outpost mode is in a good state where it is.
MT: The special enemies were the biggest challenge. We decided early on that a way to give Outpost mode character was to give it special enemies players wouldn’t for the most part encounter in other modes. We had a bunch of different ideas: guys who would throw all flavors of grenades, guys who would rush you, guys who make better use of cover and snipe, some who had unique AI, and other sorts of enemy types that fought with different weapons and behaviors. When it came down to it, we had to find something that was shippable and make sure that each enemy had a uniqueness to them. We didn’t want to overdo it and throw too many enemies in there and just expect it to be fun. Getting feedback from the 1.8 CTE was really helpful to determine which enemies were fun.

TP: Internally we spent quite a bit of time play-testing various iterations of Outpost. I kind of remember the very first playtest we did on Crossing and if I’m being honest it wasn’t much fun. It was pretty difficult and there was a lot of death. Not a lot of wins for us. Do you guys remember any specific turning points during the development when it clicked for you that “hey, this is actually really fun now”?
JvW: I think when we started figuring out what objectives were actually fun, that played a big part of it. When we made some adjustments to bots, adding more variation to the spawn points for bots, making sure they’re not always coming from a single location. Making them play more like human players. It became less gamey.
MT: Yeah, Jason, our AI Programmer, made a lot of adjustments to the AI that really helped the flow and the feeling of the attackers. And all the spawn point adjustments the level design team made made the whole thing feel like much more exciting and interesting fighting. The low point for me was actually the first time we tried Ministry and we got to the garage. We got slaughtered every time in that damn garage, it was brutal. Nobody had any supply, we were like a bunch of civilians running around taking cover behind about-to-be-exploded cars and pillars. That’s where we were thinking we really need to rethink objective placement as well as starting supply. That’s when we bumped it up to two.
JvW: Yeah, the progressive difficulty, right? We’ve figured out we need to make sure we don't start with the most difficult objective. The real turning point for me was when it started to feel less like a shooting gallery and bots approached objectives from different directions, like a human player.
SS: The difficulty and pacing of the mode really made a difference to me. We tweaked a bunch of the timers like how long each wave is and how long players spent preparing but also the objective placement and spawn placement. Once that all came together the mode was taking shape and you could really see what was coming of it. The special waves did help, but it was mostly just adding flavour and making it feel distinct compared to Checkpoint.

TP: Does anyone care to comment on the MVP of our playtesting team, Door?
MT: Door. Wow, you know, it’s a shame that Door couldn’t be here Tim. Because we’ve really got to give it to him. Door is on objective C in Outpost Power Plant. In Outpost Mode, obviously you’re defending a lot. You don’t move a lot, but you’re mobile within a certain space. So you get attached to certain spaces within your space. The door that you can open on objective C ended up being a real trooper, more useful than some of our playtesters actually. You could just close Door and any time an enemy came and tried to get into our building, Door would slam right open and say “Hey, an insurgent is here.” And we’d all turn and take care of him. It was really devastating for us when Door got kicked off his hinges. It was an accident actually, we kicked in the wrong direction.
JvW: We’ll never forget Door.

TP: Any final thoughts on Outpost mode?
SS: One thing that is really nice about Outpost is players get to see more areas of the map. In some game modes players only see part of the map, in Outpost players see all of the map. Objectives will be in areas of the map where someone might go “Oh, I didn’t know this existed”.
MT: Yeah, even though it’s on maps that exist, players will get into firefights and defend objectives in areas that feel like totally new spaces. Best examples I can think of are, as Jeroen mentioned earlier, the military base as the final objective on Crossing and the shanty village on Outskirts. Defending the shanty village in Outskirts reminds of the movie Seven Samurai. Everyone chaotically running from building to building defending the village. It’s very much like Jeroen was saying, it’s not a shooting gallery anymore. There’s multiple angles of attack. Some flanks will fall and you have to reinforce them. This is a cheesy overused word in game development, but it does feel dynamic.
JvW: Yeah, I also think the final objective in Outskirts of the gas station with the gas pumps at the front was fun. In one of our latest tests, the whole thing blew up.
MT: Oh god, that was ridiculous. We got a Rocketman special wave, and they used their rockets on us, that’s for sure. It wasn’t even a dignified heroic defense, where each one of us gradually died in slow motion. It was just, like, a cacophony of screams, and confusion to match.

Outpost mode is available to play on select maps. The remaining map layouts will be coming in a future update.

Tell

In Operation: Breakaway, we’ve remade the map Tell, a popular classic from Insurgency (2014) for Sandstorm. I’ve sat down with two of our level designers, Zach Snyder, the original creator of Tell, and Jan Huygelen, who implemented the vision in Sandstorm, to talk about the process:

Tim Perreault: What was the inspiration for the original map Tell?
Zach Snyder: That’s kind of a tough one, because it all went by so fast and I remember little of it. I knew some of the people at NWI and I got a message from one of them about the mapping contest, but I couldn’t do it because I was really busy with work. And then about a month or two later they announced an extension to the contest and it just so happened that work was about to slow down. There was about three weeks left in the contest and I sat on it for about a day and then said screw it, I’m just going to do it.
The inspiration, if you could call it that, was a small chunk of a Counter-Strike map I had been working on as a modder. I copied it into the editor and started from there, because I just needed something to jump in and start working from. I was still teaching at the time, but otherwise I was literally working around the clock for the remaining time and submitted it just before the deadline. I wasn’t happy with it, and if you go back and look at it on Game Banana, I think you’d understand. It’s a much rawer and unfinished version of the map than what ultimately made it into the game. After the contest I was asked to join the team and, thankfully, was given a lot of time to polish it, because it was in a pretty sorry state.

TP: You started with the CS map layout and it turned into something that worked and already fit the theme, or did you have to retheme it at all?
ZS: Well no, it was middle eastern and it wasn’t necessarily a piece of level design, It was just a quick place to start, because I was already in trouble time-wise and I wanted to spend as little time as possible deliberating about where to start . That little chunk is a little hard to spot now in the finished version, but it’s definitely still there.

TP: What do you think makes Tell stand out from other maps in Insurgency?
ZS: Without a doubt, the close quarters of it and the sheer number of spots that you need to be aware of. It’s definitely maze-like at times, and there are a lot of corners for enemies to hide around. The kind of gameplay that comes out of that, hopefully, is a careful inch by inch struggle, and it’s not that you’re just trying to get to the next objective, it’s that you’re trying to secure key points along the path that act as informal objectives, themselves. And because things become so tight and controlled, that back and forth is very visceral in the way that you understand your team’s progress. I can spawn and if I see that a teammate is on one of these key points, I can be confident that the area between us is clear because of the amount of effort it takes to reclaim an area.

TP: Why did we choose to remake Tell in Insurgency: Sandstorm?
ZS: Tell and Sinjar were the two most popular push maps from 2014, though I’d give the nod to Sinjar, overall. Tell was the most popular checkpoint map. I think it also made a lot of sense for variety’s sake, since the map is much tighter than anything else we have in Sandstorm.

TP: What was the approach that you took with the remake of Tell for Insurgency: Sandstorm?
Jan Huygelen: I only got involved when Zach finished the blockout and handed it to me. I was given a single photo that would be the base reference for the remake. The first step is always to find as many references as possible in order to build a mental picture in my mind of what a map is going to look like or what it could look like. When beginning on the map itself, I started with creating a vertical slice to get a feeling for the theme, based on all the references I’d collected. In this context, a vertical slice is basically applying a theme to a specific part of the map, as a proof of concept. After that vertical slice was done, I repeated the process in two other areas of the blockout, both with a different subtheme.

TP: What do you think ended up being the biggest challenge of trying to recreate and capture the essence of Tell and translating it to Sandstorm?
JH: Because Tell is a classic map, I think the biggest challenge was keeping the blockout Zach made intact. He works a lot with specific sight lines, so if you move a wall a little to the left or to the right then the sight line is gone. Related to this is applying the theme. Overall, this wasn’t an issue, but there were definitely some parts of the map that were quite challenging to make them work thematically.
TP: Did you ever find yourself cursing Zach’s name while you were working on it because he made it so difficult?
JH: [laughs] Um, no.
ZS: That has to be a lie.

TP: What do you think makes the Sandstorm version of Tell unique from the original?
JH: It’s a lot bigger and it features some extra game modes that weren’t in the Source version, for example Firefight and Push for Insurgents.

Tell is available now in Co-op and Versus playlists, come join us and be sure to check out some of the game modes that weren’t available in the original Insurgency!

1.8 Minor Update and Beyond

With Operation: Breakaway out the door, the team is starting to work on our next major update. Something else to keep your eyes open for is the 1.8 Minor update where we’ll be addressing some community concerns and quality of life improvements. Keep your eyes peeled for that to drop in the next month or so.

That’s it for this month’s SoP, until next time, keep your stick on the ice.

Oct 6, 2020

Update 1.8 Operation: Breakaway Now Live!

Insurgency: Sandstorm - fatherHank

Operation: Breakaway

Check out the full changelist below and see what’s new in Operation: Breakaway.

New Map: Tell

Breakaway’s new map is called Tell, and is a reimagining of an Insurgency 2014 classic. Tell ramps up the intensity of Sandstorm's signature hardcore combat by squeezing everyone together while still allowing for diverse navigation routes down everything from narrow corridors to lengthy streets. It features tight urban CQB unlike any other level in Sandstorm.

Tell has support for the following game modes:

Push
Domination
Firefight
Checkpoint
Hardcore Checkpoint
Outpost

New Weapons: AUG A3, FAMAS F1, Underbarrel Shotguns

We’ve added 2 new small profile bullpup style assault rifle weapons for Rifleman, Demolitions, Commander, and Observer classes: the AUG A3 for Security and FAMAS F1 for Insurgents. We’ve also added 3 new underbarrel shotguns as underbarrel weapon upgrades: the M26 MASS for Security, Buckshot Launcher for Insurgents, and Masterkey shared by both factions.

AUG A3 - Low fire rate, controllable recoil

FAMAS F1 - Very high fire rate, small magazine capacity

M26 MASS - Mag-fed, available for M16A4, M4A1, and AUG A3

Buckshot Launcher - Single shot 40mm buckshot shell, available for AKM, AK-74

Masterkey - Tube-fed, available for M16A4, M4A1, AKM, AK-74, M16A2, and FAMAS F1

The Masterkey and M26 MASS have no optics or iron sights. When using Aim Down Sights with them, they’ll point roughly at the center of the screen similar to the NVG Point Shooting upgrade seen on night maps. The Buckshot Launcher can use its iron sights to be aimed more precisely, but only has one shot until it needs to be reloaded. It’s basically a tactical blunderbuss.

Foregrips

We know we’ve been a bit lacking in the foregrip department. We added 3 new grips available in the underbarrel weapon upgrade category for all Primary weapons except for machine guns and anti-materiel rifles. Yes, that means you can finally put a grip on weapons like the Mosin, MP7, and even the Grease Gun. Each grip gives a different gameplay benefit at various supply point costs. The existing “Foregrip” upgrade remains unchanged, but we’ve renamed it to “Recoil Grip” to clarify its function among the others.

Aiming Grip - Aim down the sights of your weapon faster

Loading Grip - Reload your weapon faster

Quick Draw Grip - Draw and put away your Primary weapon faster

Free Unlockable Cosmetics

In Breakaway, a coup d'état is underway. Some security forces have defected to the insurgents. Internal affairs officers have embedded with the Security to gather evidence, build a case, and track down these rogue elements, which include both local and federal police teams fighting alongside the Insurgents.

Rogue Cop - A federal or local law enforcement officer who has joined the Insurgents.

Rogue Cop Top Camo (Torso slot)

Blue DPM
Digital Blue
Digital Dark Blue

Rogue Cop Bottom Camo (Legs slot)

Blue DPM
Digital Blue
Digital Dark Blue

Combat Glasses (Eyewear slot)

Black
Blue
Cyan
Dark Red
Orange
Peach
Purple
Yellow

Digital Dark Blue (Equipment slot)
Blue DPM (Equipment slot)

Internal Affairs - An investigator working with the Security to hunt down rogue actors who joined the Insurgents.

Internal Affairs (Torso slot)

Dark Brown
Sand
Tan

Business Casual (Legs slot)

Dark Brown
Sand
Tan

Aviator (Eyewear slot)

Black
Dark Red
Orange
Peach
Yellow

DLC Cosmetics

We are adding new DLC cosmetics with this update that will give your characters and weapons a unique look. The cosmetic items they contain can be combined with other cosmetic items already in-game. Purchasing these is a great way to support Sandstorm’s continued post-release development. See the different sets below, along with what items they contain and apply to:

Insurgent “Rogue Spec Ops” Gear Set

Skull Mask and Shemagh
Spec Ops Tactical Shirt
Spec Ops Tactical Pants
Spec Ops Boots

Insurgent “Urban Digital” Weapon Skin Set

AK-74
FAMAS F1
Uzi
ACE 52
Alpha AK
1911 Pistol

Security “Urban Warden” Gear Set

Net with Helmet
Chainmail Top with Padding
Chainmail Bottom with Padding
Chainmail Gloves

Security “Desert Hex” Weapon Skin Set

M16A4
AUG A3
MP7
Tavor 7
Mk 18 CQBR
M45 Pistol

If you want to get all four Operation Breakaway DLC sets at a reduced price, check out the link here:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/16237/

Outpost Mode

We’re adding a new co-op mode called Outpost, a reimagining of Insurgency 2014’s mode of the same name. In it you’ll be put on the defensive with limited supply points, holding off against waves of enemies. Outpost takes inspiration from our WWII shooter Day of Infamy’s Entrenchment Co-op mode, fixes a lot of the common complaints seen in both it and the original mode, and greatly expands on Sandstorm's Co-op experience.

Overview

Players need to defend their objectives against 7 waves of enemies to win.
Only 1 or 2 objectives are active at a time, with a total of 4 to 8 objectives on each map.
If all players die, or their active objectives are captured, they respawn at the next objective area to defend it.
If players are pushed all the way back to their final objective area, and it is captured or they all die, they lose the round.

Gameplay

Players start with 2 supply points on the first wave, and gain 2 supply points after every wave.
Players can resupply in between waves during a “Preparing” phase.
Enemies get better equipment as waves go on.
A randomly selected “special wave” with unique enemies mixed in among normal enemies will attack at waves 2, 4, and 6. Special enemies include:
- Bangers - Rush you with Grease Guns, flashbangs, increased movement speed, and a physically shorter height so they’re harder to hit.
- Grenadiers - Force you out of cover with a copious amount of explosive frag grenades.
- Blasters - Suppress you with MG3 machine guns, increased health, and a physically taller height so they can shoot over more cover.
- Rocketmen - Target you from afar with RPG-7 rocket launchers. Or up close.
- Suicide Bombers - Yep. A wave of suicide bombers.
The final wave will combine all special enemies and normal enemies together for one massive attack.

Outpost mode is available on the maps below. We hope to expand the mode to more maps in a future update.

Tell
Crossing
Ministry
Hillside
Outskirts
Power Plant

Official Co-op Playlists Update

A playlist for our new Outpost mode will be added to official Co-op matchmaking, and will replace the Frenzy playlist. The other playlists, Normal and Hardcore, will be renamed to Checkpoint and Hardcore Checkpoint since we now have more than one Co-op mode and need to be specific. As we add new game mode content we need to be careful to not split our player-base as we don't want to increase queue times too dramatically. We also want to ensure every official playlist experience in Sandstorm is strong for both new and existing players. Please expect us to have similar considerations with future game modes. We'll keep up the Frenzy playlist for another 2 weeks so you have a bit more time to play, after which it will go away as a permanent playlist. Frenzy (and its beloved cousin Task Force 666) will still be coming back on occasion as limited time playlist modes. Don't forget you can still play Frenzy on community servers that run the "Frenzy" mutator.

AI Update

The first stage of the AI overhaul is here in update 1.8 Operation: Breakaway. It has focused primarily on the bot's knowledge of the player's location, basically answering the question, "when should the Bot know where the player is?". The ultimate effect of these changes is that the bots will be more fair. You shouldn't have situations where, for example, you get shot through walls or smoke unless you're really obvious about your location. You also shouldn’t feel that bots are unusually accurate at range, or snapshot you up close.

Specific Changes

AI now know what sounds they hear (gunfire, dialogue, opening doors, footsteps), instead of just knowing that a specific player made noise and guessing at the cause.
Adjusted which sounds provide AI awareness of a player's location, and at what range.
When shooting a player, the AI will use the last known position of the player instead of their current position. If you duck behind cover, or into a cloud of smoke, they may still suppress your last position for a few seconds, so don't stick your head out.
When suppressing, since the AI don't know the target's specific location, they will no longer gain increased accuracy over time. Instead they'll just spray the area. If you're behind thin cover, you can move away silently to avoid getting wall banged.
The AI have laxened their social-distancing policy, and will no longer automatically aim for the player's face if they approach within 2m. They'll still shoot you though.
The distance that AI acquire targets at long range has been reduced, and their time to fire increased.
When AI retreat they will no longer get confused and change directions at random.

Gameplay Improvements

Over the past few updates, we’ve received feedback that certain high caliber weapons are overpowered and serve as Sandstorm’s meta. We’re going to be making a few adjustments to try to make these weapons feel more balanced among the others.

Reduced FAL’s muzzle velocity from 840 to 810, reducing damage, penetration damage, bullet travel speed, and other ballistic factors slightly
Removed Extended Magazine upgrade from FAL and G3A3 in Versus and Competitive
Increased horizontal recoil of Mk 14 EBR

New Configurations for Modders

Hear Aware Distances have been added for Footsteps, Breaching, Doors and Rigging Explosives, to configure the range that bots are aware of players taking the indicated actions
Sight Range Idle is now the distance that a bot can first spot a new target at.
Sight Range Alert is now the distance that a bot will know longer be able to see a known target.
Can grenade with LOS if you want bots to throw grenades straight at people, rather than lobbing over things
Grenade Minimum Distance when you want bots to be a bit riskier with their tosses
Rocket Minimum Distance is the same but for RPGs
Rocket Squad Cooldown is the time that bots will wait between using rockets (within the same squad)
Rocket Minimum Cluster Size how many people are close together before the bots break out the RPG

Mod Tools Improvements

Fixed an issue where upload of mods would fail when using the default /Mods/ folder (you will may to delete your Insurgency/Intermediate/ folder for these changes to apply)
Old versions of mods will now be uninstalled when a new version is installed
Added in Canyon Modular Props
Added in Tell Modular Props
Added in Town Sublevels containing merged buildings
Added "Developer Iteration Mode" which skips spawning/class selection timer to help test maps a little faster
Fixed issue with creating a new Mod when templates aren't available that causes mod creation to fail
Applied General Editor Fixes for Engine version 4.25.2
Removed "LaunchSandstorm.bat"

User Experience

Updated the font used for compass heading numbers
Polished the visual indicator for DLC items in the cosmetic menu
Updated the icon displayed when using Proximity chat to differentiate from Radio
Adjusted the position of character models on the loadout screen so they no longer hit their head (oof) on the top navigation buttons

Visual Improvements

Updated the Easy Anti-Cheat loading image
Updated the main menu map to represent the Breakaway release

Performance Improvements

Level Changes

Outskirts

Fixed an issue where players were able to reach an unintended location by walking on small ledges
Crossing
Fixed an issue where a tank had no collision set on it

Summit

Fixed an issue in Checkpoint Security where a wall had no collisions set on it

Tideway

Fixed an issue where players could become stuck after vaulting over a fence
Fixed a potential spawn camping issue on Firefight West
Fixed a number of spawn camping issues on both Push scenarios
Reduced how far Security can push when Charlie is neutral in Frontline
Fixed a number of spawn camping issues in Frontline

Bug Fixes

The Commander and Observer will now correctly hear the “BRRRT” after calling in a strafing run
Fixed the Autocannon strafe audio timing so the sounds play in the correct order
Fixed an issue where players could see their own disembodied legs when prone, crouching, or driving
Fixed an issue where the smoke overlay would activate on players on the roof of buildings even if the smoke particles didn’t penetrate the roof
Fixed an issue where smoke mortars and chemical mortars on a roof were incorrectly triggering the smoke overlay for players in the buildings even if smoke wasn’t penetrating the roof
Fixed an issue where when standing near objects with auto-lean enabled animations may skip frames
Fixed an issue where the key hint on the underhand grenade throw lesson would show as unbound
Fixed an issue with the G3A3 reload animation causing the magazine to go through the palm
Fixed an issue that was preventing some weapon attachments from being selected when using a default preset under certain circumstances
Fixed an issue where the Connect to IP field would not function properly if there was leading or trailing white space
Fixed a typo in the tutorial lessons
Fixed an issue that would cause bullets to float next to the M16A2 in the loadout menu
Fixed an issue where a server’s favorite state was not being reflected in the Internet browser tab
Fixed an issue where keybinds in the tutorial could display as unbound
Fixed an issue where chat text would still be visible after hiding HUD elements
Fixed an issue where it was possible for the reload state of the rifle could get stuck forcing you to start the reload over or swap between weapons to make it functional again
Fixed an issue where users would have to click Cancel twice to leave a matchmaking queue
Fixed an issue with the inventory screen where the right-most image would appear stretched vertically
Fixed an issue with some hairstyles clipping through the Ghillie Hat
Fixed an issue where you couldn’t correctly scroll through Loadout presets when using a controller
Fixed an issue where toggling the Mute All option for players in an online match would not update the player list until the scoreboard was closed and opened again
Fixed an issue where players might see visual artifacting around the edge of the screen when using SMAA T2x Anti-Aliasing option

Known Issues

The crosshair is not visible on the 2x Kobra when using the Picture-in-picture in Scope Setting
Equipment color option selected under Appearance section is only applying to vest area and not the rest of the Light or Heavy Carrier
The bolt of your Primary weapon won’t move if you have an underbarrel shotgun or grenade launcher equipped
Community hosted servers will show a player as level 0
Mosin and M24 have a floating rear sight in third person
Mosin Stripper Clip weapon upgrade does not push in properly when reloading
MP5 has a slight clipping of mag during dry reload
VHS-2 and AK-74 magazines disappear for a moment during a dry reload
Pressing G to toggle a Bipod weapon upgrade while standing does not show the deployment of the bipod in third person
In Frontline mode, if you capture an objective then team swap, you will see not a floating objective until respawn
Shotguns and machine guns will have a left elbow clipping into itself and the body during the third person Hardcore sprinting animation
Remote explosive or mines will have a left elbow clipping into itself and the body during the third person Hardcore sprinting animation
When playing as a Commander and having a friendly Observer nearby, the Observer’s class icon will gray out even though you are in range of them
AUG A3’s loading animations will have broken fingers in first person
AI vehicle can get stuck in the Tutorial Range
When you first load the game, there’s a chance your character may be shown without a vest; going to customize and selecting the faction will load all the correct cosmetics

Sep 30, 2020

September 2020 Community Update Blog

Insurgency: Sandstorm - fatherHank

Hello Gamers™,

Sorry for the overlap with the State of Production, it's been a crazy month so far. Next month we will try and publish them further apart.

Well, this is it! By this time next week, Operation: Breakaway will be live and you will all have had the opportunity to try our new Bullpup style rifles and take a trip down memory lane through Tell.

To those of you who played on the CTE, how are you all feeling about it so far? Have you gotten lost in Tell like me... constantly? Dry-fired the FAMAS F1 repeatedly after burning through all your ammo? How about the AUG A3 and it's 'a-baby-could-control-this' amount of recoil?

Let us know how you feel about Operation: Breakaway - you can hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Steam, or our Official Discord to give us feedback. I will have browsers open across all my monitors just reading the feedback as it continues to roll in.

I have to say that I truly love Outpost so far. “Reverse checkpoint” feels really fresh and the tension as your supply point slowly builds feels incredible. My strategy has been to get rid of the sidearm and light carrier for an M16 to start. 400 IQ play right there. Rocketmen and I are not friends, though. Peeking a corner and eating six rockets smh my head; I never learn.

I’m hooked on using the Aiming Grip and the Masterkey. Reducing my ADS speed makes such a difference for me - I feel like I win way more firefights with it. Then I just swap to my underbarrel and CQC is covered. These new accessories have really opened up the options as far as loadouts go.

In six days EVERYTHING will be live, but have you seen the new DLC and in-game cosmetics? We’ve posted them across our social accounts, which can be found here. You wanted militaristic Insurgents, so there ya go; the Rogue Spec Ops is in the house. The Security side DLC you haven’t seen yet. You may not have explicitly asked for chain mail and an armored up aesthetic, but the Urban Warden is TOUGH looking, based in reality (the German SEK), and shown here on the blog first!

The in-game cosmetics aren’t slouching either, we can finally show off our beautiful Internal-Affairs-Security-Dad™ and the “Rogue Cop”. Security dad is looking t h i c c, just needs some tongs, fanny pack, and a BBQ. The Rogue Cop gives the Insurgent some camo as many of you requested.

Along with all these character cosmetics we added some new weapon skins. We heard you after the release of the 1.7 cosmetics and we have shifted into a direction that’s more in line with what you (the community as a whole) are really looking for as far as weapon skins go. Let me know your thoughts after you see the new skins in game next week.

Our final Operation: Breakaway stream will be on launch day (October 6th) at 11am MST, right as the update releases! We are excited to hop in and play with everyone, so hopefully you can be on around then. Maybe I will carry you to victory in Outpost? Stranger things have happened. I saw a frog with wings once, so it’s possible. (Editor note: this never happened, he's lying)

I mentioned on the last stream that to make room for Outpost mode we will be removing Frenzy from the permanent playlist options. We will still bring it back as a limited time mode here and there, so don't worry, it's not gone forever.

I'm making one small addition to the monthly blog; my favourite stupid community video of the month. This month I am calling it "Perfectly Cut Scream". This was sent to me on Discord, so I don't have the original creator - if that's you, please get in touch and I will make sure to give you credit!

That’s it for updates before Operation: Breakaway, thanks to everyone who has played the game, tested on the CTE, given feedback, and watched our streams, it means the world to me (and everyone else at New World).

Speaking of streams, I’ve been happy with how they’ve been going lately. One thing I want to build on is the variety of the content we showcase. For example, my shoe reveals will probably continue (some of you made the mistake of enjoying them and telling me). Do you have any ideas on what else we could include? Send me a DM on Twitter if you do, I’d love to hear from you.

One idea I’ve had is getting some community members in a stream for a “Make Hank Better at the Game” segment. I can use the help, I think it would be entertaining, and maybe some other players could pick up some tips as well.

1.8.1 and 1.9 are in the works already, but I need the opposite of a cup of coffee (is that a Valium?) before we can even start to think about sharing them. The weeks surrounding a release are amazing and full of energy, but now I feel like there’s pure espresso flowing through my veins. Almost time for a nap.

See you all on Tuesday, can’t wait to play with everyone,
fatherHank

Sep 30, 2020

State of Production #12

Insurgency: Sandstorm - baddspella

Hello everyone, my name is Tim Perreault and I’m the Executive Producer at New World Interactive. September has been a productive month for us. We’ve got a hotfix for the live game, a CTE Preview Event for our next update, and we announced a Mapping Contest for Insurgency: Sandstorm!

Key Points of State of Production #12

1.7.1 Hotfix 2
1.8 Open CTE Event
AI Update
Mapping Contest
Operation: Breakaway

1.7.1 Hotfix 2

We’ve been spending a lot of time investigating the stuttering issue that some of our community members have been encountering. With the help of Epic we’ve found the cause relates to a recent Global Invalidation change that was done to improve performance. For the time being, we are disabling global invalidation. Because this did have a meaningful impact on the game’s performance we’ll be looking to reimplement global invalidation in the future when we can do so without any unintended side effects. This hotfix also addresses a few other issues that were annoying to the community including the lack of collision on Summit point D, mines not detonating when being run over by vehicles, and an issue preventing kills from AI controlled fire support for counting on Commanders and Observers.

Open CTE Event Results

Our Open CTE Event was quite successful. We had great participation from the community both turning up to play and providing feedback. We’ve collected a lot of information on player sentiment about the upcoming update as well as found a few issues to correct before we go live. We’ll be spending the coming weeks before our release on October 6 addressing all the issues we can reproduce. For our next CTE event we’ll be expanding the abilities of our bug reporting tool, which allowed players to provide us with feedback and information during this public test.

AI Update

I’ve asked Jason Campbell, our AI Programmer, to speak a bit about the upcoming AI improvements coming with the Operation: Breakaway update.

What's coming in 1.8?
In Operation: Breakaway we're releasing the first major improvements in our AI Overhaul. The largest issue with the AI right now is how unfair it can feel at times. Getting shot through the wall, through smoke, from halfway across the map, or just getting nailed with a laser guided Molotov is just not any fun. For this update, our highest priority is fixing those unfun behaviours. This gives us a solid foundation that will allow us to look into ways to add new, more intelligent behaviours that will make the AI more fun and interesting in future updates.

When deciding if the AI should shoot a player, there are two major questions to answer. Should the AI be aware of the player's presence? If so, how quickly and accurately should they react? Both of those questions are deceptively difficult to answer. Most of our changes in Operation Breakaway are focused on getting better answers to the first question. To that end, we've migrated to Unreal Engine's newer Perception System, which gives us more detailed information regarding what the AI can hear and see. Once we had that information we could nail down the situations in which the AI were being unfair and added a bunch of new configurations to tune them to be nice reasonable soldiers who give you at least a little time to shoot back.

Another aspect of AI in Operation: Breakaway is the special enemies for Outpost mode. While most of these were simple to add through configuration changes and playtesting, a few of them needed some new logic to be written. We made sure to make this logic configurable, so any modders will be able to use it in any new maps or modes they dream up.

So what happened with 1.7.1?
Some of you may have noticed that after Operation Clean Sweep the AI seemed to have gotten upgraded with wall hacks and aim cheats. This was a side effect of including the new Perception System in 1.7.1, but without the extra configuration and polish that we’re bringing you in Operation: Breakaway. When we were testing 1.7.1, we got reports back that devs were getting snapshot and wall banged, and of course we knew that wall banging and snap shooting were issues in 1.7. Since we planned to fix this in 1.8 we marked it as a known issue and moved on. However because we didn't have the scope of testing that comes with a larger release, such as the public community test (CTE), we didn't realize just how much more frequently these issues were occurring until it hit the live servers.

Fortunately, we were able to learn a lot from this situation and we've already improved our testing process for 1.8. Not only do we have the full CTE (as we do for all major releases), but we began internal testing of the AI much sooner, and have been testing much more frequently to allow us to iterate on the behaviours faster to get better tuned AI. Those of you who tried out the CTE should have had a much better experience, even before we’ve had the opportunity to take your feedback into account. We're now being more thorough about our before and after observations to help ensure this doesn't happen again.

What can we expect to see in the future?
While Operation: Breakaway was focusing on the AIs awareness of players, in our next updates we're going to focus on the AI’s awareness of the world around them. If they're running to attack Objective B we want them to know if they're crossing an open field, down narrow corridors, or through a rubble filled courtyard, so that they can change their movement accordingly. If they hear gunfire from 10m to the west, and see a window 8m to the northwest, they should realize that there's a good chance the window leads to the room with the defender, and is a great place to lob a grenade.

At this point in time, we're focused on wrapping up Operation: Breakaway, and we are just beginning to work on these next set of changes. The first step of the process is to get the information the AI needs to make more tactical decisions, then build out the behaviours that make use of it. To make sure we don't have a repeat of 1.7.1 we're going to continue testing the AI early and often. This means you shouldn't expect the AI to begin maneuvering like a well oiled special forces team in future updates, but you should see steady improvements as we go.

Mapping Contest

We recently had a stream announcing the Insurgency: Sandstorm 2020 Mapping Contest. It’s our largest contest to date, in collaboration with Nvidia, Intel, Epic Games, Focus Home Interactive, Saber Interactive, and Mod.io. There are over $17,000 in prizes available so if you’re at all interested in map making, download our Mod Tools and let your creativity flow.

NWI has a deep-rooted history in the modding community and our previous contests for Insurgency and Day of Infamy have led to some amazing community maps. We’re very excited to see what our community comes up with this time!

Submissions must be received before January 28, 2021 at 2PM EST. For full contest details, see the post here.

Operation: Breakaway

We’re very excited for Operation: Breakaway to release on October 6. Between now and then the team will be putting the finishing touches on the update. If you missed out on the open CTE event you can still check out the website where you can get a sneak peek at some of the content (including a few things we didn’t have in the Open CTE!). That’s it for this month’s SoP, until next time, keep your stick on the ice.