Hello Gamers™,

The time is nearly upon us. Operation: Cold Blood is only eight (!!!) days away.

To those of you who played the 1.9 CTE, thank you very much for your time. We received a lot of feedback from the CTE players and it honestly helps us determine adjustments we can or should make before the official release.

There were over 440,000 kills in the 5 days of the CTE alone, with M1 Garand leading the way with 68,792! The best weapon in the game (the Welrod) had a meager 360 kills, 12 less than the combat knife.

One thing we saw during the CTE is that a lot of Outpost scenarios are still easier than we intended, so we will be tweaking those in upcoming updates.

We also used heatmaps like the one below to determine where the most kills and deaths were happening.



I’d also like to say that we have had a huge breakthrough as far as how the AI interacts with smoke goes - so in 1.9 you will notice a large improvement.

If you didn’t try the CTE or aren’t sure what that even is, take a look here - it’s a great way for people to try upcoming content early, and it helps us a lot. All major releases such as Operation: Cold Blood will have a CTE a couple of weeks before release.

We have a few more reveals coming for Operation: Cold Blood in this final week before release, so keep an eye on our socials (@InsurgencyGame on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) and our update website (http://www.sandstorm.game/coldblood).

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There is something I want to touch on that is coming with 1.9 that we haven’t talked about yet.

We looked at something a lot in the past few months and have come to a decision. In 1.9 the Security and Insurgent factions will have adjusted weapon availability, to match what it’s currently like in Versus.

There are three main reasons we are making this change:

1. We want to improve balance between the two factions
   
2. We want to maintain (and improve) the identity of the factions
   
3. Having weapon availability parity between Versus and Co-op helps players that move from Co-op to Versus

Some of you may not like this change at first. Please let us know on Reddit and the Steam forums how you feel about this, but also please let us know *why* you feel the way you do about the change.

Before you make your mind up, try and wait for 1.9 to try it. In my opinion Security feels more… Security-ish with the changes.

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For the main feature this month I wanted to showcase a Sandstorm mod. It has a large team, it has a lot of content, and it’s a lot of fun to play. How many of you have tried ISMC?

If you haven’t heard of ISMC, I highly recommend checking it out. Their mod.io page is available here, and they also have a website, available here.

I spoke with their lead developer earlier this month:

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Welcome to the first official edition of ‘From the Field’, a (now named) section where we show off some of our favourite community content from the past month.

We’re going to start with a reaction to seeing the ‘Garand Thumb Reload’ for the first time. Keep those thumbs clear, soldier. Credit to @MAKHINA10 on Twitter.


This Redditor made an MP7 entirely out of cardboard, and it looks incredible. Need to work on your trigger discipline though my friend (credit to indopoppy on Reddit).


There are pros and cons to shooting down a heli (credit to Reacher-Said-N0thing on Reddit).


Great production, great aim, great gun. 10/10 Mosin use (credit to Eziokas_YT on Reddit).


One of our French players on Discord created this piece of art. Le mérite revient à Gat (I guarantee that is incorrect French, but I tried).

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Well, that wraps up this month’s blog - soon enough we'll all be trudging through the snow, clicking heads and hearing that oh-so-distinctive ping (which is audible to ALL players around you as well, for the record).

Can’t wait for everyone to hop in to Operation: Cold Blood - I will be glued to my screens on the 8th, awaiting your feedback.

fatherHank

Well, another Community Test Environment has come and gone.

Thank you to all the players that took part and tried out some of the upcoming content for Operation: Cold Blood, we have received some excellent feedback to help us tweak the upcoming release.

If you did play the CTE and haven't filled the survey out yet, please take the 10 minutes to do so. The information we gather from the survey goes a long way in helping us understand concerns with content, finding any new bugs that didn't come up in internal testing, and giving us direct feedback on the upcoming release.

The survey is available here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ColdBloodCTE

We look forward to seeing you all on December 8th for the release!

In anticipation of our upcoming Operation: Cold Blood update, our Play with the Devs event is happening NOW from 11:00 AM MST - 12:00 PM MST on the Community Test Environment.

Help test upcoming content for Operation: Cold Blood on the Community Test Environment:

• New map: Bab
  
• Two new weapons (M110 SASS and M1 Garand)
  
• New Weapon Upgrades

To play with us, go to your Steam Library and download “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment". Boot up the CTE, and please set matchmaking regions to US East. Click Play, select Co-op, select New Outpost Maps, 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.

Please note that all devs will have a DEV tag next to their name in-game. Anyone posing as a dev without the DEV tag is not an NWI developer.

After playing, please fill out our CTE survey. The only other place the team will be funneling feedback is on our Steam CTE Sub-Forum. 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.

For more information on the CTE, please visit our frequently asked questions article here.


See you soon!

In anticipation of our upcoming Operation: Cold Blood update, our Play with the Devs event is happening NOW from 11:00 AM MST - 12:00 PM MST on the Community Test Environment.

Help test upcoming content for Operation: Cold Blood on the Community Test Environment:

• New map: Bab
  
• Two new weapons (M110 SASS and M1 Garand)
  
• New Weapon Upgrades

To play with us, go to your Steam Library and download “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment". Boot up the CTE, and please set matchmaking regions to US East. Click Play, select Co-op, select New Map: Bab, 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.

Please note that all devs will have a DEV tag next to their name in-game. Anyone posing as a dev without the DEV tag is not an NWI developer.

After playing, please fill out our CTE survey. The only other place the team will be funneling feedback is on our Steam CTE Sub-Forum. 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.

For more information on the CTE, please visit our frequently asked questions article here.


See you soon!

In anticipation of our upcoming Operation: Cold Blood update, our Play with the Devs event is happening NOW from 11:00 AM MST - 12:00 PM MST on the Community Test Environment.

Help test upcoming content for Operation: Cold Blood on the Community Test Environment:

• New map: Bab
  
• Two new weapons (M110 SASS and M1 Garand)
  
• New Weapon Upgrades

To play with us, go to your Steam Library and download “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment". Boot up the CTE, and please set matchmaking regions to US East. Click Play, select Versus, 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.

Please note that all devs will have a DEV tag next to their name in-game. Anyone posing as a dev without the DEV tag is not an NWI developer.

After playing, please fill out our CTE survey. The only other place the team will be funneling feedback is on our Steam CTE Sub-Forum. 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.

For more information on the CTE, please visit our frequently asked questions article here.


See you soon!

This content is now available on the Community Test Environment. Go to your Steam Library and download “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment” to play. Please remember this is a preview build, so some issues are expected (see 'Known Issues') and all content is considered work in progress. If you encounter any problems or have feedback for the development team please don’t hesitate to let us know in the CTE sub-section of the Steam forums. Also be sure to fill out our 1.9 CTE Feedback Survey. Our team will be monitoring feedback during the CTE and aim to push this update to players on the live version of Insurgency: Sandstorm in December. The CTE will be available until Monday evening.


Fight your way through a village, down snowy hills, over a frozen river, and at the gates of an ancient fortress. For those of you who are curious, “Bab” is an Arabic word that means “gate”. This map differs from our other maps by being more supportive of long-range combat and open layout play, but still having plenty of points for medium to close range engagements. It also sports a more mountainous snowy rural environment, which is only otherwise seen in one other snow map called Hillside. Bab has support for the following game modes:

Versus

• Push Security
  
• Push Insurgents
  
• Firefight
  
• Domination

Co-op

• Checkpoint Security
  
• Checkpoint Insurgents
  
• Hardcore Checkpoint Security
  
• Hardcore Checkpoint Insurgents
  
• Outpost

There are two new high caliber semi-auto sniper rifles available for the Marksman class: the M110 SASS for Security at 4 supply points and the M1 Garand for Insurgents at 2 supply points. Both weapons support Optic, Underbarrel, Barrel, and other upgrades, including an old school 20mm muzzle-loaded grenade launcher for the M1 Garand. Oh and be careful: when you run out of bullets in the M1 Garand, both you and your enemies will hear its loud iconic “ping” sound.

Toggleable optics are optics that can be switched between a short-range magnification and a long-range magnification. We know you’ve been wanting this for a while, and here it is.

We’ve added 9 new toggleable optics to Sandstorm, and we’ve updated 8 existing optics that were already in the game so that they can now be toggled. You can see a full list of the new toggleable optics as well as the existing optics that now have support for toggling below. The existing optics have been renamed to reflect both magnification levels.

Optic availability on a per-class basis has not been changed. Unless otherwise noted as weapon-specific, used in Co-op, or used in Domination, all optic types at or below 4x-1x are available for Rifleman, Demolitions, Observer, Commander, Gunner, and Advisor classes. Breacher is limited to 1x and 1x-2x optics. The new closer to medium range oriented 3x-6x optics are available for the Marksman class.

New Insurgent Toggleable Optics

• 2x-1x OKP-7
  
• 2x-1x MARS
  
• 2.5x-1x M1C Scope (M1 Garand specific)
  
• 4x-1x M150 BUS (Red dot sight on top)
  
• 6x-3x T Scope

New Security Toggleable Optics

• 4x-1x SU230 BUS (Red dot sight on top)
  
• 3x-1x CH Sight BUS (Red dot sight, G36K specific)
  
• 6x-3x DOS Scope (M110 SASS specific)
  
• 6x-3x Red Ring Scope

Existing Insurgent Optics That Were Updated to be Toggleable

• 2x Kobra -> 2x-1x Kobra

Existing Security Optics That Were Updated to be Toggleable

• 2x Holographic -> 2x-1x Holographic
  
• 2x Red Dot -> 2x-1x Red Dot
  
• 4x SU230 -> 4x-1x SU230
  
• 4x C79 -> 4x-1x C79
  
• 4x SUSAT -> 4x-1x SUSAT (L85A2 specific)
  
• 4x ISM -> 1.5x-1x CH Sight (G36K specific)
  
• 1.5x A1 Scope -> 1.5x-1x A1 Scope (AUG A3 specific)

We’ve added Outpost to some new maps, and improved some of the existing layouts with better objective placement and enemy AI spawn areas. We hope to expand the mode to more maps in a future update.

New Outpost Maps

• Hideout
  
• Farmhouse
  
• Tideway
  
• Bab

Improved Outpost Maps

• Tell
  
• Crossing
  
• Ministry
  
• Hillside

• Improved HUD during Outpost mode to better indicate the various stages

Over the last few months we’ve taken huge strides in optimizing our maps. Time was spent analyzing memory usage and determining performance bottlenecks in each individual level. Our goal was to provide more consistent frame rates and performance in our levels without impacting the visual integrity. Generally this was achieved by reducing draw calls where possible in levels to help improve frame rates and improving cull distance to reduce CPU overhead.

The following maps were focused on for optimization:

• Hideout
  
• Farmhouse
  
• Precinct
  
• Crossing

Performance testing also showed areas for improvement in first and third person animations as well as many UI elements. These items were all optimized to provide better and more consistent experiences for users.

• Players now have the ability to customize night scenario Loadouts in the Customize menu prior to matchmaking
  
• Players have the ability to adjust the volume of radio commands in the Settings Menu

• Implemented night and day time selection for the Range found under Tutorials in the Main Menu
  
• Added sounds to notify players when supply points are gained and waves progress in Outpost Mode
  
• An animated red arrow now appears on the objective icon to indicate that a counterattack has commenced in Checkpoint mode
  
• Added new scrolling animation to score bars in Domination to better indicate capture speed
  
• The top left part of the menu under the Co-op, Versus, and Competitive sections now says the section you are browsing instead of “Play”
  
• Post-match messages are now hidden when the scoreboard is active to reduce clutter

• Enemies capturing an objective will more effectively find players that enter the objective
  
• Enemies are less likely to leave an objective they are capturing
  
• Enemies are more coordinated when moving between objectives, keeping more distance between themselves so that they no longer bunch up in a column and “conga line”

Since new weapons have come to the Marksman, we decided to do a balance pass on its other weapons to make sure everything fits together. The M24 and Mosin-Nagant have been reduced in price along with their Greased Bolt upgrades to reflect their limited capabilities. The M82A1 CQ and M99 as well as their upgrades were reduced in supply cost to better match their effectiveness. The Mk 14 EBR’s unmatched full auto fire mode and high fire rate have warranted an increase in price.

Marksman Weapons

• Reduced M24 supply cost from 2 to 1
  
• Reduced Mosin supply cost from 2 to 1
  
• Reduced M82A1 CQ supply cost from 6 to 3
  
• Reduced M99 supply cost from 6 to 3
  
• Increased Mk 14 EBR supply cost from 5 to 6

Marksman Weapon Upgrades

• Reduced M24 Greased Bolt from 3 supply to 2 supply
  
• Reduced Mosin Greased Bolt from 3 supply to 2 supply
  
• Reduced M82A1 CQ Extended Magazine supply cost from 4 to 2
  
• Reduced M99 Extended Magazine supply cost from 4 to 2
  
• Made 7x Type 99 Scope only available for M99
  
• Added M99's Extended Magazine and Bipod upgrades for the Competitive Insurgent Sharpshooter class

• Fixed an issue with the explosive launcher weapon upgrade appearing broken in the Loadout menu
  
• Fixed an issue where the Chemical Mortars fire support smoke cloud color overlay was appearing black when the player is inside the smoke
  
• Reduced instances of an issue upon game launch where your character may appear invisible with only a vest (Note: Playing the basic training tutorial may help to fix this if you're one of the edge cases still affected by this problem)
  
• Reduced instances of an issue upon game launch where the Customization Menu may appear to be empty

• Replays may cause the game to crash
  
• Players can see their vest in first person but can be fixed by swapping weapons or double hitting escape
  
• Weapons can be misaligned with the player’s hands during pre-game but can be fixed by swapping weapons
  
• Mosin-Nagant Stripper Clip weapon upgrade does not push in properly when reloading in third person
  
• AI vehicles can get stuck in the Range level under Tutorials
  
• Upon game launch, there’s a chance your character may be shown as just an ammo carrier. Doing the Basic Tutorial will often fix this until a full fix is implemented
  
• Upon game launch you may not see any of your customization options. Going to customize and swapping factions will correct this
  
• Players and AI may not appear to have a character model but only appear as a floating vest or weapon
  
• The background of the Main Menu may flicker
  
• The Slow Movement mutator will sometimes only function on the first map in rotation on community servers
  
• Initial state upon spawn of Toggleable optics can cause alignment or sensitivity issues but can be fixed by swapping weapons

Check out the full changelist and see what’s new in update 1.8.1. This is a minor release and aims to fix bugs and add a few small changes.

• Players are now able to bind a separate key for each explosive type
  
• Added night scenarios to the Admin GUI for all maps
  
• Added a new symbol for the Night-vision Goggles UI images
  
• The Map Vote Screen will now show three day scenarios and three night scenarios every time
  
• Tactical Map now indicates when a friendly is in a contested objective zone with a colored marker on top of the player icon that matches the color of the enemy team
  
• Made several improvements to auto team balance:
  • Only dead players will be autobalanced
    
  • Autobalance will trigger after 60 seconds rather than 30 seconds
    
  • Autobalance is disabled when the number of waves reaches zero in Push and Frontline modes. The following message in the chat log will be displayed: “0 waves reached. Auto team balance is disabled.”
    
  • Players who are autobalanced will receive the following message in the chat log to notify them of the change when they spawn, “You have been moved to the other faction to balance the number of players on both teams.”

• Reduced M16A2 supply cost from 2 supply to 1 supply
  
• Reduced QBZ-03 supply cost from 5 supply to 4 supply
  
• Increased FAL supply cost from 4 supply to 5 supply
  
• Reduced M16A2 supply cost from 4 supply to 3 supply in Competitive
  
• Reduced QBZ-03 supply cost from 7 supply to 6 supply in Competitive
  
• Increased FAL supply cost from 5 supply to 7 supply in Competitive

Push Insurgents:

• Increased restricted area on security side behind objective A to allow more space out of spawn for Security
  
• Increased restricted area on Insurgents’ left flank of objective D to bottom of stair area to allow more space out of spawn for Security
  
• Removed portion of objective C on street closest to Security team spawn

Push Security:

• Increased restricted area for objective A on Security side of canal to match Insurgency 2014 boundaries
  
• Fixed a rubble pile out of Security spawn for objective A that Security could get stuck in jumping down from bridge
  
• Added sandbags to Last Stand Cache to reduce chances that explosives thrown or launched from outside the building will destroy it
  
• Several other relatively minor changes that address dark areas, balance, and movement throughout the map

• Reduced occurrences of a bug where AI were not wearing the proper clothing
  
• Reduced occurrences of incorrect status showing on an objective marker when capturing a zone -
  added logging for the edge cases where this still happens to help us eliminate it completely
  
• Fixed a bug where the chat textbox obstructed the click on the Loadout Screen
  
• Fixed an issue where looking above the ‘horizon’ caused the objective status to disappear
  
• Fixed an issue when reporting a player where the text box would not activate to allow typing when clicking on the white space
  
• Fixed a bug where the player ranks were displaying as zero on the scoreboard on community servers
  
• Fixed a bug where a vehicle was not displaying visual effects when destroyed
  
• Fixed a bug where the active objective marker was missing during the first spawn
  
• Fixed a bug where the objective status icon would disappear when looking upwards or downwards
  
• Fixed a bug which caused the equipment color option selected under the Appearance section to only applied on the vest area and not the rest of the Light or Heavy Carrier
  
• Fixed a bug where Autocannon Strafe was not causing damage to weapon caches
  
• Fixed a bug where the IED and phone will float in place if a player planting an explosive on a weapon cache is killed
  
• Fixed 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
  
• Fixed a clipping issue when reloading an MP5A5 or MP5A2 using dry-reload
  
• Fixed an issue where the magazine momentarily disappears when performing a dry reload on the VHS-2 and AK-74
  
• Fixed an issue when pressing “Cancel” while downloading server mods would prevent you from returning to the Main Menu and playing the game
  
• Fixed an issue where prompt gets stuck when attempting to connect to a server with mods without accepting the Terms of Service
  
• Fixed an issue where modders may have been experiencing issues loading in textures whose parent was not a material shipped in the game

• Mosin-Nagant Stripper Clip weapon upgrade does not push in properly when reloading in third person
  
• AI vehicles can get stuck in the Tutorial Range
  
• 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
  
• Upon game launch, there’s a chance your character may be shown as just an ammo carrier. Doing the tutorial will often fix this until a full fix is implemented
  
• Upon game launch you may not see any of your customization options. Going to customize and swapping factions will correct this
  
• The background of the Main Menu may flicker
  
• The Chemical Mortars fire support smoke clouds color overlay can sometimes appear black when the player is inside the smoke
  
• Attachments may not appear correctly in the loadout screen on your character
  
• The Slow Movement mutator will sometimes only function on the first map in rotation on community servers

Hello everyone, my name is Tim Perreault and I’m the Executive Producer at New World Interactive. Snow has started falling and winter is upon us here in Canada. The team has traded in our Digital Desert BDUs for something a little warmer as progress on our latest update continues. This will be short and sweet (perhaps to make up for the exceptionally long SoP we had last month).

Key Points for State of Production #14

• 1.8.1 Patch and Live Issues
  
• Operation: Cold Blood
  
• Upcoming Open CTE Test
  
• Studio News and Schedule

The 1.8.1 patch is in the final stages of certification and preparation for a release on November 17. While this patch was built around addressing some community concerns which you can see discussed in this stream, we’ve also got a few bug fixes and improvements to live issues. The two biggest issues we are currently working on fixes for are both the “impostor” issue where some Insurgent bots will have Security cosmetics and Objective display issues. We’ve put some improvements for both these issues in the patch; however, we’re still working on determining root cause and implementing full fixes that cover all edge cases. There will hopefully be a reduction in occurrences for players with this patch but we’ll continue working on a full fix to be released as soon as possible.


We’ve recently announced the name of our winter release, Operation: Cold Blood. Keep your eyes peeled on the website for updates and sneak peeks at content. The team remains busy behind the scenes working on all the new content including Outpost layouts for some of the maps that weren’t ready for our last update. We’ll do a bit more of a deeper dive into the work that went into Cold: Blood during December’s SoP, but suffice it to say there are a lot of nice little things that will be coming in the update beyond the new content including continued improvements to our AI. If you’d like to see some of it, you can check out our Open CTE Test.


Shortly after you read this update, we’ll be running an Open Play With Devs test on our Community Test Environment. You’ll be able to try out the new weapons and some yet to be announced upgrades before they are even fully announced. You’ll also be able to help us try out our new map and check out the new Outpost layouts. Keep your eyes peeled for the official announcements on the availability of the CTE, feedback questions, and Play with Dev schedule. I’m hoping I’ll see plenty of you out there during the Play with Dev events.


On November 10th it was publicly announced that we are opening a new studio in Montréal, Canada dubbed New World East. This studio will open us up to the highly talented pool of developers in the region that will help us build out some areas of our development team where we still need to expand. You can see the announcement here.

The studio is coming up to our next break at the end of the year where we’ll be closed from December 24 until January 4. In January’s SoP, we’ll be reviewing what happened throughout 2020, what we learned, and how we’ll be applying that to 2021.

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