Operation: Harsh Doorstop

[[R-DEV]​Dr Rank]

Good luck with it Looking forward to seeing more.

[[R-DEV]​Suchar]

The story behind that name sounds really similar to the history of the 'Project Reality' name.

COINCIDENCE?


...well, probably yes

[[SFOD-D]Sandman]

This game looks promising. Hope we get to dig in ASAP!

[Bluedrake42]

Posting a few updates.

Implementation of our radial menu, which will be used to deploy outposts, rally points, and spot enemies. Obviously this will be expanded in future updates, but for now we feel these three radial features are the most important to include for the first release of the game.



Bandages have been implemented. Currently our health system is much more simple than Squad or Project Reality, however this will change in future updates. For now the bandages simply heal you a small amount, however in the future they will be used to stop bleeding.



Grenade launchers have been implemented. Currently you cannot set the range, but this will come in future updates.



We have a significant number of other features that have been implemented... including leaning, prone stance, squad management, among other things. However I'll leave those updates for a future post.

We're getting close.

Keep in mind that Operation: Harsh Doorstop will be a free game, similar to how Project Reality is a free game. The project will be funded through community donations and engine licensing. We've already raised around $300,000 for the project, and we're hoping to raise a considerably larger amount on launch.

Make sure you wishlist the game so you can be notified on launch. Won't cost you a thing.

Talk again soon.

[Deviro]

When you re-announced this last April you said that MicroProse was helping you. As far as I understand you are in some kind of a publishing deal with them. What's the story behind that? And in what way are they contributing to OHD?

[Bluedrake42]

I can sum that up pretty quickly.

MicroProse is a client of ours. We license them a version of our codebase "OHDCore" for them to develop video games and training solutions with. They also own an IP called "Warfare 1944" which they contracted us to develop utilizing OHDCore. This arrangement has obviously helped fund development of Operation: Harsh Doorstop and OHDCore.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/793560/Warfare_1944/

This is basically part of our business model. Operation: Harsh Doorstop is a free game funded by community donations but also by investments from third party organizations. We own Operation: Harsh Doorstop and OHDCore in its entirety, but we license out the codebase in exchange for funding.

MicroProse also won a bid to be listed on Operation: Harsh Doorstop as an investor and publisher. This arrangement has further helped to fund the game, however we still own exclusive publishing and intellectual property rights to both Operation: Harsh Doorstop and OHDCore. So their listing there is purely a marketing arrangement.

MicroProse does publish Warfare 1944, and receives royalties for the purchase of that game. They also own a license to OHDCore, and plan to develop additional titles utilizing OHDCore in the future... but that is all I can say for now.

There is more history to all of this, but those are basically the big bullet points. I contract and develop projects for a number of organizations, so you'll likely see a lot of different names thrown around. It is all just part of our model. We work for a number of clients, MicroProse being one of our largest. However we still retain full ownership and publishing rights to both Operation: Harsh Doorstop and the underlying codebase. We just license it out to our investors.

[[R-DEV]Mats391]

Looking good. Can you share anything about the netcode already and how it will go with 100 players? I remember some UE4 games using client side hit/collision detection which makes cheating easier.
Speaking of cheating, do you have any plans to prevent people from just creating new accounts once caught?

[Bluedrake42]

Originally Posted by Mats391

Looking good. Can you share anything about the netcode already and how it will go with 100 players? I remember some UE4 games using client side hit/collision detection which makes cheating easier.
Speaking of cheating, do you have any plans to prevent people from just creating new accounts once caught?

So for Unreal Engine 4, the number of players we can support fluctuates wildly from patch to patch. Our objective isn't to push the boundaries of how many players we can support on the first day. Right now we can support up to 80, and we can push it to 100 if you're okay with some lag. However we're planning on focusing on 64 players for the first release, and then slowly ramping up to 100 players over time.

As far as cheating, we can create systems that require accounts to be a specific age, require a particular number of games to be purchased, or other things to ensure only legitimate accounts are able to join servers. These will all be server-side settings though.

Basically its the same anti-cheat aspects that Roblox or other free to play games have.

[Bluedrake42]

Updates on leaning and prone stances.





We're also working on an updated version on back up sight management. Where players can either switch to back up sights or to a braced non ADS aim. Similar to what is possible in Due Process.

One thing I really wanted to nail was the leaning. I really didn't enjoy Squad's leaning implementation until it was updated years layer. We took inspiration from Insurgency: Sandstorm, and I'm pretty happy with our first iteration.

[AfterDune]

The project has come a long way, good to see it's alive and kicking!