***Official Squad Thread***
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Had a few decent weekend test session and fixed some major bugs. Also had quite a few server stability issues too but *fingers crossed* they should be fixed. We've also done some major work to the bullet damage and hit detection.
Here's the post!
Week 4 Closed Pre Alpha, Stability testing and framerate gains
Commander, Ranger and Airborne level Kickstarter Backers can Pre-Load the Closed Pre-Alpha via the link on the pre-alpha site within the next day or two, so check the pre-alpha site and the forums for the latest.
The next session will begin Saturday 6AM GMT/Friday 11PM PST, and run for 72 hours until Tuesday 6AM GMT/Monday 11PM PST.
They call it CPA for short, we're 28 Days Afflicted, Squad Medics baffled, Kickstarter fundraiser for further research has yet to slow down the progress. You say there are more out there trying to get into this war? Madness.
Are they wondering what's new? Nothing. Everything. Filling out the maps, rebuilding of the movement system, bullet damage and hit detection being upgraded. Systems for gunfire sounds updated again, Auditory atmospherics being improved constantly. The updates we're working on are big enough we can not possibly push them out en masse, will take several updates to be made public. We've focused on hit detection again, effort spearheaded by RoyAwesome, the coders say it's time for public play test of this system.
The Bonanza
- Improved hit detection in high server load situations
- Fixed a major performance issue related to animations (now in C++)
Like Christmas in August
- Added a portable toilet object
- Fixed a major performance issue related to animations (some heavy math code was in Blueprint. It's now in C++)
- Fixed breathing sounds not following the camera when leaning
- Fixed several issues where stamina was being used when it shouldn't be
- Added a bunch of ambient sounds for rivers and streams
The Lands
- Updates to Kohat
- Fixed Kohat Conquest
- Updated the south river of Kohat
- Updated Logar with new rocks and fields. Also a gas station
- Updates to Fools Road
- Added better handling of full auto looping when shooting a single shot.
The Tools of War
- Removed the fire selector from the SVD
- Added looping sounds for the M249, M4, and AK74
- M67/F1 Updates
- Medic revive system iterations - internal
Join Us as Ingame Admins
It is at this time we ask for people to step up and help us help and the community, by volunteering to be ingame moderators to maintain healthy gameplay experiences for our CPA.
- Ingame moderator application
For troubleshooting assistance, please head over here: http://forums.joinsq...shooting-guide/
Not yet, the build is still being finalized.
Sounds are pretty amazing even at this early stage if I say so myself. Anders (main sound guy) has done some amazing things so far. The engine opens up some great features for sounds.
I've not been able to bump and push the updates on here as I've been too busy unfortunately.
Servers are quiet yes but that's because there are limited keys from all over the world, servers only up at weekends so it's hard to get all those players from all over the world to join in at the same time! Servers are busy enough to do what the devs need at the minute and that is just to test the current build.
Fear not. The next wave of players will be on soon (Squad Leaders) and next week there should be something special...
Servers are quiet yes but that's because there are limited keys from all over the world, servers only up at weekends so it's hard to get all those players from all over the world to join in at the same time! Servers are busy enough to do what the devs need at the minute and that is just to test the current build.
Fear not. The next wave of players will be on soon (Squad Leaders) and next week there should be something special...
Yeah, don't want to scare people off because this game is amazing, but right now there is about 20 people at weekends who play consistently. 10 Vs 10 isn't great imho.
I really wish the devs would open up the next tier so we can actually fill the servers. As it is now people join and instantly leave when they see the server count so low.
Surely you are not getting much data for server stability when there is only 20 people on it.
Pretty please let more people in. I want to experience squad as it should be!
At this stage there was never going to be a huge amount of players on at any one time. It's purely for finding a fixing game breaking bugs so the numbers are doing the job just fine at the minute.
Having said that, it won't be long until those who backed the Squad Leader tier get access.
Bit of a long one this....
August + Pax Prime
The summer is nearly over.. but development sure isn't!
Before we jump into the news, Week 7 of the Closed Pre-Alpha will commence on Saturday 5th September at 6AM GMT/Friday 4th September 11PM PST, and run for an extended 96 hours until Tuesday 6AM GMT/Monday 11PM PST.
We here at Offworld simply can't BELIEVE it has been another month. Aside from the critical performance and back-end developments that have been going on a week-by-week basis, this month we really pushed out hard into two key features, Reviving and an overhaul to the Map & Squad UI.
In addition, we had a booth at Pax Prime 2015, in Seattles Washington State Convention Center. It was also the first time a lot of the developers that could make the trip met face to face and after the manly handshakes and hugs it was down the business, bringing Squad to the masses. More on that after the Monthly Recap for August.
Without any further ado!
Systems
Art
Mapping
Pax Prime After Action Report
It was a Wednesday when we got to the venue, with just Chuc (Animator), Royawesome (Programmer) and Merlin (Programmer) there to oversee the initial setup and to make sure we got all of our hired equipment from the venue. We spent most of the time sorting out the laptops that would be our demo stations, making sure the special Pax build would work over a LAN and that things wont crash during play. (and they didnt! Not a single crash over 4 days!)
On Thursday Irontaxi (level designer), ZTrooper (3D Artist, game design), Litoralis (community manager) and SgtRoss (military advisor, game design) arrived in Seattle, and we got to work putting up the decorations, sorting out the special Dog Tags that we ordered just for Pax Prime and working out the final logistics before the show opening on Friday morning. At the end of the day we all made merry at a fine local establishment (but not too much, cause it was showtime the next day!)
Special all-metal Dog Tags that were given out over Pax Prime, logo on the front and the joinsquad.com URL on the back.
While in Seattle, we also took the time to go to a newly established Motion Capture studio called MocapNow, run by industry veteran CJ Markham (worked on games such as Halo 4 & 5, Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3) who took us on an extremely interesting tour of his facilities and even gave us a demo using our characters.
Our own SgtRoss and Merlin got the spotted Lycra on and had some fun with the capture system. Some time down the track we will be capturing our own motions and so this was a great first experience for all of us.
Pictures probably speak louder than words about what the vibe was like on the show floor. We were up on level 6 where the medium-sized developers, indie studios and merchandise traders were located. Awesome neighbors like Frontier with Elite Dangerous, Chainsawesome with coincidentally named Knight Squad and Switchblade Monkey with Secret Ponchos kept us company as the crowds came through and saw our wares.
The demo was a special 3v3 orientated layer of Logar, keeping the action within the town. We were continuously cycling people in and out of the demo stations, and we were glad that at no-point during the event were the chairs ever empty.
Every person that stopped by our booth received a Dog Tag with the Squad logo on one side and the joinsquad.com URL on the other. Needless to say they were popular as heck and we managed to give away our stash of 1500 tags over the 4 days of the event.
The reception to the game was also very positive, with people praising its looks and also how much of a fresh experience it was for a FPS. We had some real characters drop by the event, including some of our Kickstarter backers!
A Backer! (Please let yourself be known in the thread!)
This champ came back three times to play, while his left arm was in a cast! We salute you.
http://i.imgur.com/53fjbn6.jpg
RoyAwesome sporting some shades courtesy of the guys from Super Dungeon Bros. Great game, go check it out!
ZTrooper keeping it classy on a very special kind of unicorn.... We hope he did his laundry after sitting on that thing.
Without a doubt Pax Prime proved to be a milestone for Squad and Offworld Industries as a team. For a lot of us it was the first time at a major games event as an exhibitor, and to put on a show as good as the one we had over the weekend was no mean feat. Wed like to thank the event, the other exhibitors and enforcers and most of all the people that came down to talk to us for one hell of a weekend of gaming.
Offworld Out.
August + Pax Prime
The summer is nearly over.. but development sure isn't!
Before we jump into the news, Week 7 of the Closed Pre-Alpha will commence on Saturday 5th September at 6AM GMT/Friday 4th September 11PM PST, and run for an extended 96 hours until Tuesday 6AM GMT/Monday 11PM PST.
We here at Offworld simply can't BELIEVE it has been another month. Aside from the critical performance and back-end developments that have been going on a week-by-week basis, this month we really pushed out hard into two key features, Reviving and an overhaul to the Map & Squad UI.
In addition, we had a booth at Pax Prime 2015, in Seattles Washington State Convention Center. It was also the first time a lot of the developers that could make the trip met face to face and after the manly handshakes and hugs it was down the business, bringing Squad to the masses. More on that after the Monthly Recap for August.
Without any further ado!
Systems
- Improved hit detection in high server load situations
- Added server-side validation of shots and threw out shots that aren't valid
- Added new UI systems for Maps, Map Markers, Squad Management and Kit Role selection
- Added a Wounded State, Player Revive and generally expanding the medical system
- Fixed a major performance issue related to animations (some heavy math code was in Blueprint. It's now in C++ which should help with performance)
- Reduced replication and update rates for deployables, players, weapons and projectiles to aid with improving server performance
- Added more Logic to FOB and Rally Point placement (eg. minimum squad member requirements)
- Increased spawn time on fobs to 15s, up from 10s, they are now half of the Spawn time of a Rally Point
- Firebase spawning now stops when more than 1 enemy soldier is in cap radius or the FOB is 75% captured. Clear out the FOB of enemies and spawning will resume
- Completely overhauled the flag systems to allow for better functionality with the AAS and Conquest systems.
- When a flag is lost in AAS mode, the side who lost the flag loses tickets as well
- Added stamina consumption to prone sprinting
- Fixed Crouch to Prone/Prone to Crouch positional glitching in third person
- Fixed maps to reduce LOD popping from occurring so often
- Prevented server from playing impact FX, improving server performance
- Fixed team switching bug that prevented players from switching teams when they should have been allowed to
- Shortened Pistol deploy animations down to 0.9 secs
- Fixed breathing sounds not following the camera when leaning
- Fixed several issues where stamina was being used when it shouldn't be
- Fixed both shell casing collision bug that made it float on surfaces and Wood bullet hit rotating decal.
- Modified local VOIP attenuation so the voice drop-off is a little bit more realistic
- Allowed audio at half-volume when outside of the game window
Art
- More progress on the Russian Soldier model set, plus test rigging the model
- Added New Crops, Corn, Wheat and Rice
- Progress on the M1014 Shotgun
- Overhauled the way Crops are created, making them look much more natural
- Added customisable freight containers and decals to go on the containers
- Added a police station
- Updated a bunch of wooden doors
- Added a bunch of ambient sounds for rivers and streams
- Added a portable toilet environment prop
- Added gasoline pump and gas station props
- Updated particle effects to look more realistic
- Updated backblast to look more realistic
- Added better handling of full auto looping when shooting a single shot
- Added proper looping sounds for the M249, M4, and AK74
- Added a plastic material for plastic water containers and other plastic objects, with associated impact effects and sounds.
- Added ceramic tile bullet hit sounds assigned to pot materials
- Added a small rocket propulsion effect to rocket projectiles
- Increased volume on sprint footstep sounds
- Added specific sounds to deployables, and radios now have static sounds combined with pre-recorded chatter
- Added flesh wound decals to all player characters
- Updated muzzle flashes and explosions
- Improved performance on explosion effects
- Added a Quick-start guide to the loading screen of the Pre-Alpha
Mapping
- General foliage and detail updates to Kohat
- Populated and detailed the south river sector of Kohat and increased cull distance on river trees
- Updated Logar with new rocks and fields. Also added a Gas Station
- Foundation started on a new 4kmx4km map
Pax Prime After Action Report
It was a Wednesday when we got to the venue, with just Chuc (Animator), Royawesome (Programmer) and Merlin (Programmer) there to oversee the initial setup and to make sure we got all of our hired equipment from the venue. We spent most of the time sorting out the laptops that would be our demo stations, making sure the special Pax build would work over a LAN and that things wont crash during play. (and they didnt! Not a single crash over 4 days!)
On Thursday Irontaxi (level designer), ZTrooper (3D Artist, game design), Litoralis (community manager) and SgtRoss (military advisor, game design) arrived in Seattle, and we got to work putting up the decorations, sorting out the special Dog Tags that we ordered just for Pax Prime and working out the final logistics before the show opening on Friday morning. At the end of the day we all made merry at a fine local establishment (but not too much, cause it was showtime the next day!)
Special all-metal Dog Tags that were given out over Pax Prime, logo on the front and the joinsquad.com URL on the back.
While in Seattle, we also took the time to go to a newly established Motion Capture studio called MocapNow, run by industry veteran CJ Markham (worked on games such as Halo 4 & 5, Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3) who took us on an extremely interesting tour of his facilities and even gave us a demo using our characters.
Our own SgtRoss and Merlin got the spotted Lycra on and had some fun with the capture system. Some time down the track we will be capturing our own motions and so this was a great first experience for all of us.
Pictures probably speak louder than words about what the vibe was like on the show floor. We were up on level 6 where the medium-sized developers, indie studios and merchandise traders were located. Awesome neighbors like Frontier with Elite Dangerous, Chainsawesome with coincidentally named Knight Squad and Switchblade Monkey with Secret Ponchos kept us company as the crowds came through and saw our wares.
The demo was a special 3v3 orientated layer of Logar, keeping the action within the town. We were continuously cycling people in and out of the demo stations, and we were glad that at no-point during the event were the chairs ever empty.
Every person that stopped by our booth received a Dog Tag with the Squad logo on one side and the joinsquad.com URL on the other. Needless to say they were popular as heck and we managed to give away our stash of 1500 tags over the 4 days of the event.
The reception to the game was also very positive, with people praising its looks and also how much of a fresh experience it was for a FPS. We had some real characters drop by the event, including some of our Kickstarter backers!
A Backer! (Please let yourself be known in the thread!)
This champ came back three times to play, while his left arm was in a cast! We salute you.
http://i.imgur.com/53fjbn6.jpg
RoyAwesome sporting some shades courtesy of the guys from Super Dungeon Bros. Great game, go check it out!
ZTrooper keeping it classy on a very special kind of unicorn.... We hope he did his laundry after sitting on that thing.
Without a doubt Pax Prime proved to be a milestone for Squad and Offworld Industries as a team. For a lot of us it was the first time at a major games event as an exhibitor, and to put on a show as good as the one we had over the weekend was no mean feat. Wed like to thank the event, the other exhibitors and enforcers and most of all the people that came down to talk to us for one hell of a weekend of gaming.
Offworld Out.
Yup, it's known about and is mentioned in the release thread. It's all down to the new version of the Unreal engine throwing in some big bugs. It was either have the same build again for another weekend or get you guys new things (medical system etc) to test but with having some bugs.
Won't be until December at the earliest.
It's an impossible task to organise a limited player base spread all over the world to come on only at the weekends to populate a few servers to simply test builds with early WIP features that sometimes are pretty broken. The majority of backers who have access to the game at this early stage are the guys who have played PR for years, they just want to see the game become the next evolution of PR and don't really want to step in at this stage and test which is fair enough, you can't blame them for that.
We always expected numbers to be low during this stage. Clan backers have had access to the game from this weekend and we are seeing increased numbers. When Squad Leader tier gets access and communities can host their own servers I've no doubt it will become a hell of a lot more active.
Time to get back up to speed updating things while I'm away.
Squad Leader backers....keys are coming out to you guys. Check your e-mails, this weekend may get manic!
Closed Alpha Announcement
Squad Leader, Commander, Ranger, Airborne, and Clan Pack level Kickstarter Backers can Pre-Load CA-V1 at prealpha.joinsquad.com (when the build is available later this week we will make an announcement)
Changelog:
Audio
Effects:
Gameplay:
Maps:
UI/HUD:
For troubleshooting assistance, please head over here
Follow us on social media:
►http://facebook.com/JoinSquad
►http://twitter.com/JoinSquad
►http://youtube.com/JoinSquad
►http://soundcloud.com/Scotttobin (music composer for Squad)
Squad Leader backers....keys are coming out to you guys. Check your e-mails, this weekend may get manic!
Closed Alpha Announcement
Squad Leader, Commander, Ranger, Airborne, and Clan Pack level Kickstarter Backers can Pre-Load CA-V1 at prealpha.joinsquad.com (when the build is available later this week we will make an announcement)
Changelog:
Audio
- Heavy breathing now stops when you go into incapacitated state
- Added bleeding heartbeat sounds.
- Breathing from stamina no longer plays when in incapacitated state
- Added Main menu music by Alkali.
- New M4, M249, AK-74 and RPK fire sounds.
- Added more deploy and reload sounds.
- More footstep sounds and bullet impact sounds.
- Added Rocket flyby sounds.
- Added Radio filter for Squad and Command VOIP with transfer sounds.
Effects:
- Modified the scene tint for the incap state to blend smoothly from the low health state.
- Fixed water hit effects not rendering correctly
Gameplay:
- When you get incapacitated your stamina is now set to 0
- Fixed stamina being consumed when sprinting and going incap
- Fixed dry load animation not playing issue
- Fixed auto spawning when going straight to dead state
- Fixed voice comms not working when incapacitated
- Changes to rallypoints now mean that they will disappear after 9 players have spawned, as well as the squad leader being limited to placing a new one for 2 min after placing the last, unless the SL respawns at a FOB
- FOB capture time increased
- Flags now require 3 players to cap and 60 seconds of cap time to capture
- Changed inventory system, weapons can now have a much more complex mag/ammo layout and button presses can be empty (pressing #2 on rifleman kits now no longer does anything)
- Fixed various issues with revive and incapacitated state. Capsule no longer falls through the ground.
- Fixed issues discovered when a person becomes incapacitated soon after revive.
- Moved the point system to float instead of int, allowing finer grained control of points
- Medic now heals 1% of health every 0.1s instead of 10% of health every 1 sec, making the ui and healing more fluent.
- Fixed rpg and law not having sway and properly aligned sights.
- New Ammo / Magazine functionality. Ammo is now saved and sorted on reload.
- Increased bandages for soldiers to 2, medic now has 6.
- Fixed ability to bandage enemies
- Changed bleeding rate from 1hp/sec to .5hp/sec
Maps:
- Added new Kohat Toi map layer and new area along south river
- Update all maps to new AAS system, with flag names and ticket loss penalties
- Updated Kohat Toi and Logar Valley with “Foliage 2.0”
- Updated Logar Night lights to temp fix AMD card issues and low frames
- Updated all Logar Valley map layers so flags take 60 seconds to neutralize and 120 to cap
UI/HUD:
- Updated loading screen quick guide with new icons and info about Field Dressings
- Fixed hard-to-see black font on the login screen
- Added HUD icon to indicate whether or not chamber is loaded and fixed magazine counter
- Allowed the M203 and GP25 to have a round in the chamber to show round chambered indicator on the HUD
- Changed incap HUD icon to be displayed out to 50m instead of 5m, it should help in finding fallen comrades.
- Added a scrollable Squads-list and the ability to collapse/expand Squads on the Squad list
- Removed old hud damage indicator
- Stamina now hides when full and linearly changes color depending on percentage
- The map now shows the correct position of players
- The map now shows markers correctly from player to player
- Rally point tooltip now displays the number of spawns left
- Fixed voice comms not being available when map is open
- Fixed an issue where a fob would be selected on the UI when it wasn’t
- Fixed player duplication in the squad player lists
- Fixed blur effect persisting after closing map.
- Fixed not taking bleeding effect if > 100 damage taken
- Added kills and deaths to the final score tally, as well as an indicator for when the next game will start
- Added a map legend
- FOBs will go red when overrun and become unselectable when spawning is unavailable
For troubleshooting assistance, please head over here
Follow us on social media:
►http://facebook.com/JoinSquad
►http://twitter.com/JoinSquad
►http://youtube.com/JoinSquad
►http://soundcloud.com/Scotttobin (music composer for Squad)
Not sure where you're getting that info from.
Servers will be up 24/7 as of this weekend.
Correct!
Servers probably won't be up until 7am tomorrow morning guys. Don't quote me on that but I'll let you know if anything changes.
Pretty much bang on mate.
I hope you all have mics! Hopefully we can organise a time we can get on and create a squad this weekend. I'll be in-game showing the ropes to the guys from Polenar Tactical tomorrow. Apparently they are one of the biggest European gun related channels on YouTube so we'll see how that goes!
Pretty much bang on mate.
I hope you all have mics! Hopefully we can organise a time we can get on and create a squad this weekend. I'll be in-game showing the ropes to the guys from Polenar Tactical tomorrow. Apparently they are one of the biggest European gun related channels on YouTube so we'll see how that goes!
Taken from a thread over on the official forums - http://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/4766-the-squad-game-manual/
Try going to X:\Users\userName\AppData\Local\ and delete the Squad folder and do a fresh extract of the game. Relaunch the game and that should fix the Rift problem.
Freak.
This build is much better than the previous, being a medic in that version was a nightmare. You can definitely tell there a new players, you find entire squads on the other side of the map doing who knows what.
The first few rounds people have been playing it like CoD/Battlepump but they are slowly getting the hang of it. I managed to get the same group of 9 players in my squad for a few rounds. They started off completely oblivious of anything going on but once they all started using their mics and communicating they loved it.
Managed to sneak up to an American who were roughly 300m away. Everyone was itching to engage them but I told them to wait. The plan was for the RPG gunner to engage them first and then for everyone to then get rounds down. It worked brilliantly! The RPG went off killing about 3, the other 6 went into utter panic as 8 of us opened up with rifles and the RPG gunner sent more good news with his HE! I sat there with a huge grin on my face!
Moral of the story is use your mic!
Can't seem to log in, in game
Can you log into the alpha portal? The login servers were down roughly 3 hours ago but should be fine now. We had to take the master server down for a little bit earlier to increase the resource allocation because of the heavy load the master server has been under.
So what is a good time to play to get a good squad to learn off of? Got my key but I'd be jumping into this clueless haha
Have a read of this unofficial manual matey. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50135680/Squad_Alpha-Manual_1_0_0.pdf
If anyone wants to join me tomorrow I will be about all day finally!