⚠️ NOTICE
These release notes are for the V1032 testing build currently available in the GROUND BRANCH CTE (Community Test Environment) Steam app — not to be confused with the actual (and upcoming) V1032 release for the regular GROUND BRANCH app.
🚨 CLEAR YOUR OLD FILES
To avoid input and asset conflicts, delete all files/folders located in both of the following locations (copy-paste the path into your File Explorer address bar and hit Enter):
1. %LOCALAPPDATA%\GroundBranch\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor
2. Documents\GroundBranch
As we mentioned on Twitter, we have been squashing bugs all holiday season to get some of the most pressing CTE issues ironed out before the new year.
Here’s the list of fixes and additions for today’s GROUND BRANCH CTE patch:
Gameplay and customization
Tweaked leaning to be a lot more useful again. It’s a stop-gap solution until we get the rigging/animations figured out properly.
Fixed M16A4 not having fire mode selection and mag check capability.
Fixed unlimited shotgun reloads.
Reoriented dropped item interaction boxes.
Adjusted recoil and rate of fire for G3A3 and FAL closer to real-life values.
Updated Micro T-2 red dot sight with new models.
Added plain button-up shirt with 5 skin choices (icon pending; currently shares plaid shirt icon).
Fixed/tweaked various character asset skins and textures.
Fixed arm mask clipping too much on some long-sleeve tops.
Maps and game modes
Prevented people spawning crazy inter-dimensional AI and players (sorry to spoil the fun).
Fixed collision issues on Storage Facility.
Fixed lots of lights popping on/off on Run Down.
Added light switch boxes to Compound.
Fixed Team Elimination game mode.
Fixed bad extraction points on Storage Facility’s creek (Intel Retrieval).
No more rogue Russian gear-wearing bot on Small Town (Intel Retrieval).
Intel Retrieval now logs laptop name as well as number so you can find it in the mission editor.
Greatly reduced the number of dead bodies sticking around in respawn modes.
Audio
Added radio syncing beep audio cues on round start and end.
Audio work and fixes done on various maps and weapons.
Added crouching SFX.
Ambient sounds and sound fixes on Storage Facility.
Possible fix for VOIP issue where player input signal is too quiet (may have caused VOIP to be too loud!).
Increased sound occlusion for the Ready Room’s shooting range.
Graphics, performance and online replication
Performance pass on inventory textures (downsized, optimized).
Graphical performance passes on Rig and Compound.
Tweaked graphics settings (Low/Medium/High/Epic etc.) to try and get those working better.
Updated doors to fix long-standing replication bug (doors have different states on client and server).
Tentative fix for PiP scopes making areas too bright.
Tweaked lighting across all maps to improve consistency and nighttime lighting — highlights and shadows should now be less harsh, generally.
Disabled eye adaptation.
Fixed various clipping issues.
Default lens reflection texture changed to better placeholder before it loads in properly.
Redid laser dots so all lasers have big bright IR dots in NVG (still a WIP).
Changed alternative respawn behavior in Team Elimination from always respawning next to a teammate (“Always Teammate Respawn” option) to always respawning back at the insertion point (“No Teammate Respawn”).
When is V1032 stable coming?
We are only 3–4 days away from the new year — meaning the stable release for V1032 will not be here before 2022 as we need this build to get a decent testing period to make sure the fixes work and that nothing else broke in the process. There’s plenty more polishing we’d like to do too.
With that being said, with a little luck the official release is not likely to take more than a few weeks. So keep an eye out for game-breakers and fingers crossed!
This has been CTE UPDATE #009!
Thanks for testing V1032 and reporting all those bugs!
To those of you who celebrate it, we hope you enjoyed the holidays. And to all of you supporting and playing GROUND BRANCH: we could not be more grateful. Thank you so much for sticking with us through another year.
Till the next update, and we'll see you in 2022!
⚠️ NOTICE
These release notes are for the V1032 testing build currently available in the GROUND BRANCH CTE (Community Test Environment) Steam app — not to be confused with the actual (and upcoming) V1032 release for the main GROUND BRANCH app.
🚨 CLEAR YOUR OLD FILES
To avoid input and asset conflicts, delete all files/folders located in the following locations (copy-paste the path into your File Explorer address bar and hit Enter):
1. %LOCALAPPDATA%\GroundBranch\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor
2. Documents\GroundBranch
You’re not seeing things: our Community Test Environment (CTE) for version 1032 is finally live!
For anyone arriving now, GROUND BRANCH CTE is a separate Steam app (available to anyone who owns GROUND BRANCH) where we deploy test releases for broad public testing. If you are okay with major bugs and possibly unstable releases, go ahead and install it to start testing and previewing V1032, our upcoming major update.
Before we get on with the change list, let’s go over some of the major known issues — also known as things that don’t need reporting.
Known issues
Character assets and item skins are generally a work in progress (WIP). Things like clipping and missing/inaccurate skins are known and expected.
Similarly, animations are all WIP and subject to change. Expect bad skeleton behavior here and there (like wonky arms and necks), as well as unfinished implementations like vaulting, ladder climbing and leaning. Issues may be more pronounced in multiplayer.
Vaulting will sometimes fail to get the character over an obstacle and resemble a sliding motion.
There are still no animations for certain actions, such as jumping. Some actions also use placeholders.
Audio stuttering is expected on Run Down and new map Compound.
New map Rig is missing sound occlusion and environment-specific gunshot tail sounds and reverb. Those were disabled to temporarily prevent bad audio stuttering.
There are currently no footstep sounds for stairs.
Weapon stance transitions sound effects are out of sync with the animations.
The in-game map tablet is not fully integrated yet, so expect wonkiness.
Eyewear may be stuck in view inside the Ready Room when playing online. To make it go away, either hold F near a locker or workbench, or simply deploy to the mission area.
When playing online, players who hit the Spectate button after dying will hear a wounded grunt that should be assigned to dying enemy AI only.
For those using debug cams for pictures and videos: the “unarmed” pose (weapons slung/holstered) will currently not play the walking animation properly client-side (other players will see it normally online, however). The same applies to the subtle idle animations, which can only be seen on other players while playing online.
The Rangefinder’s NV mode is currently broken.
Picking up items from the ground is fairly bugged and can result in floating and/or unusable items.
In the Customize Operator screen, clicking the Save/Load button for any kit column will cause your list of saved kits to be displayed at the bottom of any item selection menu you open later. This bug is cumulative.
Weapon attachments may be strangely rotated.
What’s new
💭 The T in CTE is for Testing
Our goal with the Community Test Environment is to gather valuable data and feedback from a larger group of players. Needless to say, everything is a work in progress and subject to change.
Gameplay and mechanics
Mag check
You can now hold the Reload button (default R) to estimate the amount of rounds you have in your magazine/belt. You will get a HUD icon that indicates one of the following:
Fairly full
About half-full/empty
Nearly empty
Empty
Icons, timings and animations are all subject to change.
Map Tablet
You can now easily figure out where you are in relation to objectives and your teammates (if you have any) by tapping M or selecting the Tablet item in the Equipment menu (4).
The tablet displays the following information:
Your location and bearing
Your teammates’ location
Your team’s roster
Current objectives (as well as relevant markers on the map)
The in-game time of day (local time, in the top-right corner)
The amount of time remaining to complete your objectives
You may find yourself using the tablet a lot during Intel Retrieval missions.
New watch modes
Your wristwatch has a few new functionalities:
In all game modes, a “time remaining” warning will be briefly shown on the watch at 5, 2 and 1 minute(s) remaining.
In Intel Retrieval, you can now turn on the “Proximity Alert” mission setting (on the Ops Board) to get a vibrating alert when within 5 meters of the intel device.
In the new Dynamic Take and Secure (DTAS), your watch will display DTAS-specific information:
Approximate distance to the flag once placed (in meters). Also present in Fox Hunt mode.
Direction of the flag once placed (yellow arrow).
When in range of the flag as a defender, a green alert will pulse.
When in range of the flag as an attacker, a yellow alert will pulse.
When the flag is being captured, a red alert will pulse (defenders get no warning of flag captures).
More information about DTAS and Fox Hunt in the Game modes section.
Beefed up smoke grenades
Smoke grenades have been beefed up a bit to give more effective concealment. Performance may suffer if you spam a whole lot of these, but it’s a stop-gap solution until we have these effects remade and optimized.
AI can still see through them — sorry.
Team Elements
The new Team Elements feature (akin to player squads or fireteams) allows players to assign themselves — or be assigned by a server admin — to elements within your team for the purpose of aiding in coordination.
Team Elements are displayed in various places as differently colored letters: A, B, C and D, corresponding to elements Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta. To change your Team Element, press Esc and access the Session Roster tab (top menu). Click the letter next to your player name, and choose your new Element.
There will in due course be features such as Element-specific radio channels, but for now you will see different Elements displayed in different colors on the in-game tablet.
Movement speed
Movement speed has been slightly tweaked. We’re being deliberately vague here as to not sway anyone — try it out for yourself let us know how it feels to you.
Game mode updates
Intel Retrieval
Intel Retrieval has received a major overhaul. Here’s what changed:
Instead of searching multiple laptops, there is now a single laptop to search and extract.
Approximate search areas are described and indicated on the new Ops Board, as well as the new map tablet item.
Typically, there will be one true location and one false location, but the number of possible locations can be changed under Mission Parameters.
The true laptop location and the extraction point will usually have additional AI guarding and/or patrolling them.
Please note that the visual search location circle is approximate, and you should treat the location text as definitive (for example: on Tanker, one search location is “Whole of Deck 3”, so search the entire deck rather than just the circle mark).
Terrorist Hunt
Terrorist Hunt has not fundamentally changed, but it benefits from the new AI placement system to ensure less predictable placement and more replayability.
Dynamic Take and Secure (DTAS)
DTAS is an entirely new PvP game mode (actually a recreation of a game mode in the early 2000s UT mod Infiltration) where both teams spawn in a random spot on the map.
The Defenders then have a short amount of time to place a flag, which marks the centre of a capturable zone. The Attackers must capture the zone, by getting a minimum of 2 attackers in range. The defenders can block an attack by getting a minimum of 2 defenders in range.
The Attackers can win by wiping out all defenders; the Defenders can win by killing all but one of the attackers.
Our own Matt “Fatmarrow” Farrow — who programmed this game mode — created a short video explaining how it all works:
As with most game modes, admins can tweak several parameters to their liking.
Fox Hunt
Fox Hunt is a further new game mode hidden within DTAS (see above).
When there are insufficient numbers of players on the server to start a DTAS round (by default: 6), the Fox Hunt mode will be engaged.
In this mode, one Defender is designated The Asset, and all players will receive an approximate distance (but not bearing) to their position.
Attackers win by eliminating The Asset.
Defenders win by keeping The Asset safe until time runs out.
A reduced time limit is automatically applied when Fox Hunt mode is engaged.
Team Elimination
This mode remains unchanged, but has been extended with the possibility of player and/or team reinforcements (respawns). This is still an experimental addition. When you die, the game will try to respawn you near a teammate, but will fall back to the additional spawn if necessary (this is to try and mitigate spawn camping in the reinforcements mode).
Uplink
The core gameplay remains the same, but a visible search area is automatically computed (based on the laptop locations) and displayed on the Ops Board.
Deathmatch
This very non-tacticool but classic game mode now allows you to specify a target frag limit or time limit, to allow a winner to be decided.
You can also specify a minimum number of players: if there are fewer human players than this limit, additional AI enemies will be spawned to make up the numbers.
Training
The Camp Peary Training Facility (aka The Farm) has received a couple small updates:
The regular shoothouse’s targets were repositioned, and many more possible target locations were added.
The Ops Board, light switch and Target App screen were moved around a bit for better usability.
The Ops Boards received some basic instructions on what to do on The Farm.
Maps and level design
New maps
New maps Compound and Rig are now available. Keep in mind that visuals, performance, audio and design are all an ongoing development.
Storage Facility overhaul
Storage Facility has had an overhaul to add a new industrial area at the top of the hill and a new route down into the tunnels, which have been spruced up and expanded in various ways. The docks area has also been extended.
Other significant map changes
Power Station has a new entrance west of the Substation insertion point leading into the tunnels.
City‘s central area was changed to add a new route to the previously “unconquerable” stairwell.
Run Down has a new ladder access route down from the roof.
New and improved props have been put into various maps, most notably Tanker.
Terrain materials have had a “de-tiling” pass.
New water has been added to multiple maps.
Missions and mission editor
Almost every single mission (i.e. objectives, spawn points, AI placement etc.) has been reworked and the AI slightly tweaked.
Certain game modes now allow you to play on sections of a certain map. For example, you can now play Team Elimination on City (Streets) or City (Subway), which are versions of the original City map restricted to the areas above the ground and underground, respectively.
The Mission Editor was reworked to be a bit more user-friendly. To access it, type editmission in the console when in a Lone Wolf level. (Please keep in mind however that there is currently a show-stopping bug with object selection and manipulation.)
New features in the Mission Editor include laptop-supporting meshes (meshes that automatically spawn with laptops when placed for Intel Retrieval or Uplink), mission meshes (additional meshes that can be placed in a specific mission, e.g. to block line of sight for spawns, or to block players from parts of the level), and mission-blocking volumes (invisible walls to block players from places where they shouldn’t be).
Also see the new (and somewhat invaluable) Validate Level command in the file menu.
Animations
Animations have received a major overhaul, most of which is still behind-the-scenes.
Reprocessed all character locomotion animations for new skeleton.
All weapons have completely remade animations for shooting and weapon manipulation (reloads, fire selector, mag checks etc.).
Added camera recoil animations.
Reworked weapon positions and transitions.
Body part-specific hit and death animations, including extended death animations.
First pass on basic ladder climbing (still missing mounting and unmounting).
Vaulting now has an associated animation (which is pretty bugged, per the Known issues section).
Ready Room and UI
New Ready Room look.
The Ops Board has a new layout and map images that emulate drone/satellite imagery.
The UI has received a general art pass, and most text is now in a slightly larger font size.
Customize Operator screen: new icons and improved item selection menus. Custom item builds are now also colored differently.
Mission settings now have an advanced settings category, which is hidden by default on the Lone Wolf and Host Game menus. A brief description of the game mode type is now given on those screens, and the mission selection tiles at the right-hand side now provide a description of the map.
Advanced AI Settings are now customizable (again) from the Lone Wolf and Host Game screens, allowing you to edit the various properties of the custom AI difficulty level.
If you try to select an OPFOR count over 30 (the recommended maximum), you will get a warning message and the OPFOR count itself will be displayed in red as a performance warning.
The After Action Report (AAR) has been overhauled and expanded. Extra tabs with extra info are added when appropriate. For the full set of AAR tabs with custom player and team scoring, check out the DTAS game mode. This may be extended in the future.
Character and inventory
New MK14 EBR model based on the Mod 1 variant, replacing the old Mod 2.
The new MK46 (Mod 1) light machine gun in 5.56 NATO replaces the old MK48 Mod 0. Suppressor not yet implemented, but on the way.
New M4-series and HK416-series models:
M4A1 SOPMOD
M4A1 Block II
M4A1 Block II (FSP)
HK416D
HK416D CQB
All-new character assets:
Character heads
Outfit and gear items
Beard selection currently disabled (still in development)
AI
Basic AI behavior remains the same, but some essentially cosmetic changes have been made to their loadouts and callouts (mainly reduced frequency). A more fundamental pass on AI is, of course, still planned.
The placement of AI on maps has been overhauled to make it more random, yet still plausible. In Intel Retrieval, AI is now spawned conditionally in some places, so that laptops and extraction zones are more heavily guarded than other areas of the map (which can give you a clue as to the laptop location if you observe carefully).
Audio
New reload sounds for all weapons.
Audio mix overhaul: adjusted levels of all sounds to make sure gunshots and explosions sound more powerful.
Dynamic Range presets (Settings › Audio):
Full: Gunshots and explosions significantly louder than other sounds. Recommended for headphone users.
Medium: Recommended for speaker users.
Low: Gunshots and explosions aren’t much louder than other sounds. Recommended for speaker users playing at night and for players with impaired hearing.
New channels setting: Binaural. Recommended for headphone users for more accurate sound navigation (not recommended for speaker users!).
Added water footstep sounds.
Pain and death sounds for AI (placeholders, consistent with current voice lines by Daeln Murphy).
Admin
New command admin motd will broadcast the server MOTD (message of the day) to all players on the server.
The admin resurrect command has been altered to respawn players at their death location always (rather than where they might be spectating, if their body has disappeared). A new admin resurrect all version is available, which does what it says on the tin.
New command admin resurrectnear (also accessible as admin resnear) will respawn players in the vicinity of a teammate rather than where they died. You can also add ‘all’ to the end of either command (e.g. admin resnear all) to resurrect all players in the vicinity a teammate.
This has been CTE UPDATE #007!
We're sure there's plenty we forgot to add here, so if you have any questions or would like to point out any glaring omissions, leave us a comment or reach out via social media with the links below. As always, thank you for your continued support and we hope you enjoy this test build!
Alright, everyone, it’s time for another Intel Update!
These last few months have seen no shortage of setbacks — big and small, both inside the development and outside — but we’re chugging along like we always do. Humans are not built for waiting, and believe us when we say we absolutely hate how long this is taking, but we’re hoping this dev blog will give everyone another good taste of what’s coming.
Some will argue that the succulent previews you are about to see actually make the wait worse. To those, we say: scroll no further, for this shall be painful.
This is going to be media-heavy, so double-check you’re not on mobile data and let’s move on.
Optimization
In our last Intel Update, we introduced you to Bad Rhino Studios, a company that has been helping us with mostly under-the-hood development.
As part of our partnership, they have ran a thorough performance profiling on GROUND BRANCH and found that the biggest offender was indeed audio- and AI-related. More specifically, AI audio event calls causing big spikes in CPU usage.
Another performance issue we had was related to navmeshes (the areas of maps that bots are allowed to navigate on), and determined to be caused by how the AI interacts with doors within the navmeshes — hence maps Run Down and Tanker having the worst PvE performance, as they have the most doors.
Fixes have been applied to both issues, and appear to have yielded positive results in testing so far. Hell yeah, Bad Rhino Studios.
Further reinforcements
We cannot get into detail just yet, but we’ve recently gotten a tech artist on board. To put it simply, tech artists bridge the gap between programmers and artists (a job that Kris has so far been solely responsible for, on top of his regular coding duties), so we’re talking a very valuable acquisition for the team here.
There are a couple other positions that may be filled soon, but it’s a little too early to confirm. Bottom line is, we’re putting those sales to good use and will continue to build up the team.
Art assets
Character customization
One of V1032’s biggest attractions is, of course, the brand-new character assets. Even the heads are all getting replaced with much better ones, with more models to come later:
We have yet to figure out how we’re going to use the dirt/wound layers; whatever we go with, we promise these heads are going to have eyes
And here’s a little selection of loadouts you can make with the new gear, showcased with a new pose that Mike hooked us up with specifically for the Customize Operator screen:
We didn’t have any extra skins setup for the vests and carriers at the time of these screenshots, but rest assured they will be added (See? They do have eyes)
Although not 100% of the assets are new (we’re still missing a few items, like the Ball Cap and Headsets), they are all set to be updated within the next few releases.
In fact, here’s some upcoming eyewear — in various stages of development — that will be in V1032:
Goggles (ESS® Profile NVG), high-poly model
Sunglasses (ESS® Rollbar), high-poly model
Eyeshield (ESS® Crossbow Suppressor), low-poly/textured model
Another view of the eyeshields
Always keep in mind that these pretty renders (for the eyeshields, specifically) are created by the modeler with complex rendering tools, and will not look as good in-game due to real-time dynamic lighting, resolutions, graphics settings and other engine realities
And just as a little demo of how much complexity full customization adds to development, here’s a study sent to us by our trusty character asset artist Pau Peñalver as we try to figure out how to deal with goggle headbands vs. helmets vs. helmet accessories (e.g. ear pro/comms):
how goggles ?
Decisions, decisions. Anyway, more shots to gawk at:
Swatch system
As mentioned in a previous Intel Update many moons ago, most of the new character assets are setup to essentially take any color or pattern we want. As a result, the days of mismatched camos and inconsistent pouches will be over as soon as V1032 hits, and you’ll be able to MultiCam OCP the sh*t out of your kit:
Never Always go full MultiCam OCP…?
In keeping with the authenticity that GROUND BRANCH is going for, we are for the most part creating skins that exist for the real-life counterparts of our assets. We may get more flexible as we go (OCP Black?!?!), but one thing we know for sure is that you’ll never see neon or brightly-colored skins in this game — not by us, anyway.
Y’all got any more of them new models?
New MK14 EBR (WIP)
We have a new MK14 EBR model under development by Cody Cudmore to replace our old Mod 2 variant currently in the game.
We know, you may not be exactly excited about a new EBR, but we figure these renders might help:
Here it is again, a little further along:
This new EBR is based on the US Navy’s Mod 1 variant (photo) — a better fit for the game overall, as it is fitted with a shorter 18″ barrel and an adjustable-length stock (which you will be able to switch out for other models in the future).
➕ Click here for a preview of another upcoming GROUND BRANCH weapon (that's for a later update, though!) at Cody's ArtStation page.
➕ For a list of all known upcoming weapons and more, see our Early Access Roadmap. Yes… a SCAR-H is coming. *sigh*
MK46 (WIP)
We’re also getting a MK46 Mod 1 light machine gun made to replace the old MK48, a model that is just as old as the current MK14 Mod 2 EBR. We aren’t 100% sure that it will make it to V1032, but here are some progress shots anyway:
High-poly model; clockwise from top-left: tray cover, belt pouch, view of the open tray, and a view of the full model
Low-poly model with suppressor
Much like the updated EBR, the MK46 is a better fit for the game for a few reasons: it is lighter, shorter, and more likely to be seen in a small, high-speed unit. The 5.56 mm caliber, however, means a firepower downgrade when compared to the MK48’s 7.62 mm round.
We’d like to get at least one additional stock made for this LMG, so drop your suggestion in the comments!
🔫 We have a new M1911 in the making, but that isn't far along enough to showcase just yet. It may or may not make it to V1032.
Updated accessories
The SpecterDR 1x/4x scope has been updated with a new, highly-detailed model by Cody:
Yep, that’s an FDE skin too
… and so has the EXPS3 holo sight, by the same author:
Also in FDE!
Other V1032 weapon accessory changes will include an updated AK suppressor, new/updated backup iron sights (BUIS), and a new MK4 3.5–10x scope to replace the old generic 12x.
Updated M4/MK18 assets
You have probably noticed by now that our M4/MK18 platforms have all been updated with entirely new models — including an FSP M4 Block II rail option — but here’s a close-up just to really get the point across:
The classic M4A1 SOPMOD is also being updated, but since the previous model wasn’t as old, the different isn’t quite as jarring. Still, it’s nice to have art consistency, the potential for cross-modability and, well, the correct barrel length:
Although these will be setup as standalone weapon platforms in V1032, we’ll eventually have a basic “gunsmith” feature where you’ll be able to (for example) select a base M4 platform and swap out the stock, handguard and possibly barrel; that will make customization more flexible and the UI cleaner.
Animations
New weapon positions and stance transitions
As teased a couple weeks ago on our Discord and Twitter, we have new animations and poses for the weapon positions. Although nothing is set in stone and this is all one big work in progress, we’ll be trying this style out and update as the feedback comes.
One thing we at BlackFoot Studios agree on is that they look and feel a lot better, especially with the smooth transitions.
Notice the trigger discipline finally adapting to the stance
⏳ More natural, full-body character movements will all come in due time.
We’re sure there will be justified concerns about flagging — and again, these are not final — but we’re looking into having collision act as the “safety trigger”, so to speak: if you get close enough to a friendly unit, your character will automatically point the muzzle lower (if you’re at Low Ready) or higher (if you’re at High Ready).
It’s also worth noting for these previews that things like animation timing and camera/head movement are TBD.
New High Ready (primary weapons)New Compressed Ready (pistols)
As we progress, Mike will also be creating variants of the new ready positions/transitions that account for weapon length and weight. As an example, bringing a machine gun to ADS will be slightly slower than a carbine, while longer weapons may use a more “tucked in” High Ready position to mitigate environment collision and clipping.
⏳ V1032 will be merely our first big animations update. It will lay the foundations for animations and features to be added and improved all the way to the v1.0 release.
IK foot placement
The magic of IK, or inverse kinematics, will allow character’s feet to conform to the inclination and height of the environment, as displayed by this silly screengrab from 3 weeks ago. We don’t have a more recent shot because something broke the IK since, but don’t let anybody tell you game development isn’t endless fun:
This initial implementation is guaranteed to create plenty of wonky moments, but that’s what iterations are for.
Reloads
All-new reload animations also mean all-new reload sounds. Sound designer Mikson has also been busy making sure the audio is in sync with the new motions, as well as improving effects all around as he went along.
Make sure you’ve also checked out the STANAG vs. PMAG (metal vs. polymer) reload audio comparison from the last Intel Update here
Death animations
Another part of the animations update will be a first pass on death sequences. While the current method — a mix of ragdoll and hand-made animations — does not allow for the animations themselves to be as accurate as fully rendered ones, it lets the ragdoll physics maintain full effect, so bodies still react to falling against the environment or off platforms while the animation plays.
Here’s a little demo:
As the video hopefully conveys, enemies no longer drop like a sack of potatoes: they have animations for being hit in different parts of the body, and even the direction they’re shot from has an effect on how they drop.
There’s more to these animations than just that, but we’re not spoiling it all just yet. Not bad for a first pass, huh?
Maps
In addition to upcoming maps Compound(working title) and Rig, already showcased previously, Storage Facility is getting a revamp consisting of a considerable expansion of the outside play area, a new way into the tunnels, and a huge makeover of the tunnels themselves.
If all goes well, the updated Storage Facility will have also received an extra art pass by the time you get to explore it.
Game modes
GROUND BRANCH V1031 brought us Lua-based game modes, which semi-officially opened up game mode modding to the community. Although development isn’t streamlined at this point, a few community-made modes have already been created:
Dynamic Take and Secure (DTAS)
Those who follow our Roadmap know about DTAS – Dynamic Take and Secure, a PvP game mode we added to the board a while ago. As it turns out, DTAS has been under development over the past several months by our friend and occasional collaborator fatmarrow, also known for his community maps (you can find his progress and tutorial videos here).
In DTAS, teams alternate as attackers and defenders. Once defenders set up the flag, attackers are free to start tracking it down. To win the round, attackers need to have more players inside the flag’s capture radius than defenders. If attackers are down to only one player or fail to capture within the time limit, defenders win. All parameters — time limit, capture radius, team balance — are customizable by admins.
It is currently in advanced testing, and will be available once the first V1032 CTE is released.
💡 DTAS was originally a game mode for Infiltration (aka INF), an old tactical realism mod for Unreal Tournament (1999).
Rendezvous
Fatmarrow has also helped create Rendezvous, a game mode by community regular V2. The description and rules for this scavenge/escape game mode can be found in this Discord link, and the download is right below:
GB community member eelSkillz has created an additional 2 solo/co-op game modes, dubbed Kill Confirmed (a VIP assassination mode) and Break Out (another take on a scavenge/exfiltrate mode).
You can download the game modes from eelSkillz’s GitHub here and discuss them on the Steam thread here.
For a few demo runs of both modes (also featuring V2 and his Rendezvous mode), check out eel’s YouTube channel.
Nvidia DLSS & GeForce NOW
Just to make it official: GROUND BRANCH will support both GeForce NOW and Nvidia DLSS in the near-future!
GeForce NOW is the better-known Nvidia subscription-based cloud gaming platform where, instead of running on the player’s PC, games are run on powerful PCs somewhere else in the world and streamed to the player.
Nvidia DLSS(Deep Learning Super-Sampling) takes advantage of GeForce RTX technology to generate high-resolution, sharp, detailed images from low-resolution native samples via AI. This video offers a good demonstration of how it all works and looks:
This has been Intel Update #009!
We’ve just started internal testing, and although a lot of the game still needs to be put back together, dev builds have been stable and performing well. When we’re done with the major fixes, we’ll start rolling builds out to the CTE so you can all have a look and help us make sure we have a solid release.
As a final reminder, V1032 won’t be the ultimate animations update, but it will help us get there in a lot of ways. It’s all about paving the way for new features and a game that looks and feels better as development progresses.
Lastly, the only reason GROUND BRANCH has made it this far is our community’s continued support over the years, months, days or however long you’ve known about our game and talked about it with your friends, bought a copy, started a discussion thread, streamed it, hung around the Discord or even just followed us on social media.
And so as always, thank you for keeping us going, and we’ll see you on the next update!
As underscored by last month’s publisher announcement, development for upcoming release V1032 is still chugging along, and as we work on putting the game back together with the new character rig, assets and animations, another Intel Update is coming at you with everything that’s happening behind the scenes.
Reinforcements are here
It is no secret that the development of GROUND BRANCH has been rocky, and in many ways too ambitious for its own good. Nevertheless, it has endured, and thanks in no small part to our community’s continued trust and support, we have finally reached a point where we can more comfortably go after professionals that can help us stay on track and take this project where it needs to be.
Tech backup
One such example is Bad Rhino Studios, an independent studio from Kansas City that we just partnered with as a means to get more eyes and hands on the game’s overall performance, code, online networking (netcode), and general implementation. As we progress, the studio will also be helping us fix major lingering issues and improve other areas of development.
The fine developers at Bad Rhino have previously lent their expertise to the likes of Epic Games (Unreal Engine, Fortnite), Bohemia Interactive (Arma, DayZ standalone) and even Facebook, so they are more than capable of helping us take GROUND BRANCH to the next level from a more technical standpoint.
Some of the companies Bad Rhino Studios has partnered with
It goes without saying that we’re very excited for this partnership’s future, and we’ll hopefully be seeing its repercussions soon enough!
For anyone interested, you can learn more about Bad Rhino Studios and what they do in their website right here.
Art backup
We have also gotten dedicated vegetation artist Paul Brousse on board in a contractor capacity. For starters, Mr. Brousse will be building assets for 4 different biomes (i.e. trees, bushes and ground cover): Eastern Europe, Horn of Africa, Middle East, and Mexico–US border.
Just a sample of Paul’s work in UE4, from his ArtStation portfolio (link)
In addition to granting environments an extra layer of authenticity, these new custom biomes will generally make maps look better and more consistent. If we’re lucky, they might even improve performance too.
Further backup
We are also looking for a dedicated VFX artist and a producer/project manager type, in addition to a few other roles we may disclose later. At this time, we are only considering close recommendations, but we’ll be sure to let everyone know if we end up expanding our search.
Other areas of assistance
GPU manufacturers
In order to improve performance in the future, we have submitted GROUND BRANCH builds to Nvidia and AMD for profiling. This may lead to potential assistance in optimizing the game, as well as GPU driver enhancements for better compatibility with it.
Localization
Our new publishing partner MicroProse has been helping us localize (that is, translate) the content of our Steam store page to several languages, so that non-English speakers can make better informed purchases and potentially have a minor positive impact on the player base.
Localization of the game itself will also begin as soon as we have a large enough portion of the UI locked down.
Some V1032 sneak peeks
Now for what you’re actually here for—taking a look at how V1032 is coming along and getting eyes on some sweet sneak peeks. We get it, and we got you covered.
Here’s some media, starting with this quick audio and animation preview:
Mmmm, crunchy
In addition to all these new reloads, our animator Mike has also put together this satisfying recoil animation that adds a lot of immersion to shooting:
Notice the more natural “bounce” to the recoil when compared to the basic back-and-forth motion currently in the game. Weapon stances are a work in progress and subject to change.
On the modeling front, trusty contractor and 3D artist extraordinaire Pau Peñalver continues to bang out amazing models to get our character art up to date, and to make sure we don’t have brand-new assets mixed up with really old ones.
Below are some of Pau’s latest creations:
The new Helmet (AF) …… and here with the camo cover (patterns pending, but they will be there)
Four new types of footwear
The new Combat Boots
New NVG arm mount on helmet shroud
Detail of the new NVG arm mount
Keep in mind that although these previews are already of the game-ready models (yep, no joke), they are generated from rendering tools that have lighting capabilities far beyond UE4’s real-time lighting. You know we like being transparent, so here’s what we really mean by that: they will not look necessarily this amazing in-game, but they will still look pretty good and certainly better than the assets they will be replacing.
In the level design department, Will has put some work on the night lighting and skybox for the still untitled compound map:
Really makes it seem alive, doesn’t it?
In case you missed it, there are a bunch of pretty previews of the upcoming compound map on MicroProse’s GROUND BRANCH product page (click). We know what you’re thinking and yes, it’s gonna be totally sick, lit and dare we say, based.
And that’s it for today’s Intel Update!
We know—waiting for V1032 sucks. But hopefully this helps ease the wait a little, and reassures everyone that we’re still here, working hard, and expanding the team so that we’re able to improve GROUND BRANCH’s experience at a faster pace.
We’ll have more details and previews for you in a few weeks, so stay tuned and don’t forget to let us know what your thoughts are on today’s intel.
🚨 CLEAR YO FILES
We strongly recommend everyone to delete all files located in %LOCALAPPDATA%\GroundBranch\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor (copy-paste this into your File Explorer address bar and hit Enter) to ensure that old files do not conflict with the latest changes and cause input and settings issues.
Our last game update, patch V1031.2, arrived with more bugs than we anticipated. Luckily we were able to diagnose and fix most of them relatively easily, packaged and tested a new build, and are now rolling it out as a hotfix for you all.
Hopefully this will take care of most of the recent reported issues—if it doesn’t, you know what to do, but please check the known issues listed at the end of the fixes list to make sure it hasn’t already been noted.
Changes and fixes
Ready Room
Fixed Ops Board‘s “In Progress” overlay not always showing up.
Fixed Ready Room team wall not always being removed for PvP modes.
Fixed the player character in the Customize Operator screen disappearing if the round started mid-customization.
Increased sound occlusion in the testing range.
Added spatial audio volume for the Customize Operator screen’s background to block all sounds while customizing character.
Fixed round time not being cleared when round stage timer is.
Weapons and attachments
Fixed M9A3 magazine’s display name (was listed as 15 rounds when it’s actually 17).
Fixed NVG effect not being loaded correctly sometimes and displaying no green tint.
Fixed shotguns preventing players from changing items when fired.
Updated collision on optics to allow placing the Offset Rail and low-mount RMR where applicable.
Spectator Mode
Fixed Show Player Names / Show Enemy Blips not being applied immediately while the spectator overlay is shown.
Fixed spectators having the ready status set to NotReady when sent to the RR even if they had been WaitingToReadyUp earlier.
Maps & level design
Fixed grenades colliding with foliage—they should now go right through leaves.
Fixed foliage protecting players from grenade explosions.
Fixed various bugs on Tanker dealing with collision on pipes and some visual issues with the internal stairs.
Admin
Changed in-game menu Admin button to a drop-down list containing an option to open the Admin Panel, as well as a list of quick admin commands (thanks, Prowlaz!).
Fixed Admin Panel spamming console/log with admin commands.
Fixed StartRound command not working in ReadyCountdown round stage.
Fixed dead bodies being created when StartRound and RestartRound commands are used.
Known issues
These audio-related issues were reported, but not yet diagnosed or successfully fixed:
Occasional lack of gunshot SFX.
Long bursts with the MK48 machine gun can cause the audio to bug out.
🐞 One common issue that we have been unable to fix yet is related to VOIP and microphone usage, from stuttering all the way to freezing or otherwise being unable to communicate via voice. For a list of possible fixes, please see this post: ⚠️🎙️ Microphone/VOIP issues!
This has been BUILD UPDATE #031!
Thank you for all the reports! This patch wouldn't be out so soon without all the feedback and we continually receive from the community. If this patch survives first contact, expect a new Intel Update in a few week's time to get everyone up to speed with how V1032 is coming along.
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