Scopey

Build Update #047: GROUND BRANCH V1034 is now live!

Hey, everyone!

Thank you for your patience and support while we worked on the latest update for GROUND BRANCH V1034. Though this has been a tough testing and debugging season thanks to major system changes — particularly AI and animations — the official release is now among us!

🗒️ For a detailed list of changes, please see our patch notes for the V1034 Community Test releases over the last few months here.

For the non-masochists among us, keep reading as we have a more readable summary of the main changes to the game since our last main release (V1033). But first:

IMPORTANT: Clearing your old files is recommended!

If you are coming from V1033 or have not downloaded a Community Test build in a while, you need to delete all contents in the following locations (copy-paste these paths into your File Explorer address bar):

1️⃣ %LOCALAPPDATA%\GroundBranch\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor
2️⃣ Documents\GroundBranch

Not doing so may cause various asset and input issues in your game.

Highlights

DX12 mode and DLSS 3 Frame Generation

Once you’ve updated to V1034 and launched GROUND BRANCH, you’ll be greeted with a new pop-up dialog that lets you choose between running the game in either DX11 (the default option we’ve always had) or DX12 mode (previously available only via the -dx12 launch parameter).

DX12 (DirectX 12) mode is required to use the new NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation video setting, which users of GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs will benefit from in terms of framerates. If you’re one such user, here’s how to enable it:

  • Launch GROUND BRANCH in DX12 mode
  • Go to Settings ► Video
  • Under the “Video” section, look for NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation and select “On” from the dropdown menu
  • Apply the new settings
💡 Users of different graphics cards may experience improved performance from running GROUND BRANCH in DX12 mode, regardless of the DLSS 3 Frame Generation setting. We recommend everyone to try it out and see how their system reacts.

UI, UX, settings and accessibility

The user interface and general user experience have received a number of updates in V1034, with multiple new options introduced. Here are some of the main changes to look out for:

  • Pressing Esc during single player sessions will now pause the game
  • Added a headcam-style camera to Spectator Mode, also accessible as a debug camera (Ctrl+)
  • The portion of the Gameplay settings dedicated to on-screen elements has been split into the new HUD menu
  • Colorblindness settings have been added to Settings ► Video (Advanced)
  • The Server Browser now features an expanded info box (listing players per team, as well as active mods) when a server is clicked
  • The Ops Board in the Ready Room now has a ↻ button to re-randomize objectives and insertion points
  • Players can now volunteer for game mode-specific roles — such as the hostage (Hostage Rescue) or flag carrier (DTAS) — by clicking the Volunteer button next to their name in the Session Roster
  • Servers can now allow friendly name tags in-game: these only appear when the player is pointing at a teammate from within a certain range; you can disable this feature for yourself in Settings ► HUD
  • Callsign patches will now be displayed on the back of Headgear items
  • The Mission Editor was updated, and validators now check for collision and navmesh issues
  • Skin selection now features standardized swatch-like icons, especially useful for previewing camo patterns

Server administration
  • More comprehensive server admin options/settings, including the option to restart a server in-game and to schedule server restarts for particular times of day
  • Server admins can now lock (disable) the Ready Room test shooting range
General fixes and improvements
  • A plethora of optimizations to various maps and game systems
  • Cleaned up various UI elements to improve readability, formatting and consistency
  • A load of bug fixes, including not being able to change the enemy count via Ops Board

AI

We have now made the switch to the Kythera AI middleware, replacing the stock Unreal Engine 4 AI system. We had paused AI development in a less-than-ideal state for a few updates in anticipation of this change, but luckily nobody noticed or brought it up ever.

Kythera is not a complete AI solution, but a tool that allows us to implement AI in more flexible and effective ways. We still had to do a whole ton of work behind the scenes to get everything working properly, and a lot of work remains as we’ll explain further.

💡 Thanks in particular to Chris, who has cemented his reputation as our official AI guy, and to Kythera for working closely with us and helping iron out the odd AI wrinkle.

You will notice a wide variety of changes in how the AI behaves. Overall, the AI should now be more “life-like” and more challenging in some aspects, but without having as much of an aimbot feel to them. AI senses (sight and hearing) have been continually tweaked, and benefit from improved pathing and more sophisticated actions: AI will return fire and take cover as before, but they may now crouch and go prone in certain contexts (e.g. lack of nearby cover), use suppressive fire to keep players pinned down, form spontaneous squads, hold close to guard points (as close as mission designers specify), react to dead bodies, and use a few more call-outs.

At lower difficulty levels, AI will now also fire tracers — with higher frequency at lower skill levels — and have more frequent muzzle flash effects to help less hardcore players figure out where they’re being shot from.

Stance and movement should also have a greater impact on detection, so be sure to move slowly and keep a low profile if you’re trying to be sneaky.

Missions have also been given a once-over to check specifically for collision and navmesh issues, so the AI should now flow around maps more easily in existing missions.

💡 One important aspect of AI presentation still missing is more varied animations, as the lack of specific motions to convey all the different AI behaviors makes bots retain a lot of their "roboticness". The lack of natural "idle" animations also contributes to this.

We'll of course continue to iterate on that an other aspects of AI as things progress, including providing friendly AI support (that is, AI teammates) as well as more sophisticated and natural-looking enemy AI.

New voice lines are also recorded and waiting to be implemented in a future update cycle.

Prone and animation overhaul

Prone (a.k.a. lying on the ground) has been on our to-do list for a while, but we didn’t want to do it until we could do it right™. After another extensive and necessary under-the-hood overhaul to support the new stance, it is now in and working thanks to the combined efforts of Kris and Mike.

There are still some kinks to work out, but even so, we think we have created a solid base to build upon. Here’s how it currently works:

  • To toggle between your current stance and prone, hit the Prone key (default Z)
  • Going prone while sprinting will perform a dive
  • Pressing Jump while prone will immediately switch to standing, regardless of your stance before going prone
  • Once prone, you will not be able to aim beyond a limited horizontal arc, while vertical aiming will be limited by the ground at the bottom and a fairly modest upwards angle
  • Pressing any movement key while looking/aiming off to either side will rotate your character in place to align their lower body with their upper body
  • You can crawl in all directions by using your movement keys. You can crawl faster by holding the Run key (default Shift)
While prone, the limited aiming angles require rotating your character to cover different areas

By assigning keys to the new Stance Up and Stance Down keybinds, you may also use an alternative control scheme that sequences between StandingCrouchedProne instead of transitioning directly to/from prone.

Keep in mind!

❌ Going prone will interrupt certain actions, such as reloading — if you hit the dirt while reloading, make sure you have a magazine in the well and a round in the chamber!

❌ Most actions (shooting, reloading, changing items etc.) will interrupt movement while prone, and you cannot start crawling while these actions are being performed.

❌ While prone, you're also unable to perform most world interactions, such as opening doors, deploying breaching charges or interacting with mission objectives.

❌ You will not be able to go prone if there's not enough room for your character's full body length.
Other changes in animations
  • Characters now react to weapon recoil against their upper body when firing
  • Death animations have been created for crouched and prone stances
  • Death animations from the standing position received some polish as well
  • Leaning now uses actual poses that look more natural
  • The Breaching Charge now has an animation for setting up the charge on doors, as well as for triggering the detonator
  • Switching weapons got a polish pass
  • Improved animations and hand poses for AK-type rifles
  • Hand poses in general — such as how your character holds grenades — were also slightly updated
  • Lastly, animations and poses were created for the new and updated weapons (we’ll get to those!)
🐞 Your character's support (left) arm will bend in unnatural ways when moving while holding various primary weapons with no foregrip equipped. This is due to the animation rework and will be fixed in a point release.

Focus Zoom

Another notable addition to gameplay is the Focus Zoom ability. As the name suggests, it allows you to zoom in on your sight picture, giving reticles and targets more pixels to work with on your screen and making ranged shots a better experience.

Focus Zoom is bound to Hold Ctrl by default (same key as Steady Aim) but can be changed in Settings ► Controls.

💡 Keep in mind that the Focus Zoom function will disengage if you move, or if you move your weapon too fast.

Customization and inventory updates

We are very pleased to welcome playable female characters to the Ready Room, in the spirit of the classic Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six games that inspired GROUND BRANCH.

The addition also encouraged us to finally get some hairstyles implemented, and so we did. Here’s what’s new:

  • 7 new characters (Females 0106 and Male 06), selectable under the APPEARANCE tab
  • 4 male hairstyles (Crew Cut A, Crew Cut B, Caesar Cut and Long Cut) under the new HAIR tab
  • 4 female hairstyles (Straight Bun, Textured Bun and Buzzcut) under the new HAIR tab
  • 1 new beard style (Short Beard) under the FACIAL HAIR tab
💡 Additional hairstyles and customization options (such as hair color) will follow in future updates.
New and updated skins

In addition to a big revision of gear and outfit skins to look more authentic and consistent, a handful of new skins were also created for the following items:

  • Tactical Pants
    Coyote Brown
  • Ball Cap / Ball Cap (Reverse)
    DCP    AOR-1    M81
  • Boonie Hat / Boonie Hat (Folded)
     UCP
  • Helmet (HC)
    OCP    AOR-1    AOR-2
  • Headset
    Foliage Green

A new version of the Flannel Shirt with the popular “Buffalo plaid” pattern was also added in 8 different colors.

💡 The old pattern shirt is still available — we renamed it Light Flannel Shirt.
🏳️ In case you missed the Intel Report and discussion: most country flag patches have been removed. More details in this post.
New weapons
SA58 OSW (top) and Galil ARM (bottom)

As is tradition in our main releases, V1034 introduces a few new blasters to the armory:

  • SA58 OSW battle rifle (Battle Rifle / DMR / Sniper Rifle category)
    This modernized, highly compact version of the FAL battle rifle features multiple accessory rails. Magazine capacity is 20 rounds of 7.62 mm NATO ammunition. Can be fitted with a suppressor.
  • Galil ARM automatic rifle (Machine Gun category)
    A 5.56 mm NATO rifle created for the squad automatic weapon role, the Galil ARM can fit either 35- or 50-round magazines.
  • FAL battle rifle (Battle Rifle / DMR / Sniper Rifle category)
    The FAL with wooden furniture (based on the very rare FAL G-series) last seen in V1033 as the FAL (Vintage) is now replaced with a more appropriate and far more common variant fitted with a polymer stock and handguard. It still fires 7.62 mm NATO ammunition from a 20-round magazine.
💡 The MPX 9 mm submachine gun has also been updated with a new model.
Radio (cosmetic)

A radio pouch and PTT (push-to-talk) module are now a fixed part of most Platform items in the game, with the exception of the Ballistic Vest. While mostly a cosmetic addition that helps build up the characters visually and get players more immersed, the radio pouch has taken the place of a customizable pouch slot in some platforms — so keep that in mind when re-creating your builds. The presence of the radio system on your character has otherwise no gameplay effect.

Modding

Official GROUND BRANCH modding is… coming. Callum has put in a lot of work to create an SDK (Software Development Kit) for the game, and a lot of the internals of the game have been rejigged to facilitate the use of third-party mods via Steam Workshop.

We still have some hoops to jump through before we can officially release the SDK, but that should be sorted soon and allow the release in a V1034 point release (patch).

💡 Initial SDK release will include the ability to add new weapons, with further modding coming later.

Map and mission updates

  • The classic Small Town map has been extensively overhauled by Will, who returns to the team after a brief hiatus
  • The Farm has had cosmetic updates to bring it into consistency with (and indeed proximity to) Small Town — canonically establishing both maps as part of the same training complex in Camp Peary
  • City was extended with a fun new bank area and a few other new enterable buildings
  • Lots of other maps have had touch-ups and plenty of bug fixes here and there

We are also laying the groundwork for more interactive and interesting maps and missions. For example, Compound now has a call to prayer at (approximately) correct astronomically-based times of day. City is now overseen by a nosey news helicopter that can be scared away with sprays of gunfire. And now that players can crawl underwater in prone, Creek and various other maps have been outfitted with brand new underwater effects.

🐞 The animation for City's helicopter bailing out may not be playing correct. We're looking into it.

Missions have also been tweaked, bug-fixed, and in some cases new missions have been added. Rig now sports a new Hostage Rescue mission set in the accommodation block, for example, and new mission variants for Hostage Rescue and Terrorist Hunt have been created for City.

💡 With the new AI and prone capability, even existing missions may play quite differently from V1033 — give them a try!

New game mode: Defuse (Lone Wolf / Online Co-Op)

V1034 launches with the return of the Defuse game mode, now also available in co-op.

In Defuse, you’ll race against the clock to defuse a number of explosives around the mission area, guarded of course by AI enemies.

  • The default amount of explosives to defuse is 2, with the default timer at 15 minutes and a default defuse time of 10 seconds per bomb. These can all be customized via Ops Board before deploying.
  • To defuse a bomb, look at the LED display and hold Use/Interact (default F) when the prompt appears. You should see a progress bar filling up in LED display.
  • Throw a careless grenade or shoot wildly at the bombs and you may find yourself making a lot of new friends.
💡 The Extraction game mode — essentially a PvE version of Hostage Rescue — is slated for a V1034 point release (a small update or patch), building on the new AI and animation work. Stay tuned for updates on this as well.
A small change to Intel Retrieval

While we’re talking game modes, the laptop in Intel Retrieval is now automatically grabbed and put away after finishing the search — just a little streamlining to make things less redundant and frustrating.

🐞 Due to changes in underlying systems, Hostage Rescue is in a work-in-progress (WIP) state, with some bugs remaining in relation to leading and restrained behaviors. However, the core gameplay should still work (including the new Volunteer function).

Audio updates

In addition to all of the sound work done to support prone movement, the new weapons and female voice lines (via Comms Menu), audio was also updated in these areas:

Soundtrack

As announced in Intel Report #017, we have partnered up with composer and sound designer Venus Theory, who is authoring the soundtrack for GROUND BRANCH. This release already features a few of his tracks in the main menu, transition screens, and the Ready Room. We’re excited to hear your thoughts on them!

Environmental audio
  • Optimized audio occlusion and diffraction when inside buildings
  • Indoor audio now reacts to whether a door is open or closed (this can now be expanded to account for the material of the room/building)
  • Fixed missing ambient sounds for all maps
  • Updated attenuation for various distances to provide more spatial awareness and distance for varying sounds
🐞 When playing online, The Farm does not play audio for various actions. We have been unable to fix this so far, but are working on it.
Event SFX
  • Power boxes now have a distinctive electric “hum” when active, and will also play a sound when switching the lever on/off
🐞 In some cases, the hum will not play at the start of an online round.
  • Added localized beeping and explosion SFX for Defuse’s bombs, as well as sound effects for closing and putting away Intel Retrieval’s laptop
  • Implemented and fine-tuned news helicopter audio and attenuation (City)
Mixing

Updated overall mix for gunshots, reloads, character foley and environment:

  • Character movement (e.g. footsteps) now sounds quieter and more balanced in the mix
  • Reloads are less sharp and overpowering compared to other sounds
  • Gunshots are slightly less loud in general, with suppressed gunshots now also being slightly quieter than their unsuppressed counterparts
  • Weapon sounds now have more room reverb compared to the environmental audio and character movement

VFX

Visual effects have been generally reworked in V1034:

  • Blood splatter on surfaces has been re-introduced, with new decals created
  • Grenade effects and bullet impacts
    • New particles for smokescreen and frag explosions were created
    • New material-based bullet impacts were added
    • Various props and materials not displaying correct bullet impacts were fixed
  • Muzzle and weapon effects
    • Muzzle flash and smoke have all been updated, and a shockwave effect was added
    • Ejection ports now also generate smoke when shooting
  • Light fixture effects
    • Outdoor light fixtures now attract bugs at night
    • Shooting out lights now generates sparkle particles
    • Most light fixtures now have a proper “destroyed” version when shot out
Frag explosion
Light bugs
Light destruction

This has been Build Update #047!

By the time you’re done reading this, we’re already fixing pending issues and on the lookout for reports like a pack of airport security dogs.

We’ll most likely push the first patch (V1034.1) in about a week, so give this build a good kick in the tires and let us know if you find any bugs we haven’t mentioned.

As always, thank you for reading and continuing to play, follow and support GROUND BRANCH. See you on the next one!

GROUND BRANCH is 30% OFF on the Steam Spring Sale!

From March 14th to 21st @ 10am Pacific, you can grab a copy (and indeed as many copies as you want) of GROUND BRANCH with a sweet 30% discount.

You know the drill: spread the word and maybe even get a few extra keys to get yourself and your gaming buds in on the action just in time for the new update and the inevitable uptick in player numbers.

🤍 Consider buying directly from our store!

Valve takes a 30% cut from sales on their store, so if you have a PayPal account and would love us to get the full cut from your purchase, head over to our official store and use code Spring2024 at the checkout to apply the same 30% discount!

💵 Please note that our store operates in USD only, so this might not be a great deal if you're paying in a different currency as we use regional pricing on Steam.

Enjoy the sale!

Intel Report #020: Dev News for November 2023

Hey, everyone!

We’re back with another Intel Report as the development of GROUND BRANCH V1034 continues diligently behind the scenes. Here’s the usual reminder:

⚠️ This report is not an exhaustive list of V1034 features!
For the most up-to-date list of expected V1034 and later features, see our roadmap. You may also want to check out our Intel Reports for June (#015), July (#016), August (#017), September (#018) and October (#019).

And with that out of the way, we got just one more thing before we can take a look at what’s been cooking since our last dev blog:

🍂 Steam Autumn Sale: GROUND BRANCH is 25% OFF!

We weren’t planning on it, but Valve approached us with a nice exposure deal to participate in the Steam Autumn Sale, and so we accepted at the last minute.

If you have a PayPal account and are willing to pay the game’s USD price, consider buying your Steam key from our official store using code GBFALL23 at the checkout to apply the same 25% discount.

🚨 The Autumn Sale ends November 28 — don't miss it!

Alright, on to the report!

Preparing for (and fixing things around) prone

We’ve mentioned it a lot before, but just in case this is your first Intel Report: upcoming release V1034 will introduce the new prone stance into GROUND BRANCH.

And as much as we would’ve liked to be proven wrong, adding prone has been as massive an undertaking as we predicted, with entire systems being reworked to support it.

In addition to all of the things necessary for prone to be implemented on the character side alone, care is being taken to support it within maps (environment interaction) and to generally make sure it doesn’t break various areas of gameplay. For example: did you know that preventing the characters’ legs from clipping right through a wall if you crawl backwards towards it requires additional programming? Regular character collision used while standing or crouching doesn’t automatically apply to prone, so extra logic has to be created specifically for it.

The same is true for something as seemingly simple as making the character conform to sloped surfaces while prone (instead of disregarding the terrain and always looking like it’s lying on a perfectly flat surface) — all of that requires intricate logic to happen. Take a look:

Arm and weapon collision also had to be reworked for prone, as the short-stocking and other collision animations don’t just carry over for the stance. For the time being, obstacles will simply prevent players from turning their aim beyond a certain point (this may or may not change as prone develops and feedback is received).

Before collision
After collision

Another factor we had to account for: what happens if you go prone in water? Which leads us to…

Underwater effects

Section by Matt “Fatmarrow” Farrow

One consequence of bringing prone into the game in V1034 is that it is now possible to go underwater in areas that were previously not accessible.

We are still not decided as to whether we want to let players go prone underwater; it is not something we intended as a core gameplay feature, and it is probably something we would like to prevent entirely (older players might remember 2001’s Ghost Recon line “Too deep” whenever you tried to lower your stance in waters that would submerge your character).

Nevertheless, as an interim solution in V1034, we have added some underwater effects for those players who want to leopard-crawl their way through the watery deep.

In our interim solution, you can hold your breath for a short while, but when you start seeing pulsing effects on screen, you will soon be out of breath. At that point, the game forces you out of prone to take a breath (and too bad if you are in front of an enemy). While underwater, you cannot shoot, use items, or aim down sights. It may turn out that this is a game mechanic we are happy to keep, but until then, have a go and see what you think. See below for a demonstration of the new underwater effects in Creek (as well as a demonstration of the new smooth time of day transitions).

💡 Even if we end up preventing players from going underwater, the effects will be useful for non-gameplay camera purposes such as Spectator Mode and screenshots.

Though prone is currently highly functional — in the sense that the foundation is there and it allows all essential actions (moving, shooting, aiming, reloading, switching items) — there’s still plenty to fix and refine, even if we’re not expecting to release a fully fleshed out iteration straight away.

AI development

New enemy AI systems continue to be developed, with existing features also having to be rebuilt within the new Kythera AI middleware. This month, we’ll be focusing on more sight detection.

Take a look at this first video:

In the video above, a character walks into the cone of vision of an AI bot, quickly raising its Alertness Level from “Idle” (Alertness = 0) to “Suspicious” (Alertness > 0). Once Alertness reaches 1.0, the bot goes into the full “Alert” state and is instructed to engage the enemy.

When the character is no longer visible, the AI goes into a “Cautious” mode and is instructed to start searching for the target after a short period of time. (This, of course, is just the basic behavior, which will be expanded over time.)

💡 Why are there 2 cones of vision?
› The wider cone (gray) is the actual visual perception cone for the AI: any enemy activity picked up within it will raise alertness.
› The smaller cone (red) is used for target selection: targets within this cone will be engaged according to priority — more on that in a future report.

But how does visibility work? Well, target visibility is determined by various factors such as:

  • Distance: the closer to the target, the faster the AI will identify it
  • Angle: targets that are in the primary cone of vision (red) will raise suspicion more quickly than targets in the secondary cone (gray)
  • Time of day: broad daylight makes detection easier by increasing the range/length of the cone, while nighttime makes it shorter
  • Light sources: proximity to artificial light sources can make targets more easily detectable

To illustrate the last two points (time of day and light sources), here are two quick demos:

In the demo above, the player character is outside of the AI’s cone of vision for nighttime. As time of day is changed to daytime, the cone expands and the player is now within the AI’s visual range.

But nighttime isn’t the only factor to consider:

Above, the player is initially invisible to the AI. As the character steps into the light, however, you will notice how the Alertness value quickly increases until the AI is alerted and starts engaging.

💡 Please note that these videos and visualizations are merely for demonstration purposes and don't necessarily represent final AI detection behaviors or values.
💡 For earlier AI-related news and demos including grenade usage, shooting out of windows, cover system and world interactions, make sure you've checked out Intel Reports #017, #018 and #019.

Although we have basic light detection in the game currently (in V1033), these systems had to be rebuilt with the move to the new AI middleware. They should hopefully be more consistent and efficient than the current implementation, as well as better integrated with other AI behaviors.

Time of Day alarm system

Section by Matt “Fatmarrow” Farrow

We have now implemented what we call a time of day alarm system in order to implement an appropriately timed call to prayer in the Compound map.

Islamic prayers are not synchronized with hours of the day, but are aligned relative to astronomical phenomena like sunrise, midday and sunset. Luckily, we have already established an internal system which maps a “standard day” to an actual day of the year, where hour 6 is designated sunrise and hour 18 is designated sunset (this system is what already allows you to use shorthand like “sunrise” instead of a specific time of day). Of course, the times of sunrise and sunset depend on the date and latitude, but this is also taken into account in the system.

For example, the Fajr prayer (the first of the day) takes place at the first light of dawn. Through trial and error, we determined that a “standard” hour of 5.5 or so (a little bit before the standard sunrise at 6:00am) reasonably satisfies this criterion. In the Compound level itself, a blueprint plays a call to prayer sound effect on receiving an alarm event from the time of day system.

💡 The system can also be rigged to work with "normal" or "actual" hours, for example to have a bell sound every hour.

One reason for this deep dive is to point out one of many features that modders will soon be able to use to help them bring their own maps and props to life (though map mods will not be available just yet, as we are focusing on weapon mods in V1034). There is an eclectic but relatively extensive library of features that will be available to player-authored blueprints. In due course, we will provide documentation to assist with this.

Other developments

Female voices coming to the Comms Menu and other audio updates

With the introduction of playable female characters, V1034 needs basic call-outs for the Comms Menu (default G). Here’s a quick look:

🔊 Audio reverb is also being updated. Whereas in V1033 the reverb is essentially binary, accounting only for whether you're "outdoors", in a "large room" or in a "small room" — with no in-betweens — in V1034 reverb should dynamically adapt to the size and layout of rooms.

Making sure you retrieve that intel

Section by Matt “Fatmarrow” Farrow

You know how it goes. You play Intel Retrieval for the first time. Excitedly, you search the laptop and then you hot-foot it to extraction. But why is the round not ending? The laptop, of course, is where you left it, and not with you at extraction. It is a GROUND BRANCH rite of passage, but it isn’t all that fun.

So in V1034, we’ll try having players pick up the laptop automatically after searching it. There was some concern about players being “locked” into the pickup animation, but in practice it is not really a great inconvenience or vulnerability. You can say a fond goodbye to the “did I remember to pick up the laptop?” meta game.

Patching out certain patches

It turns out that making country flag patches was a bit of a minefield.

Rather than be forced to make what might be construed as political decisions regarding which country flags/patches to include (or not), we have decided to limit the official selection of flag patches only to those that represent the countries of our development team.

The good news is that the process of making and sharing modded patches will soon be streamlined via Steam Workshop, so we anticipate that the community will step in to fill the gap if there is demand.

Bugfix corner

In this month’s bugfix corner, we have a few doozies that will be in V1034:

  • Fixed reticle not updating when scope magnification levels are changed by the player while not in ADS (aim down sight) mode.
  • Fixed lights being blown out when shooting poles and other parts of light fixtures rather than the bulbs or light strips themselves (a particular issue on Small Town and Depot, for example), and some new VFX has been added for lights shot out while off, and also to add some visual feedback when multiple shots are required to take out a light (for example the large floodlights in Depot).
  • Tweaked various outfit and gear skins to:
    • No longer mismatch with other items of the same skin (especially camos)
    • Have better consistency in camo pattern scaling
    • Tone down excessive brightness (most noticeable in desert patterns/colors)
  • Breaching Charges can no longer be placed or detonated while the player is “frozen” (e.g. at round start).

So when is V1034 coming out?

Though we wanted to have a full V1034 release before the end of the year, difficulties with the implementation of prone have thrown the proverbial wrench into those plans, as is probably clear at this point. So we’re settling for releasing the public testing version of the update by then.

As much as we don’t like giving out ETAs: we’ll be aiming to start the public testing on December 19 — about three and a half weeks from today.

So hang in there and pray to the gaming gods that we get as much as possible in order by that date.

And this is it for this month’s Intel Report!

We have a testing branch to put out, so next time you hear from us, it should be a Build Update rather than another Intel Report.

Enjoy the weekend, and as always: thank you for your continued support of this project. We’ll see you next time!

Intel Report #019: Dev News for October 2023

Oh, hey! Hi.

Welcome to another Intel Report! This month we’re bringing you previews for upcoming release V1034 and beyond, as well as other development news. But first, the usual disclaimer:

⚠️ This report is not an exhaustive list of V1034 features!
For the most up-to-date list of expected V1034 and later features, see our roadmap. You may also want to check out our Intel Reports for June (#015), July (#016), August (#017) and September (#018).

Due to personal lives clashing with work (such as 3 members of the team being in the process of moving places) this report might be a little thinner than previous months in the eye candy department, but we’ll try to make up for it with previews for things that won’t be in the game until V1035 and later.

Alright, let’s get going.

New voices on the way

With female characters being included in V1034, we needed at least one female voice recorded and processed for the “commo rose”-style pre-recorded messages (accessible with the G key). But because writing and recording lines is all one big intertwined process (and because we want new voices sooner rather than later) we decided to go the full length.

Hence our announcement, a couple months ago, that we were looking for talented voice actors.

And thanks to our followers and the awesome voice actor community who helped spread the word, we were able to find and cast a roster of 18 (!) voice actors, male and female, in four different languages: most of them English (US), but also Russian, Spanish (Mexican) and Arabic. In case that isn’t obvious, we’ll not only be replacing the current enemy voice lines; we’ll be replacing them with native language voice lines for 3–4 different OPFOR factions, each with 2–3 different actors.

Here are some samples:

Lines for the player and the team will consist of 3 different voices for male operators, another 3 voices for female operators, and one for the team handler — a CIA lady back at the TOC (tactical operations center) keeping tabs on the mission and communicating with the ground unit in real time.

💡 Should we expect new voices in V1034?
The main goal for V1034 — as far as voice lines go — is implementing the female counterpart for the existing pre-recorded voice messages. As a stretch goal, Zack will process one of the new male voices to replace the existing ones.

As of this writing, about a third of the actors have been recorded. It’s a lot of work ahead, but we’re super excited about the results so far! We look forward to hearing them in-game and sharing the footage with you as soon as we have it.

What Chris-with-a-C has been up to

Due to other tasks that required his attention, programmer Chris (not to be confused with Kris) has been bashing a variety of things into shape this month, but has still found time to keep working on the AI. He’s back on that full-time this week.

Over the last few weeks, Chris has implemented what he’s calling world events: stuff that is happening in the game world that should arouse the AI’s suspicion and trigger certain reactions. For now, he has created two event types: one is dead bodies, which the AI should eventually check on and take appropriate measures, such as alerting other AI actors; the other is power switches being shut off, which will eventually trigger enemies to go check the relevant switches and turn them back on if uninterrupted.

Though these world events only add the underlying logic and basic behavior so far (as in, bots will simply move to the appropriate actors), they represent the foundation for the fleshed-out behavior, which will of course be accompanied by appropriate animations and voice lines.

💡 Among the other things Chris has been busy with are: compiling a list of build steps for mod kit distribution alongside Callum, keeping the development builds up and running as John moves the server around Ohio, tackling some graphic setting requirements from Nvidia, and adding motion vectors to various UI elements. Don't worry: most of us don't know what any of that means either. But the point stands — man's been busy.

More info on modding!

Section by Matt “Fatmarrow” Farrow

So far we haven’t said much about the new modding features coming in v1034, but this month we’ll take a deepish dive into the new modding system helmed by programmer Callum.

Up to now, modding in GROUND BRANCH has been a rather unofficial affair, requiring players to manually place (and in some cases replace) files inside the game directory. Some kinds of mods, like missions and game modes, are essentially server-side only, but other kinds of mods like patches and asset replacements have required manual installation of the mod in both the server and clients. This has been quite a hassle. But soon, all this will change!

In V1034, we will start using the Steam Workshop as a repository and delivery system for mods. This is a tried and tested system, popular with modders, and the automatic background updating of mods is a key feature that should greatly enhance user experience. Getting content set up in GROUND BRANCH is rather complicated — not least because we are still developing some core systems — so we are going to introduce different kinds of modded content in subsequent updates. That way, we can hopefully get everything right before unleashing a modding free-for-all.

We’ll be kicking it off with one or two weapon mods to show you how it’s done. In the first example, behold! The VSS Vintorez.

What you see in the following screenshot from the Customize Operator screen is the modded VSS appearing seamlessly in the list of rifles, janky icon and all. To get this rifle in-game, you go to the Workshop, find the mod, and click the Subscribe button. And that’s it. The mod will be downloaded in the background, and the next time you run the game, the gun will be there.

So how will you make weapon mods? The answer is the GROUND BRANCH SDK (Software Development Kit), which is effectively a customized version of the Unreal Editor including some basic GROUND BRANCH bits and pieces.

We will in due course be providing tutorials and so on to explain the process in detail, but essentially you import your gun model into the editor, create a weapon blueprint, set it up with various properties (such as magazine type, display name, and so on), and then use the in-editor modding tools to create a mod and upload it to your personal Workshop account.

🔫 Since handguns are setup fairly differently from long guns, we'll also include a mystery pistol as a mod example.

Prone and animation

Kris and Mike continue to implement the new prone stance, which we have started previewing in the last couple months.

Since then, they have added item switching and reloading while prone, transitions between prone and other stances, as well as a proper rotating-in-place motion (instead of characters spinning on their pelvises). There’s still plenty of jank to clean up, but it’s almost fully functional from a gameplay perspective.

Here’s how the more presentable actions are looking at the moment:

In the video, you may notice how aiming from side-to-side while in the prone position has a limited angle. Once the threshold is reached on either side, moving the mouse will free-look a little further to the sides until that limit is also reached.

If you need to aim or look beyond those thresholds, you must reposition your character by holding one of the movement keys. In a previous iteration, the rotation would kick in automatically once the threshold was reached, which we realized felt dodgy as you were never sure at what point you would stop aiming/looking and get locked into the repositioning motion.

The amount of rotation applied to each repositioning is currently only about 30 degrees, which is likely to be increased to a wider angle somewhere in the 45- to 90-degree range — or whatever testing determines to be best.

💡 Animations and control schemes are all subject to change, so let us know how you feel about all of the above. You'll get to try it out yourself soon enough.

Animation optimization

Section by Kris

As of V1033, animation updates are performed on multiple threads, but much of the logic relating to animations was still on the game thread. This is being addressed in V1034, with as much logic as possible being moved to a custom animation proxy, allowing it to be run outside of the game thread.

At the same time, we’re ensuring that the animation graph conforms to what the engine calls the Animation Fast Path. (For those of you familiar with UE4 — or just morbidly curious — you can read more here.)

Both of these changes should lead to improved performance, especially for offline play and listen servers (the ones hosted locally via the Host Game option).

More quality-of-life updates for servers

Section by Matt “Fatmarrow” Farrow

Servers will get another boost in V1034, with a few more options added to the Admin Panel to make things easier for admins and players alike:

  • A server setting has been added for the default ready countdown time, which is used unless overridden by the MapList.ini parameters. Up to V1033, if you wanted to vary the default countdown time, you had to add a parameter to every entry in the map list. We know you have better things to do with your time.
  • If a dedicated server is started up without a defined MapList.ini file, a basic one is generated and the server continues from there. Previously, dedicated servers would hang on startup until a MapList.ini was manually added to the ServerConfig folder.
  • There’s been a big pass on server restart options: you can now set a dedicated server to restart at (or at least near) a particular time of day, and it is now possible to configure the shutdown configuration via the Server Preferences menu.
  • We have added a big red button and a console command to allow admins to reboot server from within the game. Sorry that took so long, admin folks.
  • The majority of voting settings, previously editable only via the Vote.ini configuration file, have now been added to the server settings admin menu.
  • There is a new AllowVotesWhenAdminPresent voting setting; if it is “false” then no votes can be started (except by admins) when an admin is online on the server.
  • There is a new DelayVoteFromRoundStart voting setting; if “true”, then the server will not allow votes to be called during the round until this many minutes have elapsed.
Updated Server Preferences screen
Clicking a server on the Server Browser will reveal additional information like a list of players and active mods

We may be able to squeeze a few more server quality of life features into V1034 (we are looking to improve the kick/ban process, for example), but we hope that whatever features do make it into the update will help to bring calm and relaxation to overworked server admins. Namaste.

Bug fix corner

Press F to pay respects to these V1033 bugs (which will be gone in V1034):

  • The debug camera (ToggleDebugCamera in console) will no longer spawn a mysterious stranger in the player list, also preventing new rounds from launching properly afterwards.
  • Eyewear will apply the appropriate skin that has been selected inside the character customization. In V1033, eyewear defaults to black once you leave the customization screen.
  • This isn’t a bug as such, but we have changed the mid-round spawning process to spawn you in without any freeze, and with your weapon already positioned at the Ready position (pointed forward). Hopefully this will reduce the number of “bullshit spawns” in Deathmatch and other respawn modes, where you get insta-killed before you can shoot back. OK, that will still happen, but it’s going to be more your fault now.
  • In fact, we’re removing the janky, synchronized weapon drawing from round/mission starts altogether.

Post-V1034 cosmetics

Regular contractor Pau Peñalver has been working on a lot of small tweaks and upgrades to assets.

Although the new items won’t be available until after V1034 due to time constraints, we thought it would be cool to give you a little preview of some of them:

💡 Friendly reminder: these are special artist renders; they do not represent how assets will look in-game with dynamic lighting and other real-time restrictions.

As you can see, we’ll be expanding the face-wear selection with a neck gaiter/face scarf, 3 variants of the single-hole balaclava, and a three-hole balaclava.

Female operators will also be able to wear a traditional head cover, which can be had either with or without the pattern seen above.

This has been Intel Report #019!

We hope you’ve enjoyed these previews — we’ll probably have another batch for you next month — and as always, thank you for keeping up with the development of GROUND BRANCH! Your support, feedback and patience are greatly appreciated.

Take it easy, everyone!

Intel Report #018: Dev News for September 2023

Folks,

It’s been a month since our last dev blog, and we once again take a quick break from working on GROUND BRANCH V1034 to give you a generous glimpse into development over the last few weeks. This is Intel Report #018, and today we’ll be jumping straight into it.

⚠️ This report is not an exhaustive list of V1034 features! For the most up-to-date list of expected V1034 and later features, see our roadmap. You may also want to check out our Intel Reports for June (#015), July (#016) and August (#017).

AI development

One of the most anticipated areas of development in V1034, enemy AI continues to be built on by programmer Chris with more realistic and varied behaviors. Today we’ll be taking a look at the new target acquisition system, as well as two new abilities: looking and shooting from windows and grenade throwing.

Nerfing the enemy aimbot

In a way, programming AI bots sometimes involves more removing than adding. As a crude example, once you program a bot to visually detect the player, the bot will do just that — it doesn’t matter if it’s bright or dark, if there is foliage in the way, or even if the model is looking in the right direction. You need to actively program the bot to account for things like environment brightness, different types of visual obstacles, and field of view — essentially “removing” its über-detection abilities — so that it better emulates human vision.

💡 The first pass on the AI light detection system currently in V1033 is a good example of the above.

Getting 180-no-scoped by a bot 200 meters away has a similar root cause: once you tell the bot to point and shoot at the player, it’ll act like a sentry laser cannon until you add further programming to nerf it to a human level. Though the current release of GROUND BRANCH (V1033) has a configurable period where bots will intentionally miss shots as a way to give players a better chance to react (the Deliberate Miss Time, which varies with difficulty level), once that period is over they’re very unlikely to miss.

The new target acquisition system aims (no pun intended) to mitigate this issue by defining an “accuracy plane” — an area where shots may randomly land — around the target player/character. Over time, as long as bots maintain contact, the accuracy plane reduces in size until any shot fired will definitely hit the player.

The system is being built with flexibility in mind, allowing for different sizes of the accuracy plane (as well as different amounts of time for it to collapse) depending on difficulty level and other conditions that will be expanded on, such as distance, movement and weapon type.

The AI guy taketh away, and then the AI guy giveth a little

If you bought GROUND BRANCH or are considering it, chances are you’re looking for a challenge — it’s just no fun when most of the challenge comes from superhuman accuracy. And since we’re working on improving that aspect of the game, it’s only fair that we also bump up areas where the AI’s abilities fall short to provide a challenge that feels realistic.

In addition to better cover usage and contextual stances (such as going prone when too far from cover), bots are also being programmed to use grenades. We asked Chris to do a little dive into the detail on this, because some of you tell us you like the detail:

The targeting system for the grenade throwing works different than for bullets, since they travel more slowly and are thrown in a pronounced arc. The grenade is thrown by the AI with a specific velocity. To make sure it lands at the desired target location, we have to take into account the horizontal distance and the vertical distance, e.g. when the target is standing on a hill. To determine at which velocity the grenade needs to be thrown to hit the target, kinematic equations need to be solved. To make this problem a bit easier, we say that the grenade will always be thrown at an angle of 45 degrees.

The equations below are used to determine the necessary velocity (v) to throw a grenade at 45 degrees so as to hit the target location. Implementing this formula into the game now lets the AI throw a grenade at the player:

Yes, you’re still reading the GROUND BRANCH dev blog

We know 99% of you skipped the math entirely, so here’s what you’re really here for (minus the animations — they still need to be hooked up!):

GB PLAYER: pls improve AI?
GB TANGO: [throws frag]
GB PLAYER: not like th--🪦

V1034 will also give the enemy AI the ability to contextually look and shoot out of windows.

You might be thinking that enemies are already sometimes positioned by windows and will shoot out of them in V1033, and you would be right. The difference is that, in this upcoming release, any enemy that happens to be indoors can run up to a window to check outside if they hear something, and then shoot out of it if they spot a target. Whereas in V1033, window bots would be specifically positioned by windows and set to a “guard” state, while other bots would simply rush outside in search of players. Here’s a quick demo:

🪟 Window usage by the AI will present a unique challenge once bullets start flying, as any window might be hosting an enemy ready to take you down.

AI tracers and VFX

In addition to being visually updated, optional tracers will be added to enemy shots at lower difficulty levels to help identify the source of incoming fire. The system allows us to easily set the color and frequency of AI tracers.

Here’s a quick WIP demo with yellow/orange tracers every 3–4 shots:

 

💡 As with most AI settings, the use of tracers will be player-configurable.

Charles is also updating the bullet impact VFX for various surface types, as seen in the video below:

Callsign patches coming to headgear

Just as the title says, callsign patches will now be applied to the rear of all headgear that has an adequate spot for it. At this time, that includes all helmets and the NVG Head Mount.

This is an idea we had been mulling over, suggested a few times by players (and most recently by Discord member Otoramaru). One cool feature is that the patch will automatically apply to the NVG counterweight pouch if NVG are attached:

This addition is sure to be of great help when stacking up and regrouping, as identifying your teammates can be tricky with no HUD.

❓ Should the rear velcro of the Ball Cap also host a callsign patch? How about the big velcro on the Ball Cap (Reverse), since it's worn backwards? Useful? Goofy? Let us know what you think in the comments or anywhere in the community.

While we’re talking patches, we’re happy to announce that the normal maps for the arm and chest patches are getting fixed. They’re still decals, but the normals help add a little bit of depth as currently seen on the headgear.

If you’re wondering about that US/UK Friendship Flag patch, that’s one of a set of new patches that will be coming to V1034. They’ll also include:

Europe
  • Czech Republic
  • Greece
  • Estonia
  • Ireland
  • Lithuania
  • Macedonia
  • Switzerland
Americas
  • Bolivia
  • Chile
  • Colombia
  • Cuba
  • Peru
  • Venezuela
Africa and Middle East
  • Algeria
  • Egypt
  • Iran
  • Jordan
  • Libya
  • Morocco
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Syria
  • Uganda
Asia
  • Thailand
  • Vietnam

We might also include these in-game brand patches as examples for modded patches:

  • Ramjet
  • SCOPETROL

Level design

Map work continues behind the scenes, with John having recently started changes and additions to City that we hope to be able to showcase soon.

As teased in earlier reports, The Farm has received a small makeover — most notably in the outdoor range area — with a visual tie-in to Small Town. Here are a couple sneak peeks:

Tracer goes PEW
💡 In other map-related news, Hideout has been pushed back to V1035 to be better fleshed out, while new map Ranch (also V1035) continues to be carefully crafted by Elliot.

Miscellaneous

Here are some smaller new features and bug fixes that will be coming to V1034:

  • Pressing N for Night Vision in Spectator Mode will cycle through green and white phosphor modes (thanks to Special Ed Forces for the suggestion!)
  • Fix for the quick Resurrect admin option not working
  • ResurrectAtMe and SuperKick (for kicking admins) options added to quick admin menu

This has been Intel Report #018!

Thanks for keeping up with GROUND BRANCH! We hope you enjoyed going through these news and previews, and we’ll see you on the next one in about a month.

Cheers!