INTEL UPDATE #005: Road to 1030

Oh, hello! It’s been a while. We hope you’ve been well, safe, and at home as much as possible.

Let us maintain our usual transparency and address the elephant in the room straight away:

Yes, version 1030 is taking a lot longer than expected. The aim of this Intel Update is to explain why, and also get you up to speed on what we’ve been working on. That will of course involve some well deserved previews to reward your valued patience and continued support. So let’s get to it.

Why is it taking so long?

One of the biggest deals about upcoming update 1030 are the new animations that artist Toadie has been working on. Whether they’re improving on existing motions and poses or adding to in-game actions that currently use placeholders or even nothing at all, every animation is being done on an entirely new character rig, also known as a skeleton.

As is true for many aspects of game development, things like migrating to a new skeleton, re-targeting existing animations, and then integrating the new ones by Toadie are all multi-layered tasks with a lot of parts that can break and ultimately delay the entire process. As a very small team with a single programmer (Kris), that limits us further. That limitation is starting to go away, however, but more on that in a bit—keep reading!

Is there an ETA?

In late 2019, we hoped to have 1030 released some time between February and March, and that prediction eventually turned into “hopefully March or April”. Those, of course, were rough estimates, and much of that time ended up being spent fixing lingering issues with version 1029.

Currently, the main battle is getting the new skeleton and animations to the same level of stability that 1029 had, except prettier and smoother. Although the version of the game within our internal UE4 project already has some of the new and improved animations and poses in place, there are still some very obvious issues with bone orientation and janky limbs here and there that need cleaning up.

The only honest answer to “1030 when?” is still, unfortunately, “We don’t know.” We have yet to fully figure out just how much needs doin’ in the animation department, but we can say with certainty that, at the time of this post, we’re talking weeks rather than days. Could be a few weeks (🤞), but it could be a little longer too.

What will be in 1030, after all?

Contrary to what the hype (that’s on us) may suggest, version 1030 will not be an entirely new game, but it should add a considerable degree of polish and functionality to the game. Here’s what it will boil down to:

Animations

As laid out before, a completely new character rig is being implemented and serving as the basis for all the upcoming animations. Expect actual transitions between weapon postures, new character poses for stances, some reworked reloads and a generally more natural feeling character.

We are hoping to get out the new prone stance in this update, but this is the area that is subject to the most change. Thus, it is not yet clear what state—if any—it will be in at this time.

Here’s some of the WIP animation work that Toadie has shared over the months:

UGH, prone animations are a crawl. Still a work in progress. pic.twitter.com/A3oOIRM3L9

— Toadie (@toadie2k) October 30, 2019

pic.twitter.com/75GqRLjeq2

— Toadie (@toadie2k) January 15, 2020

Hey ,it's 11pm on a Saturday, you know what this means? that's right, Work Gif time. This week's been especially whackadoo.

Obviously, Work In Progress, not final quality, yada yada. pic.twitter.com/E2cYX3nrwo

— Toadie (@toadie2k) March 28, 2020

And here’s an exclusive look at the (also WIP) poses and transitions for the High/Ready/Low weapon positions when obstructed, i.e. too close to an obstacle:

Like everything else in the GROUND BRANCH Early Access, animation work will be an ongoing iterative process, and 1030 will be just an initial taste of what’s to come in that department. We’ll keep adding polish, new sequences and accompanying actions for both players as well as A.I. over the course of development.

Encumbrance system

1030 will include the first iteration of the encumbrance system. This initial pass will add stamina, which is affected by both loadout weight and movement—the more you carry and the faster you move, the less stamina you’ll have. The less stamina you have, the less you will be able to sprint and the more weapon sway you will experience when aiming.

Arm fatigue is also tracked independently, so even if your stamina is at maximum levels, your aim will still become less stable over time from holding your weapon at the Ready (muzzle forward) and Engaged (ADS) positions. Heavier weapons also mean more arm fatigue, so you might want to think twice before taking an LMG or mounting a dozen attachments to your AR.

Inertia and effects on ready times are also coming, but we’ll save the details for the Build Update.

Soundscapes

Small Town, Depot, Storage Facility and all training maps are set to have day and night soundscapes, also known as environment or ambient sounds. Our intrepid sound engineer Mikson hopes to be able to get even more maps done in time for 1030. Hell, he says he might even be able to get them all done by then. Rookie mistake, Mik, but we’re rooting for ya.

Anyway, here’s a little demo we released a few days ago:

One cool detail he’s snuck into these soundscapes are the crickets: they’ll go quiet once the player is close enough to their location, which is not only clever but also has the interesting prospect of alerting other players of one’s presence nearby. We’re cool with all of this as long as he keeps them away from our faces.

New character assets

As we have previously shown in this album right here, there’s a load of new character assets making their way into GROUND BRANCH. Most of the existing apparel (as well as arms and hands) is being replaced with new, shiny models, and a few additional items will be added as well. What we have not shown yet are these bad boys:

New PvP maps

John has put together a couple maps for PvP: one is an upgraded version of the test Paintball map…

And the other one branched out from the concept of the old Nature Area benchmark map:

Shootable/interactive lights

John has also rigged up a basic implementation of interactive lights, demonstrated in the video below:

 

As shown, the system will allow lights to be shot out and also switched off. Although the video uses a basic light switch for the demonstration, the switch can be anything the player interacts with to turn a given light (or a set of lights) off: a regular light switch, a lever, a distribution board…

The aim for 1030 is to have the system in place for Depot and the training maps so we can get the initial experimentation going.

New weapons

We have a few shooters coming to 1030:

• A tac’d out FAL with accessory rails and the G3A3 are two additions to the battle rifle department, with the later mostly serving as an OPFOR weapon.
• Now that we finally have a bolt-action animation, the M24 SWS is making its return to GROUND BRANCH as the one true sniper rifle in the armory.

Cool, so that sums up 1030. What else is going on?

We’re glad you asked. Here is some intel on things to look forward to later in development, i.e. at some point after 1030:

Dev Team expansion

As we hinted at earlier, our core BlackFoot Studios staff consisting of John, Kris, Scopey and Mikson has received some reinforcements. Toadie (aka toadie2k), as you already know, has been handling animations for the past several months.

But we have yet to officially introduce Daniel Conroy, our newest collaborator. Dan is a hard surface artist now in charge of weapon and general equipment models, having previously worked on VR shooter Onward. You can check out some of his work and background here, and you can get a load of what he’s been working on below:

There are a couple additional members joining our ranks soon, but more on that at another time.

Art overhaul

A lot of what we’ve shown so far reflects the art overhaul process that will be happening over many months to come. We’ve been working hard on the details of apparel, gear and weapons we’d like the game to have, and we want them to not only have variety and authenticity but polish and art consistency as well.

An art overhaul wouldn’t be complete without a new UI, which we have yours truly working on. Here’s a little mock-up concept of where it’s currently headed—but keep in mind that it’s merely a (very WIP) concept and does not necessarily reflect final features, items or visuals:

Other news

Roadmap

You guys have been asking for a proper roadmap for a while now, and we finally managed to put some time aside to work on one. We’ll be making it public very soon.

HUGE news incoming

We have some seriously exciting news coming out very soon and the future of GROUND BRANCH is looking very, very good indeed. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all.

• • • • •

While 1030 doesn’t drop, you can keep in touch with us and the GROUND BRANCH community via Discord, the Steam® Community Hub, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. If you have lot questions and not enough answers, our official FAQ is always here for you.