Intel Update #008: Reinforcements

2 Comments / Intel Report

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.

See you on the next one!