Intel Report #011: More V1033 Progress and Other News

Hey, everyone!

It’s been around a month since our last dev blog (#010), and because we are now aiming for monthly entries, the time has come again to showcase some more progress and talk about other recent developments.

Intel Update is now INTEL REPORT!
We are renaming our series of dev blog entries from "Intel Update" to Intel Report. The reason is that some players would simply glance over the title, spot the word "update" in it, and immediately proceed to type "did we get an update?" in the nearest text box, prompting confusion and aggravation in an otherwise incredibly peaceful and welcoming community.

New dev team members

As some of you will know from our recent job ads, we have been looking for reinforcements in a couple areas: VFX (visual effects) and programming being the main ones.

We hope to have news on the programmer role very soon, but in the meantime, we are proud to introduce new BlackFoot Studios members Charles Schmidt and Zack Regan!

Charles is our first dedicated VFX Artist. He was previously a gameplay designer and visual effects artist for Operation: Harsh Doorstop, and is now giving the particle effects in GROUND BRANCH some much-needed love. He will be working on making hit impacts, muzzle blasts, smoke, blood and all kinds of visual effects in the game look and perform better.

Zack’s joining us as an additional Sound Designer whose skillset nicely complements Mikson‘s, with valuable Wwise and Unreal Engine integration experience. Formerly a member of Code Blue Games, Zack is also a composer, so we might be seeing some new tracks in GB down the line.

Welcome to the team, guys!

💡 We'll be checking out some of their initial work in a bit, so read on!

Performance optimization

As a pre-alpha game on Early Access that also happens to have a handful of fairly unique features, GROUND BRANCH is bound to have its performance fluctuate over the course of development as we add, remove and generally change things around. And although we always keep track of the worst performance offenders, fixes are rarely straightforward and may take some time to figure out.

It’s no secret that performance in V1032 is less than stellar, with certain aspects of audio and asset modularity being some of the major culprits. Here are some of the steps we have been taking to address them so far:

M4, MK18 and HK416D asset optimization

Though beautifully modeled and textured by Bakr Asaad, the M4 and HK416 families of carbines are using around 12 texture sets per weapon as of V1032. The models were created with very granular customization in mind, with each individual part having its own texture set.

If you go online and your team is using an assortment of different M4- and HK416-based weapons — easily some of the most popular guns in the game — that could be loading upwards of 30 texture sets for those weapons alone in your GPU’s memory. Not ideal when you already have in-depth character customization, meaning a whole lot of other assets to render.

For V1033, we had those weapon models rebuilt to use only 3–4 texture sets each, while preserving as much of the quality and fidelity of the originals as possible. This change may not be as impactful as the more CPU-intensive issues such as those caused by dynamic lighting and audio, but every bit helps and it had to be done at some point.

Audio optimization

Zack has been working closely with Mikson to address one of the biggest performance issues in the game: audio complexity causing excessive CPU usage.

To better understand the problem, think back on all of the different sounds your character makes in GROUND BRANCH when moving around or firing a weapon. There’s the footsteps, the rustling clothes, the crackling gear… And when shooting, there’s the mechanical weapon clicks and clings, the muzzle blast, and even a dedicated sound effect for distant gunfire in case someone hears them from afar. These sounds are individual audio layers, and every time a character moves or shoots, all of these layers are “broadcast” to everyone. Needless to say, the more characters in the game, the more demanding it becomes.

To tackle the problem, the duo has rearranged the entire audio project to support first-person perspective vs. third-person perspective sounds. In practice, this means they can significantly reduce the amount of simultaneous sounds and layers that are played by determining when to play each of them.

For example: the player firing the weapon doesn’t need to hear the layer for distant gunfire, so we can now tell the game to only play it as a third-person sound, i.e. for other players. Conversely, other players don’t need to hear (and are unlikely to notice) the mechanical weapon layer of your shots, so they will no longer be played for them.

As another example, movement sounds can be preserved as layered audio in first-person, but for third-person playback we can now play an optimized version where all of the layers have been combined into a single sound effect. So you’ll still hear a high-fidelity, multi-layered playback when you move your own character around, but the sound generated by other players will be a simplified version of that. That’s far fewer sounds to play.

🎧 Audiophiles using high-fidelity equipment may notice subtle differences, but the vast majority of us will only notice the glorious gains.

First pass results

After this initial optimization pass was done, Mik and Zack ran a profiler on maps Run Down, Small Town and Tanker to see how CPU usage responded to the changes.

Each map was ran three times in single player (Terrorist Hunt) with 30 AI bots, first in V1032 and then in V1033 to compare. Here are the average peaks:

MAP: RUN DOWN
V1032: 53.38%
V1033: 36.28%
-17.10% CPU usage (~32% decrease)

MAP: SMALL TOWN
V1032: 46.34%
V1033: 37.07%
-9.27% CPU usage (~20% decrease)

MAP: TANKER
V1032: 46.17%
V1033: 22.03%
-24.14% CPU usage (~52% decrease)

The peak average for these maps in V1032 was 48.6% CPU usage, which was brought down to a 31.8% peak average in V1033 — or a 34.6% decrease. Not bad at all for a first pass.

It’s worth noting that these numbers are strictly for CPU usage — not framerates — and we’ll be running more tests as the optimization continues. There’s more performance to be gained on the audio side of things alone, and certainly more scenarios to test on (e.g. multiplayer).

NVIDIA GeForce NOW

While not directly related to optimization, cloud gaming services allow players with low-end PCs to enjoy games that their machines can’t natively run. And with GROUND BRANCH having an ambitious array of features that can test lower-end hardware, we have received a lot of interest in GeForce NOW support.

Well, we have mentioned before that support for GeForce NOW is planned (it’s been on our Roadmap since around February), but we have recently discovered that we might be able to support it a lot earlier than expected! Steam has a feature that allows NVIDIA-approved games to be linked to GeForce NOW as long as Steam Cloud saves are setup and working. Which, by the way, they are now, and enabled by default — you can change that by right-clicking the game in your library and selecting “Properties”:

☁️ Steam Cloud saves will only be required for GeForce NOW users.

NVIDIA has yet to greenlight the integration, but our end is all setup and could potentially lead to GeForce NOW support before V1033 is even here. Fingers crossed!

Animations

As shown in the previous dev blog, V1033 will be introducing some new weapons, which require not only new sound effects, but also animations.

One such new weapon is the Russian PMM pistol, which has a fairly unorthodox reload due to the magazine release being located at the bottom of the grip. Here’s the non-retention version (sorry, no audio on these videos):

Next is the MK17 (SCAR-H), which was using the AR reload in last update’s Gunshot Audio Preview video. Notice the charging handle on the right side — this was done to reduce the likelihood of clipping with the supporting hand, as well as provide a more unique reload style:

Shotgun shoot and reload sequences are also being updated, with slight changes: you will be able to load 1–2 shells at a time (depending on how full the internal magazine is) while keeping it pointed downrange and ready to fire — so you can more effectively keep your weapon full while still being in the fight — or take the time to break the weapon down into your workspace to more efficiently load shells into the magazine until full. These two reload types will be done using the two different Reload inputs (tap vs. double-tap), just like in V1032, with their speed increased slightly.

Mike has also started working on basic door handling animations, which we’ll begin showcasing next month.

Visual effects (VFX)

Our new VFX artist Charles has also kept busy in his first couple of weeks, having put in some work on bullet impact and explosion particles.

Here’s a quick demo of the concrete hit effects that he’s put together so far. Notice how the angle of the shots affects the direction of the impact debris — shots will produce impact effects at a similar but opposite angle, rather than always fly out of surfaces at a perpendicular (90°) angle:

As the video shows, impacts will also produce larger secondary debris.

📈 These effects also have lower shader complexity than the previous ones, which could have a positive impact on performance in more intensive situations.

Charles has also started prototyping collision logic, with the preliminary goal of making explosion particles react appropriately to their surroundings and not go through walls etc. Here’s a quick demo:

Maps

Storage Facility has been receiving a makeover by Will since its layout redesign in V1032. This art pass adds some welcome character to the facility, with the concept of a repurposed Soviet-era mine, and adds a lot of background detail suggestive of its location.

Here are some shots of the map at around 90% completion:

John has also been working on a new map idea — working title “Docks” — that may or may not make its way into V1033 as well:

New weapon models

We showcased the new M1911A1 in the last dev blog, and you can see some new angles of that on artist Bakr Asaad’s portfolio here.

In the meantime, we have also ordered a new .45 suppressor from Cody to go with it: a legacy Ti-RANT 45S from Advanced Armament Corp. (AAC):

Other weapons are also getting some love in V1033, with the AK-74 family and SVD having received remakes by AK Productions. Be sure to check out their portfolio here for the full galleries and other work they have made.

Here are some previews of the AKS-74U (with both factory and Zenitco parts), as well as the SVD (with both wooden and polymer furniture):

📷 We'll be showcasing the new AK-74M, AK-105 and other assets by AK Productions in a future update.

As is the case with the upcoming MK17 (SCAR-H), these weapons will be added as individual pre-built configurations at first, though you will be able to swap out parts like stocks and handguards down the line when we set things up to support that level of modularity.

The new M24 is also in the make. Here’s the latest progress shot, just before entering the low-poly stage:

AI

We’re investigating how to address one of the most frustrating aspects of the enemy AI: their perfect eyesight at night, making stealthy gameplay nearly impossible.

Initial prototyping is being done using some logic to read pixels and check them for brightness. That is then hooked up to a render capture component attached to the AI, which will be taking snapshots of all the lighting currently affecting players.

The idea is that if you’re caught in one of these snapshots and the brightness reading is determined to be high enough for detection, then you get spotted and the AI reacts. Otherwise, it is told to ignore your presence. Remember that once you give bots basic abilities — like “when you see a player, shoot” — it’s a subtractive process of telling them not to based on a set of conditions, whether it’s because they shouldn’t be able to see through walls, or because they shouldn’t be able to see you in pitch darkness.

Unfortunately, we have nothing palpable to show at this time, but should hopefully have some kind of demo in the next Intel Report.

Modding

Modding in V1033 is still very much a work in progress, but there are two main developments we can talk about at this time.

Firstly, all current kinds of mods (such as game modes and missions) will now be packaged and uploaded to an online repository (details to be finalized), and this should greatly simplify the delivery of mods to users, and propagating updates to mods. Server owners should be able to select mods to be active on the server, and these should automatically be distributed to players joining the server. The days of players having to drop .csv files into their game installation should be over!

Secondly, there will be some new kinds of modding — most notably custom patches, as well as mutators. These mutators are Lua scripts (like game modes) that are intended to extend and/or replace basic game functionality, without requiring a more complicated solution using the SDK (which is still on the way). The full feature set is yet to be confirmed and is likely to be extended over time, but provisionally mutators will allow server owners to customize match structures, map changes, default/allowable player names, custom callsigns, and other server behaviors. They may also be able to do things like pistol-only modifications to any game mode, and so on. Much is possible, but not everything may make it to V1033.

We’ll share more details of the modding system at an appropriate time. But we know the community is clamoring for more modding possibilities, and we are doing our best to get this in-game at the earliest appropriate opportunity.

This is it for today’s Intel Report!

We appreciate you taking the time to read this post, and hope to keep a steady stream of previews and progress showcases going. Thanks for your continued support, and we’ll see you next month!