Intel Report

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:

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:

💡 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!

Hello there!

Another month or so has gone by, which means it’s time for Intel Report #017 to hit you with more dev news and previews for GROUND BRANCH V1034!

We’ve put a little time aside from development to let you know what’s going on in the team, as well as showcase features — big and small — that are expected to drop before the end of the year. Chief among them are the first iterations of both the AI overhaul and the new prone stance, but there’s plenty more to be excited about.

So let’s get to 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) and July (#016).

Music and voice work

About a month ago, musician and sound designer Venus Theory did a YouTube stream where he composed and added music to various parts of GROUND BRANCH.

We were impressed with the result, so we reached out. You probably know where this is going already, but Venus Theory is now officially creating the soundtrack for the game — and we’re all really excited to hear what he comes up with. Welcome to the team, Cameron! That’s Venus Theory’s real name. We keep it casual in here.

In other audio-related news, sound designer Zack is casting voice actors for various roles. If you happen to be an experienced voice actor with the following characteristics:

• Native speaker of English (American accent, male or female), Russian, Arabic or Spanish (male only)
• Age range 25–45

You can apply here.

💡 Music and new voice lines are not likely to be ready until V1035 or later.

So what’s scheduled for V1034 in the audio department?

Here’s what Zack has been up to:

• Revamped environmental audio for all levels
• Updated weapons audio mix
• Further improved the spatial audio for all levels
• Designed and implemented audio for closing and putting away the laptop
• Created sound effects for the power box (light switch): electric hum when on + lever activation
• Designed and implemented the audio for the Galil ARM
• Finalized things needed for the ability to mod audio using Wwise

💡 Zack will be moving on soon to design audio for prone movement. Speaking of which…

Prone, baby

Implementation of the new prone stance is going well, and we’re at a point where it’s fairly functional in-game. Here’s a quick look:

If you’re wondering why we’re not showing more, it’s because the rest is either broken or not yet gameplay-ready: things like transitioning into and out of prone, reloads and changing weapons/items are either pending implementation (the animations are ready, but not programmed to the character yet) or still need more work to function correctly.

But we’re getting there!

💡 Always worth remembering that the initial implementation of any new feature is supposed to lay the groundwork for it, with improvements coming over time. Which is a way to say we're not sure exactly how polished prone will be when it releases, but it'll keep getting iterated on as we go.

AI overhaul

Chris’ work on the AI overhaul continues, and today we’ll be taking a look at the cover system.

We’re now using middleware Kythera AI‘s built-in cover generation system, which allows us to create different types of cover points. Here’s what we have set up:

• Full cover: These designate points of cover that allow the AI to stand behind and either lean or step out to return fire. Shown as red and green rails in the video.
• Pop-up cover: Designate points where the AI can take cover by crouching behind and popping up to shoot. Shown as blue rails in the video.

When an AI actor detects an enemy, a cover query is run. Different cover points are checked and evaluated (gray, red, orange and green cylinders and circles in the screenshots below) based on factors like distance to the enemy, whether the cover is available or reserved to another AI actor, and the relative angle to the enemy.

The best cover is then selected and reserved for that specific AI actor to engage the enemy. In scenarios where cover is rare or already taken by another AI actor (e.g. an open field), we use Utility AI in conjunction with behavior trees. Utility AI calculates scores for various actions, enabling the AI to dynamically choose the most suitable action based on the current environment and context.

This ensures the AI can make more human-like decisions based on factors such as the proximity of the next cover spot. Depending on the situation, the AI can opt to flee, crouch, or go prone.

💡 We'll demo some more AI development in the next report!

Visual effects (VFX)

Particle effects continue to be upgraded, and we feel like Charles’ update to the breaching charge explosion deserves a highlight. This is all work-in-progress and subject to change (performance, performance) but check out how much the lingering smoke adds to the effect:

Charles has also been working on grenade explosion impacts for different surfaces (e.g. concrete vs. dirt), light fixture shot impacts, as well as polishing and fixing various other effects.

It’s only radio stuff but we like it

Following up on the radio pouch, all vest platforms (with the exception of the Ballistic Vest) have been set up with an accompanying push-to-talk (PTT) system.

It’s a small thing that took a little too long to figure out and get done, but the whole radio setup really helps bring loadouts together visually. Worth it.

💡 Oh, right — we also got a checkers plaid pattern done for a more authentic flannel shirt look.

Weapon modding progress

Programmer Callum has done amazing work turning the GROUND BRANCH SDK (essentially a heavily customized version of the Unreal Engine 4 editor with native GROUND BRANCH mod support) into reality, including liaising with Zack to get Wwise mod support working. If you’ve ever tried to mod sounds using Wwise before, you’ll understand that this is a significant achievement!

There’s a bit more work required to get everything properly integrated into the game, but we’re still hoping for a V1034 debut for weapon mod creation using the SDK.

💡 Other kinds of modding (including whole map mods) will follow when we've got everything polished up more.

Miscellaneous

Rig Hostage Rescue upgrade

Fatmarrow has put together a new Hostage Rescue mission for Rig (with thanks to Prowlaz and Trav of UN1T for playtesting and suggestions), bringing your favorite PvP chaos to another maritime location. The action is centered around the living quarters area on Deck 3.

To better support Hostage Rescue, some changes were made to the living quarters area:

• Created door signage to make navigation and callouts easier
• Added power boxes so you can shut the lights off and make infiltrations more interesting/terrifying

You can’t pause an online game, mom

But you can pause single player, or at least you should. GROUND BRANCH V1034 will finally freeze time and halt all action when you hit Esc, so you can take a break from getting your ass kicked at any time during a Lone Wolf mission.

Tablets vs. goggles

Night vision goggles — whether the AN/PVS-15 or the GPNVG-18 — have been setup to automatically be flipped up when the Tablet is equipped, so you can read the screen elements (particularly colors) better. They’ll be flipped back down when you put the Tablet away. More than just a little usability upgrade, this also fixes the conflict between the FOV shifts present in both the NVG overlay and the Tablet viewing.

City flavor

We’ve added a news helicopter to City that hovers around and maneuvers away if shot at. It’s using placeholder animation for now, but here’s the basic implementation:

💡 The underlying system implemented for the news helicopter may help with insertions (player and possibly AI) in the future.

Minor bugs squashed

V1034 will also be fixing a few smaller issues, including:

• Limiting FPS in the main menu to prevent system fans revving up
• Fixing IR Strobes flashing when NVG is turned off
• Improving the NVG overlay bounce effect to be less dependent of FPS (which caused it to gradually cover up the screen at lower framerates)

This has been Intel Report #017!

As always, thank you for reading and sticking with us through another update cycle. We’ll see you next month with more news and sneak peeks!

💡 What are you most excited about V1034? Leave a comment and let us know!

Greetings, tactical realism aficionados.

We’re a week into July, and it’s about time we put out a new Intel Report for you with fresh dev news and more sneak peeks for upcoming release V1034 of GROUND BRANCH.

⚠️ 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 last month's Intel Report #15 (June).

Going prone and more animation work

One of V1034’s most notable features will be the first iteration of the highly anticipated prone stance, in which characters drop to the ground on their stomachs and move around by crawling.

Lead programmer Kris and animator Mike have spent a lot of time and effort navigating the considerable complexities of GROUND BRANCH’s true first person system, and the prone system is now ready for a little showcasing.

The media below is all very much work-in-progress/first pass, but here are a few shots straight from Kris:

And here are some quick and dirty captures of one of the pistol reload animations while prone:

The prone stance will offer the lowest profile, making you harder to spot and a smaller target in most situations, while also boosting weapon accuracy by providing the most stable of all three basic shooting stances (standing and crouched being the other two).

Here’s the result of Mike sacrificing his IRL knees in the name of science hardcore vidya during last month’s mocap session:

Though it comes with a stealth and accuracy bonus, prone is also the slowest stance — not just to move around, but also to perform actions such as reloading, changing weapons and equipment, and looking/aiming around. For reference, the prone pistol reloads above are roughly one second slower than the standing/crouched variant.

More upgrades to the animations will include equipping and stowing additional primary weapons on and off the character’s back:

New map on the way

We’re not disclosing too much at this time, but John has a smaller map project going called “Hideout”. Here are some sneak peeks:

Chasing that quality of life

In each update, we try to include some quality-of-life changes to make your gaming life a little easier — often based on community feedback. When it comes to mission setup, we have two new features coming to V1034 so far:

Objective and insertion randomization

In game modes with randomized insertion/extraction points, search areas, hotspots etc., you can now click the 🔄 button on the Ops Board to “re-roll” them.

Don’t like the choice of hotspot in your Terrorist Hunt game, or the search areas in Intel Retrieval? Not a fan of the Team Elimination spawns for the next round? Just click the button on the Ops Board (either in Lone Wolf or as a server admin) and see if you like the new picks better.

Special role volunteering

Feeling like you become the hostage way too often? Ugh. Do you want to place the flag in DTAS, but never get the chance? We feel your pain. That’s why we’re introducing a “volunteer” button to the Roster menu.

Simply click the button, and you’ll be volunteering for any special role associated with the game mode. Only volunteers will then be considered for the special role. If no player volunteers, then the role is picked at random like before (though in all cases, game modes always try not to pick the same player in a row).

💡 Server admins will also be able to, well, "volunteer" other players. Is that a thing? Volunteering other people? *opens new browser tab*

Color blindness support

A quality-of-life update of a slightly different kind is provided by a couple of new Advanced Video options.

We have received reports that the default red reticle, red laser dots, and the red search area and hotspot markers are very hard to see for people with color blindness (especially in the case of deuteranopia, which affects about 6% of males). In response, we’re implementing two different schemes to try to assist people with color blindness of different types (and other visual impairments, hopefully).

Firstly, it is now possible to change the color of reticles, lasers, and search/hotspot markers to one of a range of different colors that different types and severities of color blindness may be more sensitive to (and thus have an easier time seeing).

Secondly, we have implemented a number of different extreme look-up tables to attempt to “correct” colors into a palette that is more visible for people with different types of color blindness. This may also shift the default red color of the reticles, lasers, and so on.

We hope that these measures provide at least some alleviation and/or aid for people with different types of visual impairment. We will of course keep an open mind as to other measures we could put in to assist with visual impairments, and we welcome your feedback.

💡 When color blindness corrections are active, a warning message is displayed on screen so that hopefully anyone seeing footage of it will not be confused as to why the colors have gone a bit awry.

The composition below shows the color correction schemes that are possible:

---

Speaking of quality of life, we have managed to fix two very special bugs that you have no doubt grown to know and love:

• Being unable to set the enemy AI count (“Expected resistance”) on the Ops Board
• Moving option sliders adding one (1) to the number that you wanted

Sorry we let those slip through, everyone.

Helmet cam

Head and body cams are all the rage these days, and since we always wanted to make it a Spectator Mode camera, we’re going ahead and adding a spectator helmet cam perspective in V1034. It may or may not eventually replace the regular first-person spectator camera, depending on feedback and practical implications.

Here’s programmer Matt “Fatmarrow” Farrow testing his creation on The Farm’s shoothouse:

Radio pouch

In V1034, we’re finally adding a radio pouch to all vest platforms. VOIP radio is a default feature in regular play, so the radio pouch is a fixed, non-removable item — though the former aspect isn’t necessarily set in stone.

It’s a small cosmetic update, but it adds some flavor to setups.

VFX

Grenade effects continue to be iterated on, and VFX artist Charles got to a nice spot with the frags.

Notice how the version below even has some small flying debris bouncing off the ground:

Expanding mod support

Cal, one of our programmers, has been making good progress on the GROUND BRANCH SDK and Steam Workshop integration.

He’s already got a functioning test mod into Steam Workshop, and servers and clients will soon be able to download mod updates automatically from the Workshop. We are planning to stagger the development of the SDK so as not to delay updates: V1034 should see the addition of weapon mods, while maps and other kinds of modding will follow in later releases.

This should be exciting news to all modders and modding enthusiasts out there who have been having to hack their mods into GROUND BRANCH for a while now.

That’s it for this month’s Intel Report!

If you made it this far, give yourself a pat on the back and know that we do have favorites.

Don’t forget to check out last month’s report if you haven’t already, and maybe check out our Discord community if you’re not in there yet.

As always, thank you for supporting GROUND BRANCH. We’ll see you again next month!

What’s going on, everybody?

We got another Intel Update for you, and this month we have news and showcases for both V1033 — our next major update — as well as a little preview of something that will be coming later on (V1034 or later). Don’t forget you can always get an overview of what’s on the way via our Roadmap.

Recap: GROUND BRANCH on GeForce NOW

As announced in late September, GROUND BRANCH is now available on NVIDIA’s cloud gaming service GeForce NOW (GFN).

Earlier this month, we also fixed an issue with GFN players losing keybinds, game/video options and listen server configurations upon ending a play session. These settings were all set to save to the Steam Cloud, so everything is now kept safe.

News for V1033

Here’s what we have this month for our upcoming major release V1033.

Pistol red dots, new models and stuff

V1033 will finally allow you to mount a mini red dot sight (such as the RMR) to pistols that are fit for it. At this time, that includes both G19 models, the MK25 and the M17.

We have also added a new mini red dot sight, the Docter II, commissioned to Cody Cudmore:

As mentioned in the last update, we have also ordered an A2-style AR carry handle, as well as a brand-new M16A4 model that better matches up with the other AR-15 models both in quality and scale. The Bipod Grip is also receiving a new model. Here’s a screenie with all of that stuff put together:

While we’re talking popular demand, we’ve made the SMG/PDW pouches into doubles so you can carry as much ammo for them as you can for rifles:

Selectable shoothouse layouts

Running the shoothouse (sometimes killhouse) on The Farm is always fun, but it can get stale with the fixed floorplan/layout.

In V1033, players will be able to choose between a number of different layouts (5 at the time of counting) — including the old layout last seen in V1030’s “Killhouse” training level — via the Target App display, right next to the shoothouse’s entrance:

💡 We'll continue to expand on shoothouse layouts and functionality as we progress.

In case you’re wondering, the existing layout (currently in V1032) remains as the first option.

Server quality of life

One of our tasks this update is server quality of life. This mostly means a lot of little fixes and features to try and make server admins’ lives easier, but there are also some improvements to the online experience for regular players.

Let’s look at a first example, the Kit Restrictions menu in the Admin Panel:

This is being wrapped up now, and should allow server admins more easily to set up restrictions for the skins that different teams can use on their kit, for ease of friendly vs. enemy identification.

Another feature that has long been requested is the favorite servers feature. The UI has been there for a while, but finally it has been rigged up:

This feature is tied into Steam directly, so you can view and manage your favorite servers offline within Steam as well:

Another change that has been made is to allow server admins to specify a “message of the day” text that can be displayed as usual with the admin motd console command, while simultaneously displaying an image on the server info board (via the new <text> tag). Changes made by admins to the message of the day or server name will also propagate immediately to all users. It’s the little things.

Callsigns

As mentioned last month, V1033 will be bringing callsigns: short IDs by which players may be more easily identified.

Callsigns are displayed as their own arm patches (though only on tops that have a velcro patch) and are limited to three alphanumeric characters (A–Z and 0–9) which can be entirely custom — within limits — or use an automatically assigned Team Element-based value (e.g. “A-01” if you’re first man on element Alpha); the latter can be forced for all players by server admins.

Various UI elements have now been updated to include the new callsign system, and as part of the server quality-of-life upgrade, server admins can do whatever player name and callsign validation they wish via a new server management mutator packaged into a mod.

The specific format of these callsigns can also be chosen by the server owner.

Maps and game modes

Docks missions

All game modes are now made for the new Docks map, including the most complex Intel Retrieval setup so far. Some more limited Deathmatch areas have been created, and DTAS (Dynamic Take and Secure) should be a very interesting tactical proposition on this map.

Uplink should be a challenge for defenders and attackers alike, and both Terrorist Hunt and Team Elimination will of course also be present.

Depot overhaul

The Depot overhaul continues, and as the teasers below show, it’s proving to be a pretty massive one. Can you tell which areas of the V1032 version these angles correspond to?

The updated Depot will also require a game modes and acoustics update in order to account for the design changes.

Ready Room hints

Though not directly related to level design, we have also made some updates aimed at new players, with revamped hints in more prominent places, as well as “in-world” Ready Room hints to make things as clear as possible about where to go and what to do to start your first GROUND BRANCH game.

All hints are temporary and disappear after the first few sessions, though they can be reset under Settings › Gameplay to start appearing like at first launch.

Hostage Rescue (PvP) and Terrorist Hunt improvements

While we are working on a PvP Hostage Rescue game mode, we are not ignoring the PvE modes.

Besides the AI improvements discussed in Intel Report #011, the Terrorist Hunt mode is being refined with two new features that we’re currently testing:

• On some larger maps, a new “AI hotspot” feature will be available where certain areas of the map spawn a larger-than-usual number of enemies, providing more of a focus and a challenge
• The return of the “bum rush” feature, in which the last few enemies on a map just can’t take it any more, and attempt to charge down the remaining players — hopefully reducing the incidence of “where’s that last damn bot?”

Audio

As the long process of audio optimization continues, Mikson has put a little time aside to record a short preview of the new gunshot tails for large interior spaces, which you can check out below:

Beyond V1033

Some features are an ongoing development that might see their beginnings well before they’re ready for the public.

Such is the case of friendly AI, whose first steps were teased last month even though it’s at least a couple of updates away from an initial playable iteration. Gotta let you all know it’s being worked on, right?

So this month we’re showcasing some of the upcoming female characters and related assets that we’ve been working with Pau Peñalver to have ready for V1034 (tentatively!). Let’s take a look:

As ever, keep in mind that although these renders are made with “game-ready” geometry and textures (as opposed to high-poly and super resolutions), they do not reflect the final in-game look due to the lighting.

That’s all for today’s Intel Report!

Thanks for keeping up with GROUND BRANCH’s development, and have an awesome rest of the week.

See you on the next one!