January 2018 Media Release
We failed to release this article on Christmas Eve, sorry about that.
This is what's been happening:
It's already been half a year since our last update, we promised to update you along the way but we didn't manage to live up to that, however, we have been working on something we believe has been worth the wait.
We've got an announcement to get out of the way before we get into the sweet bits of this article. As you might remember we set up and announced our forums one year ago, but since then it's been collecting dust, so we've decided for the time being to put it down. The site is currently facing down time but it'll be up again in no time, but sadly without the forums.
Rest in Peace RO's forums
Jan 2017 - Jan 2018
But fear not, we have a community channel in the Source Modding Community Discord server and we'd love to chat with you there!
Click here to visit our community channel
We've been flexing our weapon renders lately, time for a demonstration
Recovered Operations: Weapons Demonstration
Weapon programming by David M.
NOTE: We've implemented a c_arms system, we'll showcase this system at a later date.
AI Update
Recovered Operations: AI Presentation
The terrorists of RecOps use a mixture of combine soldier schedules and brand new schedules to work as original enemies. They're designed to flank you whenever they can, use grenades to flush you out more efficiently than default HL2 soldiers, and are less gung ho about charging out of cover. Although they make use of a few copied over schedules, they are a whole new enemy class and use their own AI written from the ground up, giving us maximum control over what they do and when they do it. At the moment, barring any bugs popping up, they are probably about 70-80% done. The next big challenge to improve their AI would be the addition of different behavior types for defensive and aggressive variants along with different ways of shooting and behaving based on weapon type.
- Bradley T. (AI Programmer)
The REAL key Seal Team 6 operatives
From Top to Bottom: Bubsy, Cuban, Grimes.
We went back to the drawing board and we proudly present you the REAL Seal Team 6 operatives.
Recovered Operations: Bryan "Bubsy" Fullwaters (ST6)
Recovered Operations: Victor "Cuban" Morales (ST6)
Recovered Operations: Joshua "Grimes" Faith (ST6)
Concept art pieces by Hoang L.
What next...?
And that concludes the media release article, and as promised we'll continue putting all our love and effort into Recovered Operations. Make sure to keep checking in as we will stay in touch with the community through our Twitter, in our Discord channel as well as posting updates on Mod DB.
Looking for Help
We're looking for talented individuals. If you have any expertise in the following, please contact us.
- 3D artists (previous experience with Source is a plus)
- Programmers (experience with C++ and Source is a plus)
- Animators (experience with animating characters is a huge plus)
- Level designers
Or if you have any other skills you'd like to provide,
Email us at 'crackedcomputerstudios@gmail.com'.
Until next time,
Cracked Computer Studios
Big fan of the weapon sounds!
And a big fan of the bare bones ballistics, i wish more source modders thought about this.
As to the AI responding to being shot, do remember that 'pistol' calibers are basically heavy slugs/rocks being thrown at a high speed at short range and will definitely kick the **** out of you in, lets say, 100 meters or less let alone if the round is caught completely by, for example, body armour, while the 5.56 can easily twist, yaw and fragment to devestating results, sometimes lighter loads can almost litteraly explode and cause lethal damage. I can't tell which one would hurt more, but I imagine getting shot by a 9mm hollowpoint up close will probably be no further away from getting kicked in the chest.
To summarize, when calculating pain chances and damage done, do take into account the total weight, speed, angle, distance traveled through target, size/area of the bullet, stopping power/fragmentation potential/Yawing and potential injury to vital organs. The speed of a bullet is far more crucial to it's potential 'damage' than the weight, and what is even more so is if the round comes to a full stop -within- the target, releasing all it's potential energy.
The kalashnikov might have a bigger heavier bullet, but it's also slow, if it passes clean through and doesn't fragment or tumble, it's potential damage is far less than a 5.56 round tumbling and exploding inside of the body due to 'drag' so to speak, causing a far bigger exit wound or interal cavity.
Yada yada, bla bla bla.
If you're willing to go this far, I suggest you take a look at the guy who made Occupation: Source. His biorhythmic and ballistic system is quite advanced, but far from perfect.
I'm a stickler for detail, and while there's a whole rabbit hole we could jump down with regards to terminal ballistics simulation (e.g. what about the volume of the target? A 5.56 round that would tumble inside a well-fed westerner might punch straight through a starved famine victim and do less damage, etc.), but ultimately this isn't a milsim.
Spending so much development effort on a system whose ultimate effect is that sometimes bullets do different amounts of damage in a way that isn't predictable or controllable by the average player probably isn't the best idea.
Cost/benefit analysis and all.
As to the AI's pattern, might I suggest that the AI moves through cover, uses things like flashbangs towards the player and smoke grenades in their path of movement, or as a diversion?
Thanks for all the feedback! Once smokes and flashes are implemented this is absolutely something I could look into. As for bullet reactions, I'd have to have a conversation with the team about how much realism we're striving for and how much they know about the different bullets' effects on things.
I wish I could say more than that it is looking awesome and I wish I could paypal you a bag of dorritos for your effort. Kudos for keeping the mod alive and doing such an amazing progress guys, I hope you're doing well and that 2018 will be a big year for you!
Cheers