Hello everyone!

Happy 2021! We are stepping into a new year and have a lot of opportunities and things to look forward to. Onward keeps moving... well... ONWARD! This month's Sitrep is a little lighter on development updates than usual due to the holiday season, but we still have some news to share.

Earlier this month we released Update 1.8.7. We have received lots of feedback from the community, we are listening to it all and we hear you. We are happy that you are enjoying the audio improvements and the updated Snowpeak map. With all improvements come some bugs and rest assured, we will be addressing things in 1.8.8.

1.8.8 will be coming out a little quicker than our usual patch releases as a maintenance release to address some ongoing issues and make some adjustments from 1.8.7 based on community feedback. Fixes that will be addressed include significantly reducing the occurrence of broken lobbies, which often cause issues such as voice chat issues, lobby lockups, rounds not assigning points correctly. Additional Audio improvements based around voice chat are also in the works. Fixing an issue allowing players to sometimes see through smoke emitted by smoke grenades and a fix for the infamous "jiggle peek" are on our provisional list as well. We also continue to work on a couple of large new features which are due to release over the next couple of months. Be on the lookout for more details as the patches get closer.

Downpour Interactive continues to grow as a company and we have been adding to the team to keep up with the game design, improvements, and the future of the game. You have already been introduced to our new Community Manager Korine (SyrinSong) earlier this month, and now we would also like to introduce a new Programmer, Ben, and Level Designer, Joe who many of you may know under his nickname Snooper Fax. They have been a great addition to the team here at DPI. We would also like to announce some changes to people you know and have interacted with in the community. Daan (MrDeath) will shift his focus from Community Management over to level design and Kasper (KasperVld) will be taking up the role of Producer while still keeping an eye on community tasks and supporting Korine where needed.

We have wrapped up our Community Contest and judging for the custom maps has begun! We will be announcing the winners in the upcoming weeks. If you missed the announcements for the Fan Art and Video winners, check out our social media accounts.

In addition, for our community we have posted a new Support area to our website with an FAQ section to help with common questions that people may have about playing or any suggestions/reports that need to be sent to us.

To stay up to date on the latest news between Sitreps, make sure to follow our social media accounts and join the Official Onward discord.

Stay Frosty!

Hello everyone!

We are pleased to announce that the time for the 1.8.7 update is now! This update is primarily focused on audio upgrades and the re-release of the Snowpeak map, but also contains a lot of bug fixes and general improvements. The full change log is posted below.

Our audio improvements comprise amongst many other things gunshots that are more consistent in their quality, more immersive and directional footsteps, higher quality voice chat, more immersive environmental sound, and more consistency between the volumes of different sources. Two new features for audio are the ability to independently adjust the volume of gunshots and voices, and audio mixing presets to select.

Enjoy those updated audio sounds while playing again on the re-released Snowpeak map (day and night versions available!) and hear the crunch of the snow under your feet as you tactically sneak around on the ice to get that perfect shot in as you notice the other team coming your way. Snowpeak features long distance engagement and close quarter combat options. This map will test your skills in stealth and tactical abilities.

Smoke grenades have also been reworked. They have changed to spherical from the previous comic spray to allow them to be used in a more predictable way which benefits gameplay. Full screen tint will be more accurately bound to the area of the smoke, and is harder to see through. We have also fixed an issue where AI wasn't affected by smoke grenades and could 'see' players as usual. Finally and perhaps most importantly scopes no longer fully tint when looking at smoke grenades, allowing you to see players in front of the smoke through scopes once more.

For all other changes, refer to the full change list below. Update 1.8.7 is available now and will download automatically.

Enjoy!

Changelog

Hello everyone!

Thank you to everyone who entered our Winter contest in the fan art and videos sections! All submissions were great and this was a hard one to judge. We appreciate the hard work and creativity you've put into these masterpieces. Today we're announcing the winners in the first two categories: Artwork and Videos, while those working on their custom maps still have just over a week to finish their entries.

The winner in the artwork category is .... *drumroll* .... Ovoideum for his stunning piece Subway Obj!

This gorgeous art piece is done in a Japanese block art style. It has so many Onward references in the details, every time we look we seem to find more. We already ordered a print to have put up in Dante's office!

Our winner for the best fan video is a long time active community member: nin10doVR

His video really brings home the feel of team playing with a catchy music tune. It's a reminder of how during the pandemic Onward has given us an opportunity to play online with our friends and offer us some community and social interaction while we can't go out.

We will also be posting our runners up and other entries on our social media accounts throughout the coming weeks. Keep a lookout and thank you again for all the great entries.

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the last Sitrep for 2020! Work continues on update 1.8.7, and although we had hoped to release it before the end of the year we had to acknowledge that making sure this update is as good as it can was the more important factor in that decision. With Christmas approaching that meant that the update wouldn't release until mid-January. We'll be spending the coming week working on the last few bugs and improvements, and polishing the new features.

One of the key new features coming in 1.8.7 is the overhauled audio system. The audio update is currently being tested and the general picture is that it will be a big improvement in both accuracy and immersion. We have been working towards providing better audio across the board. The changes to note include gunshots that are more consistent in their quality, more immersive and understandable footsteps, higher quality voice chat, more immersive environmental sound, and more consistency between the volumes of different sources. New are also the options to adjust the volume of sfx, gunshots, the volume of voices, and the audio mixer being used. Customised audio will also be available again for our custom map gurus!

If you've been keeping up with the Sitreps over the past couple of months you'll know that the second big new feature coming in update 1.8.7 is the re-release of a fan-favourite map: Snowpeak! Last month we teased the layout of the map, and this month we're ready to share some on-the-ground images of what's coming your way soon.

PCVR

Quest

Keep an eye out for improvements throughout the game. These improvements include the smoke bombs behavior change that we detailed last month, and a fix for a bug where AI would ignore smoke grenades. We've also applied a small boost to the night vision to make it brighter in dark areas. A memory leak that would result in crashes if players stayed for extended periods of time in respawn-enabled game modes has been fixed and should help those of you who like playing in the Shooting Range. A final highlight of the small changes is that you'll be able to set custom time limits in private Uplink matches now. Keep an eye out for the full change log when the patch releases!

We would be remiss not to mention an issue that's been affecting Onward's competitive scene. The "jiggle peek" issue is being worked on and we are hoping to have a fix that will come out in the new year soon after the 1.8.7 update releases. Speaking of things we're actively working on for the new year: we haven't forgotten about the graphical improvements we mentioned a while ago, and continue to research and develop improvements in that area, including shadowmasks and various shader and lighting improvements.

Unit 51 continues to be a great help and valuable asset for helping test some of these new features and help provide valuable feedback. In December we found that we needed to recruit new members to the unit to help with the evolution and expansion of the game. We received over 300 applications and are grateful for everyone's interest. From that we picked and added our new members to the unit. Due to the overwhelming interest and limited space we weren't able to invite everyone we wanted to based on their applications this time around, but we'll definitely have more recruitment drives in the future.

Switching gears from development news to community highlights we'd like to give a huge shout out to the Onward Master League. After intense battles the VR Master League (VRML) has finished Season 10. Congratulations to the Beginners for topping the league, Aimless Gaming for making sure they don't get too comfortable up there, and Bossfight & Mayhem for completing the podium with nothing to separate them.

Season 11 will be starting up in the new year, so make sure to hone your competitive play skills if you're looking to participate. If you are interested in joining the league for season 11, check out the Onward Master League website for more info.

We have our Winter Community contest running and have a lot of great prizes to give away including up to an RTX 3090 graphics card or an AMD 5950X processor with a high-end motherboard! There are prizes for three categories. Fan Art, Videos & Custom Maps. We have been seeing some very promising entries coming in already, and we're looking forward to seeing more coming in over the next couple of weeks!

To put the cherry on top of our year, Onward has been titled Best Action Game of 2020 by Oculus Quest. We are incredibly proud and happy to provide players with a great action experience and we are very grateful to Oculus for this recognition. Of course we'll want to grab similar titles on all platforms next year as well!

Finally, we wish all of you, your friends, your family, and everyone else a very Happy Holiday Season, and however you celebrate it we hope you are staying safe and healthy. We've got a lot in store for 2021, so keep looking Onward!

We know it's cold out for most of you: Stay Frosty!

Hello everyone!

Over the past couple of months we've seen Onward grow as many new players have joined our ranks. On top of that we've recently brought back custom map support for PCVR, and introduced it on Oculus Quest. Now, the holiday season is fast approaching and we've recently seen the launch of some exciting new technology. A perfect time then to celebrate a successful year for Onward, and to do that we're launching a community contest where you all will be able to compete for eternal glory, and spectacular prizes.

We will be awarding prizes in the following categories:

• Custom (Snow/Winter) Maps (3 prizes)
• Fan art (1 prize)
• Fan video (1 prize)

Custom (Snow/Winter) Maps

This category will be familiar to those of you who participated in our last community contest: creators will compete by making new and interesting maps for Onward. We'll be giving away prizes in three categories: overall best map, best PC map and best Quest map. Because we encourage creators to create maps that support all platforms, any map that supports both PC and Quest versions of Onward will compete in all three categories. Maps that support only one platform will only compete for that category. As a twist we've added a theme to the custom maps competition this time around: all maps submitted for this contest must have a winter setting!

If you're new to creating maps for Onward, go to the Onward Custom Content Guide to download the Onward Custom Content SDK for Unity and make sure to read the Rules For Content Submission on the Onward Custom Content Guide. All entries must abide by these rules.

• Submission deadline: Thursday January 21st
• Prizes:
  • For the best cross-platform map: 1x your choice of either an NVidia RTX 3090 video card or an AMD 5950X processor with a high end motherboard
  • For the best map on PC: 1x your choice of either an NVidia RTX 3080 video card or an AMD 5900X processor with a high end motherboard
  • For the best map on Quest: 1x your choice of either an NVidia RTX 3080 video card or an AMD 5900X processor with a high end motherboard

Fan Art & Videos

We always enjoy seeing the creative side of our community, and there's a lot of creative talent going around! We want to encourage and reward those of you who put your talents to use, and so we've added two new categories. For (aspiring) videographers we'll be giving away a prize for the best fan video, and we're also giving away a prize for any other form of fan art that catches our attention. Pretty much anything goes: from a drawing or painting to a music piece: catch our attention and you can win yourself a nice upgrade for your gaming system.

• Submission deadline: Sunday January 3rd
• Prizes:
  • For the best video: 1x your choice of either an NVidia RTX 3080 video card or an AMD 5900X processor with a high end motherboard
  • For the best fan-art: 1x your choice of either an NVidia RTX 3080 video card or an AMD 5900X processor with a high end motherboard

How to enter the contest

For all categories

• Join the Onward Discord to stay up to date on any announcement we may make during the contest submission periods. This is mandatory if you want to be eligible for any prizes.
• Send an email to contest@downpourinteractive.com with the following information:
  • Which category you are joining (Maps, Fan Art, or video)
  • Your Discord username

For map creators

• In your email, include all the information listed above, and also:
  • The name of your map
  • The category/ies you wish to compete in (cross-platform, PC, and/or Quest)
• Make sure the email address you use to submit your entry to contest@downpourinteractive.com is the same email address you use to submit your map using the Onward Custom Content SDK.

You will receive a response from us as soon as possible to confirm your entry and the details on how to submit your entry or entries.

Submission deadlines & winner announcements

• Fan art: Sunday, January 3rd
• Videos: Sunday, January 3rd
• Custom Maps: Thursday January 21st

We will announce the winners of the Fan Art and Video categories on Monday January 11th, and the winners of the custom map category on February 1st.

The Fine Print

1. All participants must join the Onward Discord
2. Any participant can only win one prize, but they may submit as many entries as they want in as many categories as they want.
3. Submissions for this contest must be original work, created after the date of this announcement.
4. Submissions may not contain any material which is subject to a copyright or trademark owned by another person or entity than the one submitting the work.
5. Submissions must not break or encourage breaking of any laws of the United States of America.
6. We reserve the right to remove any person from this contest and/or reject any submission for any reason without prior notice.
7. Downpour Interactive will, at its sole discretion, select the winners of each category of the contest.
8. When the winners for each category are announced we will send them an email to claim their prize. If the prize isn't claimed within one week from the date of this email, that person will have forfeited their prize and we will award it to the next best entry.

Hello everyone!

Another month passed, and it's time for our monthly update on the development of Onward! Since our last Sitrep we've released two major patches: 1.8.5 and 1.8.6. Update 1.8.5 brought us specular maps for the weapons so that they catch light more realistically, custom maps to enjoy and improved 'or haptic devices, to name a few. Onward 1.8.6 was an iterative update to improve on the foundations that 1.8.5 gave us, and to address a good number of bugs. We're still investigating reports of some new and existing issues, and if needed those will be addressed in a patch before update 1.8.7 drops. We're hoping to drop 1.8.7 just in time for the December holidays.

The most noticeable change coming in with Onward 1.8.7 will be the game's audio system, which will be completely overhauled for this update to bring you a more immersive and AAA quality audio experience. To do this we have replaced the Unity audio system with Wwise, which gives our sound designers a lot of great tools to make the audio sound like you are really on the battlefield.

In terms of improvements you can look forward to directional voice quality, improved (ambisonic) ambience sounds, improved reverberations and high dynamic range settings. On top of that actions will have more audio feedback, and we've improved the general audio quality as well. It's hard to convey changes in the audio quality through text, but we're very impressed with the results so far.

Aside from the audio improvements we've been working on something else we've received a lot of feedback over the last couple of months: smoke grenades. We've changed the smoke grenades so that they're no longer directional, but instead form a sphere of smoke around the grenade: these types of smoke grenades are easier to use in game because of their predictability. We've also managed to remove the blinding effect encountered when looking at the smoke through a scope due to a series of performance optimisations.

On to the re-release of Onward's various maps. we're working to release an improved Snowpeak map in the next update, and to follow that up with the Abandoned map. As a special preview we've included aerial top-down shots for Abandoned and Snowpeak below so you can get an idea of what we're working on. Jungle, which we had hoped to release with update 1.8.6 last week, will need more work based on the feedback we've gotten from our Unit 51 player feedback group. We'll be taking our time to get it right, rather than release a map that doesn't meet your expectations and our quality standards. Also on the topic of maps we'll be announcing a new community mapping contest with prizes later this week, and we're excited to see what the map creators will amaze us with. If you're interested in learning how to create maps for Onward, check out the Community page on our website.

We mentioned the Unit 51 playtest group a bit earlier. Unit 51 has been doing a great job providing us with feedback and catching some nasty bugs that had slipped by us. As a result, we'll be looking to expand Unit 51 with new players in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for that announcement on our Discord and social media.

That's it for this month, until soon and stay frosty!

Hello everyone!

We're excited to share Onward 1.8.6 with you! In this patch we've focused on two key areas: first, we worked to improve gameplay and graphical issues we've seen players run into such as for example people appearing to jump around if they have a poor internet connection, players spawning near you in social game modes and some performance problems a small portion of PC players ran into after the last patch. Secondly, we've fixed dozens of bugs all across the game, the highlights of which are included in the changelog below.

In the previous patch we delivered some of our previously announced features earlier than we had expected, those included improved support for haptics devices and custom content. We're still working on the next set of major new features, including the game audio overhaul and the Shadowmask feature we shared a preview of in the September Sitrep. In that timeline we had anticipated the Jungle map to be released in this patch, and although we got close we got some valuable feedback from Unit 51, our playtesting group, that made us realize we want to change our approach to that particular map.

We'll be giving you an update on our overall progress on new features later this week. For now we trust you'll enjoy Onward 1.8.6, and we'll see you on the battlefields!

Onward 1.8.6 is available now and will download automatically.

Changelog highlights

Gameplay

• Improved the priorities when grabbing objects from your vest to make grabbing different items work more intuitively
• Improved the network prediction algorithms to make players with poor connections move more smoothly ingame
• Improved spawn point logic for social modes (Gun Game, One in the Chamber, SpecOps) to reduce the odds of players spawning near each other
• Improved "damage boundary" logic to make Assault boundaries and molotov fire damage more consistent
• Fixed objects passing through ballistic shields
• Fixed grenades damaging players through ballistic shields
• Fixed players not being able to disarm another player's C4
• Fixed players not being able to interact with another player's C4 clackers
• Fixed issue with mk18 charging handle being hard to grab
• Adjusted laser sight attachment placement on the m16a4 and mk16
• Fixed players not being able to interact or break another player's molotov grenades

Graphics

• Improved the way light interacts with and reflects off of weapons for the Quest 2
• Made changes to the graphics options in order to reduce LoD 'pop-in' for PC users
• Adjusted graphics settings to improve performance for Oculus Quest
• Fixed an issue with the details settings on weapons that could cause performance issues in certain circumstances
• Added a new visual effect for bullet impacting metal surfaces
• Adjusted DesktopSpectate light buttons
• Fixed night vision not applying its color correction to the tablet screen
• Fixed a group of strange visual behaviors of the vignette
• Improved the visual quality of of several buildings in Quarantine for PC
• Changed the glass assets in Quarantine for PC to improve visuals
• Increased the brightness of lights inside buildings in Bazaar and Downfall
• Brightened Quarantine
• Fixed the textures of the g36c and magazine showing white lines
• Replaced the helmets in the tent with better looking ones
• Adjusted the lighting in Tanker

Audio

• Fixed breathing sounds not occurring while a player is bleeding out
• Fixed the M249 using pistol casing sounds instead of its own casing sounds

User Interface

• Added a screen to the Workshop which allows you to see how much storage space remains on your device
• Added an option for PC players to change which directory they store custom content in

Level Design

• Reworked the elevator logic for custom map elevators so that they work more reliably
• Fixed collision being offset on metal shacks in Bazaar
• Fixed several Z-fighting and collision fixes in Downfall for Quest
• Fixed several collision issues for Quarantine
• Fixed geometry mismatch on Quarantine between Quest/PC
• Fixed geometry mismatch on Cargo between Quest/PC
• Improved performance for PC maps: Downfall, Quarantine, Suburbia, Bazaar and Cargo
• Fixed objects disappearing when standing in a particular location in the Quest version of the Shooting Range
• Adjusted the collision for the ceiling of one of the small buildings in Downfall

Miscellaneous

• Fixed seeing bodies fly across the map as players respawn
• Fixed AI getting "stuck" and staring at the player
• Fixed the drawing board not synchronizing across platforms
• Fixed an issue where the tent was not appearing on Oculus Quest or Quest 2 in the Quarantine Day and Night maps
• Fixed bullet holes appearing at world origin if you fire your gun into a wall
• Fixed players being able to click through the password panel in the server browser

Known Issues

• Oculus users playing on PC may will sometimes run into an issue where their microphone doesn't work properly
• The windows in the towers on Downfall are too high to see through and will be lowered
• Custom Round Timer sometimes does not function correctly on Assault mode
• Custom Round Timer cannot be adjusted on Uplink lobbies

Hello everyone!

We're very excited to release a major patch with Onward 1.8.5. This update has been long in the making and features a metric ton of fixes and tweaks that we know many of you have been waiting for. Among many other things this update features custom map support, improved support for haptic devices, improved weapon audio, and support for the Quest 2 with improved graphics over Quest 1. Let's go over the highlights!

Support for Quest 2 with improved graphics

The original Oculus Quest was groundbreaking, and we've welcomed many of you with our release on the platform back in late June. Now, Oculus is releasing the Quest 2 with improved processing capabilities and Onward will take full advantage of it. On the Quest 2 you will enjoy an improved level of detail bias, meaning you'll encounter less noticeable transitions or 'pop in'. All new for both PCVR and Quest 2 are the Support for Specular Maps on weapons which improve the weapon visuals.

Custom Maps

In last month's SitRep we already mentioned custom map support would return to Onward, and we're very pleased that we've been able to push the release forward to this update, instead of having to wait for update 1.8.6 as we had originally anticipated. Over the past couple of weeks We have collaborated with several map creators to make sure there are several maps available to play on both PCVR and Quest. Aspiring map makers can find a step-by-step custom content guide here.

Improved support for Haptic devices

For those of you who are looking to take their immersion to the next level we've added support for bHaptics body haptic devices on both PC and Quest. Equipping a haptic device in Onward will allow you to feel shots hitting you, and where they're hitting you. In addition to the haptic body devices we've added support for the ForceTube to the Quest version of Onward - it was already available on PCVR. Finally, we've overhauled all controller haptic effects and added a few new ones, for example for pulling back a bolt or holding a shield, and we've increased the strength of the haptic effect on several devices to balance it out.

A huge thank-you goes out to both bHaptics and ForceTube for helping us make this happen.

Social Game Modes

When we last switched out the rotating social gun mode we had received a lot of feedback asking us to allow you to play your favourite social game mode (Gun Game, Specops or One In The Chamber) at any moment you want. With update 1.8.5 that is now possible: the featured game mode will still rotate, but you can now play any game mode you choose whenever you choose in a public server.

Improved visuals for PCVR

Update 1.8.5 brings several improvements to the game's visuals for PCVR. Aside from the specular maps we mentioned above, we've made improvements to the visuals of the Downfall and Suburbia maps. Bazaar and Quarantine have had revised lighting to be more faithful to the 1.7 representation of the maps. The PC maps are getting model overhauls, effects additions and more that will continue as time goes on.

Full changelog

Update 1.8.5 is available now!

Hello everyone!

We have just released patch 1.8.4 to address two critical audio bugs: the first is related to voice chat failing and the second to gun shots not being heard. We've also updated the rotating social game mode to 'One in the Chamber'.

Hello everyone!

In this month's Sitrep we want to take you on a tour of the changes coming to Onward in the upcoming months: we will set out the milestones we're working towards, and go into detail on several of them. Unfortunately we won't be able to share all the details on all the updates yet, but we aim to give you some insight in what to look forward to in the updates to come. Since our last patch for Onward (v1.8.3) we've been busy behind the scenes, improving our workflow to get more stable and more frequent updates out to you. It's an ongoing process, but we're getting there! If you're interested in reading more about our development process changes you can find a big post on Discord, Steam and Reddit with a lot more details, or simply follow this link to find it.

These are the milestones well be going over

• Upcoming patches: v1.8.4 and v1.8.5
• Custom content
• Haptics upgrade
• Reintroduction of pre-v1.8 maps
• Audio update
• Party system
• A new game mode, exclusive for PCVR
• High quality lighting returning to PC
• Anti toxicity improvements
• Miscellaneous improvements

Upcoming patches: v1.8.4 and v1.8.5

We're aiming to release patch 1.8.4 later this week or early next week; with the release of Patch 1.8.4 we will address a couple of critical issues affecting both PC and Quest users that we feel need immediate attention. These issues relate to voice audio cutting out in a lobby or during a game, and an issue that caused gunfire audio to be missing in some cases.

Soon after the release of v1.8.4 we'll be releasing version 1.8.5 which will include general game fixes, visual improvements for PC Downfall and Suburbia maps, and much more. We're very excited about some of these changes, and wanted to share a quick preview of the changes to Downfall.

Custom content

Ever since custom maps were first supported we've loved the creativity coming from our community. Since the release of v1.8 custom content hasn't been available due to restrictions we mentioned in previous Sitreps. Now, bringing back support for custom maps is one of our top priorities and we're aiming to release it with patch v1.8.6. It's a little too early to make a definitive call on that, but we'll keep you updated in our Sitreps. In addition to that we'll be reaching out to several map creators to help us start testing the custom content implementation soon.

The return of Jungle, Turbine, Snowpeak, Outlet and Abandoned maps

The map designers here at Downpour have been putting in a lot of hours getting these maps ready for their return to Onward. First up, Jungle and Outlet will be the first maps to return with the Custom Content update slated for patch 1.8.6. Snowpeak, Turbine and Abandoned are still in production and will require more testing due to their complexity, and will therefore return to Onward later. While Jungle, Turbine and Snowpeak will remain mostly the same compared to their versions in v1.7, Abandoned has received a redesign to allow for more compelling gameplay: while keeping the original spirit of the map, its layout and its major landmarks have been updated, and some new landmarks will be introduced as well. We will share more on these upcoming changes for Abandoned, as well as the progress of Snowpeak and Turbine in the near future.

Haptics upgrade

Good news for fans of haptics: the tactile feedback when interacting with equipment will be coming back to Onward with a vengeance (and upgrades!). This means that like before you will get feedback when for example hovering over the equipment on your chest. We've also implemented stronger haptics overall and added new features including improved effects when taking out magazines out of your AKM, cycling the bolt or pistol slide, stabbing another player and more! In addition, the integration for ProTubeVR's ForceTube peripheral has been redesigned to bring support for the device to the Oculus Rift S and the Oculus Quest in addition to SteamVR. ForceTube is an optional attachment for ProTube rifle stocks that enables the user to feel the recoil of their weapon when they fire it, adding another layer of intensity to the realistic gameplay of Onward.

Finally for those who pursue the maximum amount of realism in their games, something at Onward's roots, we have worked with the talented folks at bHaptics to bring support to Onward for their haptic suit peripheral: the Tactsuit. Tactsuit is a collection of wearable devices for the torso, arms and face that contain arrays of haptic motors designed to simulate the feeling of firing weapons, being struck by projectiles and more. Those of us who've had the chance to test the initial implementations of the bHaptics suit were blown away by it.

When Patch 1.8.6 launches players will be able to connect their bHaptics devices to both PCVR and Oculus Quest versions of Onward to unlock a new level of immersion through specific haptic effects for different weapons, bullet calibers, explosions, melee and more. You will be able to feel the raw power of the m249 and PKM machine guns as they rattle off deadly rounds, and experience terror as you duck from a grenade and its shockwave rips through you. Use your instincts to interpret where you were struck by the enemy and fire back in an instant.

Audio update

We're working with Dynamedion, a renowned audio studio, to improve Onward's in-game audio. Sound is a major factor in the immersion in the game and the first results are really showing an impact. Our main focus at the moment is to improve the audio occlusion and reverberation in the game. This is a complicated subject which definitely warrants a deep dive in a future Sitrep, so let us know if this peaks your interest.

Onward Party System

One of the things we've heard from our community after the Quest release was that it became noticeably more difficult to team up with your friends and join the same lobby because the number of game lobbies had exploded. To make it easier for everyone to find and team up with their friends in Onward we're going to be working on integrating an Onward Party system in the game which can be used on all platforms.

A new game mode for PCVR

In our last Sitrep we indicated that the 1.8 update had given us a lot of headroom to work with to improve the game going forward on PC. One of the ways we'll be leveraging all these advances is through a 'PCVR only' new game mode to extend Onward even further. While we can't share all the details on this game mode yet, we can state it's going to bring a lot of fun and mayhem to Onward, and will leverage the PC computing power to support more players in a lobby

High quality lighting returning to PC

With the v1.8 release we updated the game to use a more updated version of the Unity engine and their Universal Render Pipeline(URP). With these changes we got the unfortunate result that the Shadowmask lighting wasn't supported with the current unity version and URP, which resulted in noticeably worse lighting quality compared to previous versions of the game. Shadowmask results in a much better looking game without the necessity to calculate lighting in real time. Real time lighting calculations are extremely resource intensive game developers therefore typically calculate ('bake') the lighting and shadows ahead of time and then store the resulting lighting maps to be used by the players later. Shadowmask improves on this system by keeping the real-time specular highlights for baked lights and vastly improved real-time shadows for non baked objects like players which work much better alongside the traditional shadow bakes.We're currently looking into a couple of option to combine Shadowmask support with Unity's Universal Render Pipeline. We considered moving away from URP, but this isn't an option because we already use a lot of URP specific features, and depend on it for its performance improvements. Therefore we have two options:

• Jury rig the Shadowmask feature back in ourselves; or
• Wait for Unity to release a new version of URP with Shadowmask support.

Because we don't have a timeline for Shadowmask support in URP we opted to implement Shadowmask support ourselves. While we're making progress this isn't the most stable approach and it could be prone to break when we perform an Unity upgrade in the future.

Although we're not yet sure if our implementation of Shadowmask will work yet, we do want to share some pictures of the potential improvements, and we'll keep you updated in future Sitreps.

Anti toxicity improvements

We've been excited to welcome so many new players to Onward in the past couple of months. As with any rapidly expanding community though, we've unfortunately seen that a small number of people are actively ruining other people's fun in the game with toxic or otherwise unwanted behavior. We're working on ideas to combat this behavior and make sure everyone can enjoy playing Onward without having to deal with the toxic behavior from some players.

We'll share more on the upcoming changes in this area in future Sitreps, but for now we'd like to encourage you that when you run into toxic behavior you record it, and report it to our community managers.

Miscellaneous improvements

More changes are coming to Onward in the coming months than we have space to write about, but we briefly want to mention a few more. By popular demand we're designing a ranking system for Onward to give you a sense of achievement and recognition for your skills in game. You will get real time stats on your captured objectives, accuracy, kills/deaths, revives, headshots, body shots and more. This is still in its infancy, but keep an eye out for updates.

We will be adding more spawn locations to Assault and PVE game modes to add more variety to these game modes, and we're working on new social game modes for Onward to complement Spec Ops, One in the Chamber and Gun Game

Finally, there's always room to improve the game's code, and top of our list is currently refactoring our lobby and game mode states to further improve stability and remove inconsistencies in these areas. Especially competitive players have been running into issues here, and we will be addressing this.

We're constantly working and preparing on polishing the current existing features. If you have any suggestions please share them in our Discord! Stay frosty!

Hello everyone!

It's already been a couple of weeks and two patches since we released Onward on Oculus Quest and the PC 1.8 update. There's been a lot of discussion, and a lot of things are happening backstage, so it's time for us to share our plans moving forward.

Reflecting on our release and latest update

As with any release a few issues weren't caught or resolved before the game went live, and we're currently addressing those issues in patches. There's a handful of issues that we've labelled as critical out in the wild or that we consider to be fixable in a very short time frame. These will continue to be resolved in the coming weeks with further updates to the game. These issues include voice chat sometimes cutting out, improvements in for example gun firing sound effect loudness, and upgraded visual assets for PCVR.

On the PC side there has been a lot of discussion surrounding the changes in graphics levels that have proven to negatively affect the immersion that is vital to so many of you. Although the changes we've made under the hood with update 1.8 are fundamental to Onward's future development the simple truth is that we misjudged the impact the changes to the graphics would have on the immersion for many of you who play on PCVR. That led to two specific mistakes: most importantly, we didn't allow ourselves enough time to bring the level of graphics for PC back up before the release, and second we didn't communicate this change clearly to you, nor what our plan would be after release.

This is something we've learned from, and some of you will have read the post on the Onward Discord in which we committed to bring the graphics quality for PC back to the levels it was at in a series of incremental and quickly succeeding updates that will be coming out over the next couple of weeks and months. Version 1.8 created a lot of performance headroom in the game, and we intend to make use of that headroom to push the graphics to a higher level. We will be committed to our PCVR community. Without you Onward wouldn't have been possible, that's beyond discussion.

Onward's launch on Quest has been amazing: we've welcomed a whole new group of players who have been enjoying Onward over the past couple of weeks. With the successful launch of Onward on the Oculus Quest we've been having discussions backstage about our development roadmap going forward. The overwhelming support for the game on Quest has enabled us to not only finish Onward in the way we had planned, but also means that we'll be developing Onward beyond the original timeframe and scope, on all platforms. Over the coming months we'll be hiring new developers to help us make this happen, and we'll be keeping all of you up to date on the changes that will be coming. Exciting stuff!

Update planning

One of the things we've reflected on as a team has been the amount of time we took to bring you a new update. Going forward we want to bring patches and incremental updates to the game as soon as they are finished, instead of collecting the changes made over several months and then releasing major updates. This requires us to make large changes to the development process, which is something we'll be doing starting next week. Our goal is to have a new patch or update ready for you every couple of weeks to every month at least. These updates will not only include fixes and improvements, but also new and returning features for Onward. In this new setup we're also planning to invite players to give us feedback on an update before we push it to all players- this is something we're still drawing the outlines for, and that we'll be sharing more details on in a future Sitrep.

So, what's cooking?

As we're working on fixing critical issues that have popped up after release, we're also looking into the improvements that will follow the update, based largely on the feedback we've gotten from you. Right now we're investigating a significant improvement to lighting and shadows for PCVR (the first results are very promising), as well as adding new particle effects and more details for PCVR maps, we're adding a recenter button button for the tent and main menu that will place you back in position should you need to and we're reintroducing features to the AI such as for example allowing them to throw grenades and allowing them a greater variety of weapons.

Custom maps will be making a return on PC, while launching for the first time on Quest. We're very excited to see what maps, old and new, the map makers among you will bring to the game. While we complete the map maker tools for Onward 1.8 we're also working on bringing back the Jungle, Turbine, Snowpeak and Abandoned maps. Outlet will also be making a return as the custom map update is released.

Even the best made plans don't survive contact with reality of course and so some of these fixes, changes and improvements will take more time than others, or may turn out to be infeasible. We also haven't included some of our more ambitious and/or opaque plans yet - we'll share more on those in the future.

Hello everyone!

We have just released patch 1.8.3 to address an issue where an online lobby could get frozen when a player was kicked from it. The patch also includes updated vegetation art assets for the Downfall map on PC.

Tomorrow we'll post a Sitrep about our plans for the coming months, and beyond. Stay frosty!

Hello everyone!

Work here at Downpour continues in the wake of the PC 1.8 and Quest release. Today we're releasing version 1.8.2 of Onward for both platforms. We've been hard at work making improvements and solving issues you've reported to us. Thank you for all the feedback.

The highlights of this patch include:

• Fixed map vote getting stuck if the master client paused or left their playspace mid-vote.
• Fixed many instances of voice chat not being in the proper state, and thus not being audible.
• Fixed player collision becoming offset incorrectly if you placed your head inside of a wall.
• Resetting your orientation on Oculus devices will now recenter you as well in the tent or menu, so you will not become offset.
• Made gunshots louder. We have plans to further improve gunshot audio in future updates
• Fixed realistic gunshot setting and audio device setting not saving your choices properly.
• Fixed the shadow resolution option not working on PC.
• Increased the speed of the AI death animations.
• Fixed the holes in the backs of AI meshes.
• Slightly reduced the volume of tent chat.
• Slightly increase the volume of players if their voice chat is quiet.
• Tweaked the volumes of atmospheric sounds on several maps.
• Fixed servers sometimes showing that they support custom maps erroneously.
• Fixed issues with featured social mode timings.
• Made the level boundaries on Shooting Range the same on PC and Quest.
• Improved shadows on night maps to make night vision more effective.
• Suburbia PC has had vegetation changed and some detail added to improve visual fidelity.
• Brightened indoors in Bazaar and Downfall.
• Fixed collision issues with some buildings and vehicles in Bazaar.
• Fixed collision issues with downstairs areas in Tanker.
• Fixed z-fighting on some assets in Suburbia

The update will be available shortly.

Follow us on Discord or social media to stay up to date with Onward. We'll be sharing our plans for the foreseeable future soon.

Stay frosty!