Yeah I am on a steam deck so Squad is a no (also the community seems really toxic from what I have heard?), Arma 3 only really gives acceptable framerates in singleplayer (though not sure that is really because I have a steam deck…) though DayZ which is built on the Arma engine actually runs incredibly well for how demanding the game is and is totally playable on deathmatch servers with 20+ people.
Hell Let Loose looks ok, I really don’t like Escape From Tarkov like games though because they invariably become pay to win with players being able to pay real money to have material advantages they bring in to matches, and I could not be less interested in that to be honest even though the overall game type sounds cool.
Triple A studios can no longer sustain the game development model and remain profitable due to b-suite and a-suite management grifting all the profits and paying for CEO golden parachutes while the QA, game devs and art teams can barely afford rent.
The unfortunate thing is that the amount of development work it takes to make and maintain a multiplayer shooter with balanced gunplay and vehicles is immense. I am not convinced an indie studio can really do it and succeed long term, especially if they drag their feet and refuse to add mod support (like the Battlebit devs) so the community can augment the small development team’s work when necessary. Battlebit is certainly not a success story currently on that front, but I am eagerly watching development of Operation Harsh Doorstop as it is a realistic shooter with vehicles and large maps made by developers that understand the importance of opening up their game to modding. Even if Operation Harsh Doorstop doesn’t end up being to my tastes in terms of vanilla gameplay that fact we now have a moddable shooter with decent gunplay, movement and vehicle mechanics means that future projects in the vein of Forgotten Hope and Project Reality will have a natural place to turn that can jumpstart development past the barebones stuff that takes up a huge amount of work.
I honestly think several commercial shooters built on a shared open source shooter engine makes more sense than a bunch of indie studios trying to build shooters from the ground up every single time. The important bits aren’t all the details in getting the engine working in shooter design, the important bits are the details of balance, the subtleties of gun feel and the flow of maps, these are the things indie developers should be worrying about in terms of shooter design, not making basic aspects of a multiplayer shooter function. I am not aware of any open source shooter engine that currently provides that capability that isn’t extremely outdated. I am keeping my eye on Road To Vostok however as it is a singeplayer open world game built on the open source Godot engine, it isn’t multiplayer at this point but modding support is being built in from the beginning and I could absolutely see this becoming the open source shooter engine platform I dream of someday. It is no easy feat to design a shooter as a small team, and the fact that the Road To Vostok team is building a shooter from the ground up could end up being a huge gift to the genre in helping future game developers actualize their shooter ideas.
Harsh Doorstop looks like it will be a fun homage to those old modded Counter-Strike 1.6 servers
Yeah except Operation Harsh Doorstop and the underlying Unreal Engine can take mods wayyy farther than modded Counter Strike ever could as it has vehicles and support for large maps :) . Hopefully the impact will be like how Battlefield 2 mods were the engines of innovation in the multiplayer vehicle shooter genre for years and years.
I did enjoy those weird Counter Strike servers, I got so bored of playing de_dust over and over and over again that I would always seek out the weirdest servers I could find just because it was fun to see new shit lol. I don’t think Operation Harsh Doorstop is going to blow up like Counter Strike did obviously, the gunplay in Operation Harsh Doorstop is good but not genre defining… but I do think that small niche communities of players who like certain kinds of vehicle based multiplayer shooters will absolutely form around the foundation of Operation Harsh Doorstop, and it will be those smaller games that rocket the genre of multiplayer vehicle shooters forward into a new era.
Lets just hope it doesn’t result in Epic being the gatekeeper to it all though and that some other developer like the Road To Vostok devs creates alternative platforms to build vehicle shooters on top of. I look to the Spring Engine and the fabulous Beyond All Reason rts as examples of how open source engines (or at least engines with a good SDK) built to facilitate game development in a genre can really have a huge long term impact even if the overall playerbase never skyrockets for any particular game built on the engine.
Thanks for linking the games you mentioned, otherwise I would never had bothered to check them out, and they both look amazing.
Hey, I love these types of games so it always makes me happy when I can raise awareness about them. Especially since Operation Harsh Doorstop is free, there is no reason not to give it a try even if it is just to check up on the progress of development.
Yeah I am on a steam deck so Squad is a no (also the community seems really toxic from what I have heard?), Arma 3 only really gives acceptable framerates in singleplayer (though not sure that is really because I have a steam deck…) though DayZ which is built on the Arma engine actually runs incredibly well for how demanding the game is and is totally playable on deathmatch servers with 20+ people.
Hell Let Loose looks ok, I really don’t like Escape From Tarkov like games though because they invariably become pay to win with players being able to pay real money to have material advantages they bring in to matches, and I could not be less interested in that to be honest even though the overall game type sounds cool.
The unfortunate thing is that the amount of development work it takes to make and maintain a multiplayer shooter with balanced gunplay and vehicles is immense. I am not convinced an indie studio can really do it and succeed long term, especially if they drag their feet and refuse to add mod support (like the Battlebit devs) so the community can augment the small development team’s work when necessary. Battlebit is certainly not a success story currently on that front, but I am eagerly watching development of Operation Harsh Doorstop as it is a realistic shooter with vehicles and large maps made by developers that understand the importance of opening up their game to modding. Even if Operation Harsh Doorstop doesn’t end up being to my tastes in terms of vanilla gameplay that fact we now have a moddable shooter with decent gunplay, movement and vehicle mechanics means that future projects in the vein of Forgotten Hope and Project Reality will have a natural place to turn that can jumpstart development past the barebones stuff that takes up a huge amount of work.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/736590/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/
I honestly think several commercial shooters built on a shared open source shooter engine makes more sense than a bunch of indie studios trying to build shooters from the ground up every single time. The important bits aren’t all the details in getting the engine working in shooter design, the important bits are the details of balance, the subtleties of gun feel and the flow of maps, these are the things indie developers should be worrying about in terms of shooter design, not making basic aspects of a multiplayer shooter function. I am not aware of any open source shooter engine that currently provides that capability that isn’t extremely outdated. I am keeping my eye on Road To Vostok however as it is a singeplayer open world game built on the open source Godot engine, it isn’t multiplayer at this point but modding support is being built in from the beginning and I could absolutely see this becoming the open source shooter engine platform I dream of someday. It is no easy feat to design a shooter as a small team, and the fact that the Road To Vostok team is building a shooter from the ground up could end up being a huge gift to the genre in helping future game developers actualize their shooter ideas.
https://www.roadtovostok.com/
Thanks for linking the games you mentioned, otherwise I would never had bothered to check them out, and they both look amazing.
Harsh Doorstop looks like it will be a fun homage to those old modded Counter-Strike 1.6 servers, and Vostok looks interesting.
Yeah except Operation Harsh Doorstop and the underlying Unreal Engine can take mods wayyy farther than modded Counter Strike ever could as it has vehicles and support for large maps :) . Hopefully the impact will be like how Battlefield 2 mods were the engines of innovation in the multiplayer vehicle shooter genre for years and years.
I did enjoy those weird Counter Strike servers, I got so bored of playing de_dust over and over and over again that I would always seek out the weirdest servers I could find just because it was fun to see new shit lol. I don’t think Operation Harsh Doorstop is going to blow up like Counter Strike did obviously, the gunplay in Operation Harsh Doorstop is good but not genre defining… but I do think that small niche communities of players who like certain kinds of vehicle based multiplayer shooters will absolutely form around the foundation of Operation Harsh Doorstop, and it will be those smaller games that rocket the genre of multiplayer vehicle shooters forward into a new era.
Lets just hope it doesn’t result in Epic being the gatekeeper to it all though and that some other developer like the Road To Vostok devs creates alternative platforms to build vehicle shooters on top of. I look to the Spring Engine and the fabulous Beyond All Reason rts as examples of how open source engines (or at least engines with a good SDK) built to facilitate game development in a genre can really have a huge long term impact even if the overall playerbase never skyrockets for any particular game built on the engine.
https://www.beyondallreason.info/
Hey, I love these types of games so it always makes me happy when I can raise awareness about them. Especially since Operation Harsh Doorstop is free, there is no reason not to give it a try even if it is just to check up on the progress of development.