Hello everyone. Today I am announcing that I am stepping down as the lead developer for Sandstorm 1944. It's been a long and challenging journey developing this mod and I am proud of what we have achieved up to releasing the mod into Early Access. Unfortunately the dissolution of New World Interactive and the handling of the mod tools under Saber Interactive has left Insurgency: Sandstorm in an unworkable state. The situation has become so bad that we haven’t even been able to upload mods for the past year and thus development has stalled. I and many of us have effectively moved on with our lives rather than waiting for Saber Interactive to fix it if they ever will.

I would like to thank our incredible team of artists and developers who have dedicated their time and passion into this project. Thank you to the community who have waited patiently and supported our efforts along the way and thank you New World Interactive for giving us countless hours of fun in Insurgency and Day of Infamy and have inspired us to follow in your footsteps. As for the future of Sandstorm 1944 it will continue under the leadership of @VIX who I am handing over the reins to and will resume development if the situation ever improves with the mod tools.

WintorOperator - Founder, Lead Developer

Hello everyone. Today I am announcing that I am stepping down as the lead developer for Sandstorm 1944. It's been a long and challenging journey developing this mod and I am proud of what we have achieved up to releasing the mod into Early Access. Unfortunately the dissolution of New World Interactive and the handling of the mod tools under Saber Interactive has left Insurgency: Sandstorm in an unworkable state. The situation has become so bad that we haven’t even been able to upload mods for the past year and thus development has stalled. I and many of us have effectively moved on with our lives rather than waiting for Saber Interactive to fix it if they ever will.

I would like to thank our incredible team of artists and developers who have dedicated their time and passion into this project. Thank you to the community who have waited patiently and supported our efforts along the way and thank you New World Interactive for giving us countless hours of fun in Insurgency and Day of Infamy and have inspired us to follow in your footsteps. As for the future of Sandstorm 1944 it will continue under the leadership of @VIX who I am handing over the reins to and will resume development if the situation ever improves with the mod tools.

WintorOperator - Founder, Lead Developer

Hello everyone. After much consideration we have decided to release Sandstorm 1944 into Early Access Pre-Alpha. The Sandstorm 1944 theater mod, Day of Infamy Map Pack & our custom map Omaha Beach are now available from the following the mod.io pages.

Sandstorm 1944
https://mod.io/g/insurgencysandstorm/m/sandstorm1944

Day Of Infamy Map Pack
https://mod.io/g/insurgencysandstorm/m/day-of-infamy-map-pack

Omaha Beach
https://mod.io/g/insurgencysandstorm/m/omahabeach


Operation Felix (Gibraltar)
https://mod.io/g/insurgencysandstorm/m/felix

More details for those looking to host servers and full list of official and community maps can be found here:
Sandstorm 1944 Installation Guide
https://mod.io/g/insurgencysandstorm/r/sandstorm-mod-installation-guide

Why an Early Access Pre-Alpha?
Sandstorm 1944 has been an incredibly ambitious project. The idea of re-imagining a WW2 scenario in Insurgency: Sandstorm was bold, but bringing it to life has proven to be an entirely different challenge. The journey has been fraught with a multitude of challenges, some of which have stemmed from the complexity of this undertaking with such a small team, with as little resources as we have but much of which can be attributed to the state of Insurgency: Sandstorm.

Since Update 1.11 the quality and frequency of updates and hotfixes for Insurgency: Sandstorm has been disappointing. Each update has been riddled with bugs and issues, many of which aren't addressed until the next operation update many months later. Many more have not been fixed to this day and we are wondering if they will ever be fixed at all. These problems have severely hampered our ability to develop this mod. Issues relating but not limited to:

Packaging & uploading of mods
Custom audio not loading
Explosive damage bugs
Weapon animations
Character physics
Vehicle bugs
Lighting and graphical artifacts
AI spawning & navigation
Unreal Engine plugins missing or broken

As a result this version of the mod will be quite bare bones, missing several features, content and polish until the issues with the game & the mod tools are resolved and development challenges are overcome. The mod is however in a mostly playable state, so for those who have waited so long and due to popular demand we’ve decided to release a build of mod for those who want an early taste of what’s to come.

When will Sandstorm 1944 come out of Early Access?
Sandstorm 1944 will stay in Early Access until we are happy that the mod is able to provide a quality experience. How long will depend on whether New World Interactive/Saber Interactive implement fixes for the game, mod tools and we will also need to overcome some of the most complex and tedious aspects of development. Here's a progress report of where we're at and what areas that need more work.

Animations:

Sandstorm's animation system is notoriously complex and tedious to work with so implementing custom weapon animations will require further research, development and will take significant effort to implement.

-We are looking for Animators, Technical Animators, Programmers with Python Experience that are familiar with Unreal Engine and Blender.

Models, Rigging & Textures

We have completed most of the assets, weapons, character models and gear. There are some items of high complexity such as bolt action rifles, revolvers, machine guns and certain attachments and some cosmetic items that will take significant effort to implement.

-We are looking for Texture Artists, Riggers or 3D Generalists familiar with Blender and Substance Painter to help complete the rest of the arsenal and for future content updates.

Gameplay:


Most of the core gameplay systems and elements have been implemented in the mod from Classes, Fire Support, Weapons, UI and VFX. Vehicles can be implemented once the ChaosVehiclesPlugin is enabled for the game. These areas are being improved to increase their quality and immersion.
We would like to improve our build a custom cosmetic system with customizable uniform camos and other items that will take significant effort to implement due to its complexity.
There are some items such as revolvers, some rifles and machine guns and certain attachments that will take significant effort to implement due to their complexity.
Insurgency: Sandstorm has had several features broken and or removed. For Sandstorm 1944 to function at its best we are developing an Sandstorm Unofficial Patch to restore them in a functional state.

-We are looking for Unreal Engine Blueprint Programmers/Generalists to help us implement these features.

Maps:

The Day of Infamy Map is completely playable for the game mode Checkpoint (Stronghold). We are developing Outpost (Entrenchment) and plan to release an update later for Push (Offensive). We would further like to include some features unique to Day of Infamy such as scripted events, weather and dynamic elements, improve the lighting, VFX and remaster the materials & textures in a future update.
Omaha Beach our custom map is completely playable in Checkpoint (Stronghold), Outpost (Entrenchment) and Push (Offensive) featuring awesome scripted events e.g LCVP Insertion Sequence and more is on its polish pass.
Operation Felix (Gibraltar) is completed and playable on the Checkpoint_Axis (Stronghold) scenario.
Additional custom maps are planned for future content updates.

-We are looking for Programmers familiar with Python Scripting to help us automate placement of entities and batch process asset properties to replace the tedious manually repetitive labour.
-We are looking for Environment/Level Designers to help us create a variety of additional custom maps for future content updates.
-If you have experience porting from Source Engine and or have a map from Day of infamy please let us know and we can assist you in the porting process and feature your map for Sandstorm 1944.

Audio:

Wwise custom audio for Sandstorm 1944 such as voice lines, fire support scripted events and ambient sounds for the maps have been implemented and are nearly complete. However since we are using an unofficial solution it is unable to utilize the full set of immersive audio features that Insurgency: Sandstorm provides and isn't guaranteed that is able to function with sounds often not loading in game.

-We are waiting for New World Interactive/Saber interactive to include the Wwise Project with the mod tools so we can officially integrate custom audio with the game.

If you have any video game development or modding experience and would like to help us develop Sandstorm 1944 please do not hesitate to contact us. It's an excellent opportunity to develop your portfolio. You can join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/FNF8JzgEnw

To You, From The Developers
Thank you for your continued support. We know it’s been a long wait for you and it's been a journey of blood, sweat, tears and learning for us. This mod has been an incredibly ambitious undertaking and we have collectively invested thousands of hours of our lives into this mod. It is your support that keeps us striving to continue to develop this mod despite the many development difficulties. It is a bittersweet thing and while we are relieved and excited to finally give you an early glimpse of our vision we are disappointed that we could not give you a full release as issues with the game & mod tools have halted our work. As many of you know, New World Interactive and Saber Interactive have been significantly affected by Embracer Group's layoffs and restructuring. We extend our best wishes to the developers impacted, hoping they can recover quickly and that the ongoing issues with the game can be resolved soon. We hope that the situation improves for then but for now hang on tight and enjoy and please stay tuned on further updates for Sandstorm 1944. We will be releasing a roadmap for our mod's journey out of Early Access and for future exciting feature and content updates that we have planned in our next announcement.