Zero Hour’s Operation Thunder consists of a new map, the addition of CO-OP third person perspective, hostage gameplay improvements, improved loading times & more. This update focuses on content updates and quality improvements.

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Addition of a New Map

Prison Break

Only the co-op mission will have the top floor and the underground parking accessible. In PvP this map will be slightly smaller.

MS-Unit just received a call of a raid at the Danshiri Police Station. Since the Terrorist leader, Ahmed Al Zoori is held captive inside this station, we assume the terrorist’s motive is to break him out. MS-Unit are tasked to stop Ahmed Al Zoori from escaping and to eliminate all suspects.

Addition of Co-op TPP

This will only be accessible in co-op mode as an option. We wanted to bring a new perspective and experience for players and the game's mechanics. Of course, this won't change any fundamentals of the game.

New SWAT Character Models

The Swat Character models have been remodeled to achieve a more realistic look. In addition to that, animations have also been altered to have the character models look more smooth and organized instead of looking slightly unwary.

Residential House Reworked

In our process of reworking the previous maps to make them look more inline with our newer work, we have attempted to smoothen the edges of Residential House and bump up the texture quality to improve the overall believability and immersion. We tried not changing the spaces and layouts of the original map to ensure it does not disrupt the already fun gameplay. Next map to receive a re-work is Terror House.

Hotel Trouble Lighting Reworked

At the time of developing Hotel Trouble we did not have the proper tools and knowledge to bring the lighting we wanted. With time and effort we have found ways to get closer to that vision and so the ambient lights and GI have finally been implemented to the map.

Addition of Molotov

A new addition to the defender's utility collection, the molotov will help players threaten opponents from entering the room and buy them few more seconds to decide their next move.

Co-Op Suspect Suicide Vest

We have added Suicide vests as an option for suspects in various bomb appropriate missions. You will now see some suspects wearing bomb vests roaming in the map. These suspects will run towards you when you are spotted. You can still make them surrender by shooting their hand, however killing the suspect will initiate the count down to detonating their vest.

Hostage Gameplay Improvements

The hostage game mode was untouched for a long while and we are looking to focus on improving it based on user feedback. Hostages now stick very closely to the player to remove the tediousness of having to wait for them to move closer and disrupting overall gameplay. Along with them sticking close to you, the hostage icon will no longer appear when being interacted; meaning defenders will no longer be able to see the hostage location when attackers are extracting. These are just our initial attempts at fixing the issues, we plan on adding further improvements very soon.

Material Based Footsteps

While we have made several attempts in the past to get material based footsteps into the game due to not being able to find a bandwidth friendly way of making this feature work. The feature is finally in the game but with a limited pool of surface types that we plan to expand with time.

Improved Loading Time even further

We reworked the internal data system to improve loading times. According to our tests, it has cut down the loading time further more than the previous update. This has fixed prolonged issues such as crashing, resulting in heavy memory usage or CPU heating.

Conclusion

We are trying to get up to speed again to provide content sooner like we used to in the past. We always hope to progress through smaller patches until the next major update. Thanks to the private testers team for testing out the builds with every internal update to ensure a more polished experience for the public release of the update.

We really appreciate and thank the community for the unconditional support and love for the game.

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Update Logs

ADDED

• New Playable Map "Prison Break"
  
• New New MS Unit character model
  
• New Defender side utility Molotov [ Iteration 1 ]
  
• Material based footsteps [ Iteration 1 ]
  
• Ahmed Al Zoori prison version as suspect
  
• Co-op Suicide Bomb vest for suspects [ Iteration 1 ]
  
• Co-op Third person View option [ Iteration 1 ]
  
• Hostage PvP extraction point to Bank Heist rooftop
  
• Tactical Helmet IR Strobe light
  
• GI lighting to MV Meghna map
  

FIXED

• Match Points Back up not retrieving properly when steam fails to fetch data
  
• Defender using Smoke causes backend errors
  
• P10c missing mag in SFX for mag check animation
  
• Rats Den missing surface type property
  
• Texture corruption due to memory leakage
  

IMPROVED

• Hostage movement control (Co-op & PvP)
  
• Hostage PvP gameplay, Hostage icon will not be displayed when the hostage is either running away or following a player
  
• First person camera movement
  
• Player movement input feel
  
• Main Menu loading time
  
• Weapon short stocking
  
• Weapon holstering positions
  
• Suspect AI behavior to do suppressing fire
  
• Player movement animation flow chart
  
• Optimized door functionalities
  
• Breaker Switch interaction sounds
  
• Optimized Residential House
  
• Optimized Main Menu functionalities
  

CHANGES

• Added Acog Sight option for MK12
  
• Increased Stamina slightly in PvP & Co-op
  
• Reworked Residential House map
  
• Reworked Hotel Trouble lighting
  
• Reduced Co-op cutscene Sound volume
  

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Thank you for your patience, please make sure to report Toxicity, feedback & suggestions in our Discord server using the following links.
Discord Global Community : Zero Hour Official
Discord French Community : Zero Hour France