It is with great pleasure that we can finally announce the release of version 1.0 which will take place on December 6th this year. We are very happy to be able to bring this long-awaited piece of news at last, and we hope that you will embark on your journey through the Battle of the Atlantic this holiday season. Version 1.0 will finally add the long-awaited Career mode, together with the remaining battle variants to improve gameplay variety. Now, however, we have one more update for you before version 1.0 hits the store: the ‘leave no man behind’ update which we have been preparing for some time.
The biggest addition in this update is the new ‘rescue’ battle variant, along with its ‘picking up survivors’ mechanic. It introduces a whole new gameplay aspect, allowing you to partially recover lost points by rescuing merchant marine sailors from torpedoed ships. This can be done both by your destroyer as well as the other escorts and we hope that you will enjoy this new feature which goes back full circle to our very first trailer.
We have also looked at many aspects of our game in an attempt to improve wherever it has been lacking. We have made a lot of fixes, corrections and new additions, and we hope that you will agree that most of these will serve to improve the overall experience (as always, the full list of changes is presented below)
On top of that, we have introduced a ton of other small improvements, such as new DRT functionalities. Now you can finally make time-distance-speed measurements in order to calculate optimal U-boat interception points, and the DRT officer also marks the location of each of your depth charge attacks, providing a point of reference for search plans in case you lose sonar contact with the enemy.
If that weren’t enough, we have rebuilt the whole U-boat spawn system, introducing an adaptive mechanic which adjusts the intensity of the battle to how well you perform. There have also been further improvements to U-boat AI, another round of optimization, and much more. As always, you can find the full list of improvements at the bottom of this article.
At the same time, we are on the last stretch of testing and balancing the career mode (previously called the ‘campaign’) and we sincerely hope that it will cater to your taste as far as immersion and atmosphere is concerned. A lot of work has gone into it, and we hope that embarking on this journey will allow you to fully immerse in the role of a destroyer captain in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Additionally, you can now also watch our Developer Showcase and get a glimpse behind the scenes of our research!
As always, we would also like to thank you for your continued support, and wish you many successfully defended convoys!
Artur Salwarowski
Destroyer Lead Designer
Iron Wolf Studio
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????️ https://discord.gg/qcDF2ZZ
Changelog:
- new ‘Rescue’ mission variant added
- picking up survivors added
- destroyer presence alone can now scare U-boat off when in close proximity (even without attacking)
- escort depth charge attack efficiency rebalanced
- achievements and leaderboards added
- DRT improvements - time/distance/speed calculations, U-boat course and speed, depth charge dropping points, improved eraser
- cutscene skipping done with holding the ‘S’ button
- subtitles in intro video and tutorial videos
- fixed the black rectangle in the sky, as well as various graphics glitches
- ambush cutscenes gets special music stingers when the torpedo hits
- corrections in iceberg game saves
- optimization - destroyer model, ship LODs, cutscenes, particle effects, DRT station
- TRR disappearing plexi glitch fixed
- new dynamic spawn system for better pacing
- mission rebalancing
- depth charge camera damage text display with the option to hide it
- gun director target selection in the gun director station, no need to go to ‘contacts’ to switch targets
- 5 inch gun splash effect now displays exactly where the projectile hits the water
- improved tutorial - new UI, improved sonar and TRR, picking up survivors, various fixes across the board
- context-dependent cursor for dragging (hand) and drawing (pencil)
- mouse cursor no longer displays outside of gameplay (cutscenes, videos, etc.).
- toggle UI enabled (by pressing F2 or in options)
- radar station camera zoom and scroll
- sky flickering fixed while changing stations
- new loading screen
- the crossed out eye icon now displays and updates more correctly in the sonar room
- chinese version performance hiccups due to text messages fixed
- more compact russian font
- polish font fixes
- tactical station clarity improved, letters and X’s no longer overlap. New ‘clear until last position’ button added
- UI adjusted to all resolutions, corrected interaction areas for all buttons
- popups explaining difficulty settings added in main menu
- ambush cutscene now displays text saying that the sunk merchant will not be deducted from the score
- Air support now attacks with machine guns, improved U-boat reaction to air support, air support now stays on target and continues search even if target is submerged
- escort sinking attributions on the contact board fixed
- gun director fixes - retargeting a surfaced U-boat, gun rotation when player leaves the gun director, fixed a bug that sometimes allowed to target a submerged U-boat
- TRR window is now clickable, clicking it takes you to the TRR station
- text message window scrolling no longer engages camera zoom
- station switching bugs fixed (buttons or free camera view no longer get blocked)
- all languages now have color-coded messages in the text message window
- the sun rises and sets in the east and west, correspondingly
- air support sound no longer freezes when exiting to main menu
- autosave added
- retry battle added
- the sonar indicator moves more correctly with the detected U-boat
- escorts no longer spam messages when holding the same contact, and such escorts no longer fight for such contact between them
- collision avoidance fixes - U-boats vs icebergs, merchants and escorts vs destroyer and one another
- screen edge no longer blocks further camera movement in free camera view if mouse cursor reaches it
- game is now paused when minimized. The game minimizes into the taskbar, the window does not linger in desktop (ALT+TAB)
- key textures (e.g. bearings) are not blurred even on low graphics settings
- save and load game fixes
- escorts flags corrected
- question marks added in pause menu, explaining TRR, OSC, and DRT in manual mode (english only, other languages coming soon)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1272010/Destroyer_The_UBoat_Hunter/
