The team has been working hard to bring you this latest update, which includes 100-player server functionality, Frontline mode added to more maps and layers, updated mines and explosives, bug fixes and more! Full changelog down below.
After this update, the team's main focus will be towards the Pacific, so regular updates will slow down. During this time, we plan on showcasing what’s being worked on with livestreams, social posts, dev blogs, etc. Keep your eyes on socials for updates!
What’s New
100-Player Server Functionality
We have undertaken some UE4 replication optimisation using existing technology from our other Offworld title, Squad. This means servers should run significantly smoother and now allow for 100 players!
Thanks to everyone who came out to our public playtest!
New Frontline Gamemode Layers
Following the success of the new frontline gamemode, we have rolled it out across all maps in the game. This means players will be able to enjoy the frontline gamemode across all chapters, a total of 20 maps.
Additionally, we have added several new objective types, such as document search, where players have several areas to search to find documents for their squad lead or commander to recover. We have also added a wider variety of objectives to destroy, such as weapon caches, vehicles, deployed mortars, etc.
Reign of Steel Tanks added to Armoured Gamemode
We have added the new tanks from Reign of Steel into the armoured game mode. This will allow armoured players more opportunities to try out the tanks and compete against one another in all-out armoured combat.
Commander observation cupolas have been overhauled to bring the periscopes much closer together. This makes them more usable for buttoned-up tank commanders by increasing their situational awareness.
Armour-Piercing shells have received a tweak in their performance meaning that spalling from these shells is better scaled based on their caliber. The cone in which spalling projectiles occur has also been narrowed to better emphasize the importance of getting an accurate shot on a particular tank component. Depending on the type of armour-piercing ammunition, the amount of hull damage conferred will be different. In general, AP ammunition deals the most damage, but has the least amount of penetration potential. APCR, APCBC, APDS and HVAP ammunition types generally deal less damage but have higher penetration potential. We also increased the minimum bounce angle of HEAT-type ammunition by 50%, meaning that it’ll be much easier to score a hit with HEAT ammunition on an angled surface.
We are also introducing 2 new vehicle variants in this update: the Cromwell Mk.VI ‘Close Support’ (CS) Tank, which sports a 95mm howitzer and lots of high-explosive ammunition, and the AEC Mk. III Armoured Car, which has a powerful QF 75mm gun.
Mine and explosives overhaul
We have added in the smoke rocket to the US bazooka and have refined the behavior of mines to reflect their real life abilities. So the ‘Bouncing Betty’ mine (German S-Mines) will now “bounce” up and other mines of the various other factions will reflect their real world performance too. All mines are now placed individually rather than in clusters, and the amount of which you can place has been overall increased. A very noticeable click and delay before detonation also ratchets up the tension after stepping on a mine.
Hand grenades as well now have been tweaked to reflect their real life counterparts. An example is the German stick grenade having a wider blast radius but higher damage falloff due to its lack of significant fragmentation, compared to the American Mk2 ‘Pineapple’ grenades or the British Mills Bomb.
American and British fragmentation rifle grenades now also reflect their real life performance and are on a timed fuse rather than an impact detonated fuse. This will mean you’ll need to adjust the way you use these grenades and they will be a far less of a lucrative option to get easy kills. Being on a timed fuse allows you to also shoot them into rooms in close quarters more safely.
Graphics overhaul continued (Chapter 3)
We have worked hard to rework St Mere Eglise and Carentan to be more in line with their historical real world locations. Various building models have been further refined and furniture has been installed in various open buildings to give both maps more of a lived in feel.
Bug Fixing
We have continued to work on bug fixing and have also been tweaking the performance of various vehicles as well as developing more realistic animations for a lot of weapons in game.
Changelog
Gamemodes
- Added Frontline Gamemode to 18 maps - Arnhem, Best, Carentan, Colmar Winter, Colmar Summer, Dinant, Doorwerth, Foy, Grave, Haguenau, Heelsum, Maginot, Maleme, Oosterbeek, Rethymno, St Mere Eglise, Stonne, Velmolen
- Introduced new Frontline objectives (find & capture secret documents)
- Enabled radio destruction when a red zone moves over a previously built radio (as frontlines move)
- Possible fix for offensive redzones not showing correctly
- Possible fix for frontline redzones not showing correctly
- Offensive gamemode red zones now still show when a Capture point goes neutral, instead of disappearing on the UI
Level Design
- Final Chapter 3 graphics amends (Carentan and SME)
- Carentan refinements - some 450 hidden interior assets removed from locked buildings and added to open buildings on Carentan
- Carentan clean up - Resolved majority of grass clipping into buildings and replaced ditches
- Moved Out of Bounds on Carentan to avoid mines on Road leading out of Allied Spawn
- Updated misaligned interiors on St Mere Eglise
- Updates certain areas and forests of Maginot
- SME level optimisation to improve FPS
- Changed Layout on St. Mere Eglise to align closer to reality 1944
- Reworked “Notre Dame de Carentan” to have attic and Roof access
- Various level design fixes on multiple maps
- Haguenau updates (replaced ditches)
- Snow material updates on Foy, Haguenau and Colmar
- Fixed vehicles sinking into Utah beach sand
- Fixed vehicles sinking in the vicinity of the UK repair crane
- Fixed vehicle spawner on Utah Frontline
- Fixed Velmolen Offensive 3 has no staging zone for forward attacker
- Fixed that tank sections are no longer visible on several maps with no tanks to spawn
- Fixed Carentan Church Collisions
- Fixed wrong vehicle setup on Haguenau Off 11
- Add missing CMD actions for multiple layers
- Fixed wrong CHM Mechanized vehicle setup
- Added new St Mere Eglise minimap
- Added new Carentan Minimap
- Arnhem Range set both teams can enter every vehicle
- Adding a kit role switch crate to the Shooting Range
- Refined Invasion redzones
- Utah Invasion v2 - Bugfixed wrong boat landing spot + removed frontline bunker in the middle of the south
- Fixed non leaning bug on BP_ShootingRange_Board collision boxes (Arnhem Range)
- Fixed floating and blocking stones on Maginot road at C5-3-8
Weapons
- Tweaked Bazooka, Panzerfaust, Panzerschreck and Piat to use real world data for penetration and projectile velocity
- Decreased Piat projectile penetration from 150mm to 115mm; Increased Panzerschreck penetration from 130mm to 135mm, Decreased Bazooka HEAT penetration from 130mm to 127mm
- Increased angle at which all HEAT projectiles will penetrate from 30 degrees to 45 degrees
- Added White Phosphorus Smoke rockets for the M9A1 and M1A1 Bazooka
- Fixed rifle launched frag grenades not having explosion FX when exploding in mid-air
- Fixed Hawkins mine and Magnetic mine not being able to destroy external components like shields and track decoration
- Tweaked SMG recoil to be a bit more unpredictable and less laser-like
- Increased slow fire rate on the BAR from 300rpm to 400rpm
- Decreased explosion radius of the K98 Frag grenade launcher from 15m to 10m
- Set Lee Enfield Cup Discharger grenade and M7 Frag grenade to be on a 4 second timer fuse rather than an impact detonated fuse
- Set all Rocket Launchers and Grenade Launchers to use a longer deploy animation that loads the grenade or rocket into the weapon
- Added smoke trail to the Launched Mills Bomb and the M7 Frag grenade
- Added new BAR non-bipod and M1 Carbine reload animations
- Fixed BAR undeploy bipod sound playing on repeat
- Tweaked G43 reload dry animation to not throw the empty magazine away
- Added new M3 Grease Gun reload animations
- Added new Bren reload animations
- Added new deploy/undeploy animations that operate the safety to the Sten, Thompson, Colt M1911A1, M1 Carbines, Grease Gun, Garand, Lee Enfield, K98k, Mannlicher, Springfield M1903, STG44, G41, FG42, BAR, Bren and G43
- Added new fire rate change animation for the Thompson and BAR
- Tweaked Gras rifle equip and unequip to be not as instant
- Tweaked RSC1917 foley, fixed undeploy animation not playing in 1P
- Tweaked foley on the Bren, Sten and Garand
- Foley tweaks to the throwable explosives (louder hissing sound and visible smoke trail)
- Sped up bipod reloads for the ZB26 and MAC24 by 30%
- Sped up MP40 deploy and undeploy animations by 25%
- Fixed throwable TNT having wrong selection icon
- Switched shell ejections on the 8mm mauser caliber weapons to use the proper shell casings
- Switched French faction units to use the Jumelle 6x30 Binoculars instead of the British binoculars
- Fixed Scoped Lee Enfields not weapon resting properly
- Renamed P14 Enfield to 'Rifle No.3 Mk1'
- Tweaked lowered position on the P38
- Fixed incorrect equip time on the Browning HP
- Fixed UK 3 inch HE mortar shooting wrong projectile.
- Set Gammon bomb and Geballte stick grenade to outright kill infantry if they get too close
- Amended various weapon LODs
- Mines to deploy one at a time instead of clumps of five
- Mine trigger radius overall sized down to the size of an individual mine
- Blast radius for AP mines on them widened overall (S-Mine - 35m; MkII - 35m; M2A1 - 18m; Mle 1939 - 22m)
- Increased placement capacity and mine inventory count (AP - 3 mines in inventory, 6 max placeable; AT - 2 mines in inventory, 4 max placeable)
- All mines have a very audible click sound upon triggering
- Delay on their detonation after triggering based on historical data, varies by mine type
- Added a trigger delay of about 0.75-1 second to all AP (S-Mine has a delay of 4 seconds)
- Adjusted detonation delay on all AT mines to 0.15s from 0.75s
- Added a 'bouncing' animation before detonation for the 'Bouncing Betty' S-Mine and Mk II Mine
- Fixed weird stacking for all AP and AT mines
- Adjusted power levels of all explosive grenades to their real life counterparts - Fragmentation style grenades have smaller damaging radius but lower damage falloff; Concussion style explosive grenades have larger blast radius but higher damage falloff - (Stick Grenade - 18m radius; Mk2 Pineapple - 12m; M39 Egg grenade - 16.5m; Stick grenade Geballte - 25m; Gammon grenade - 15m; F1 grenade - 12m; Mills Bomb - 15m)
- Added SMLE No.1 Mk3 Cup Discharger to ANZAC grenadiers
- Fixed AT mines not dealing damage to infantry when exploding
Vehicles
- New vehicle variants: AEC Mk III Armoured Car and Cromwell Mk VI Close Support (CS) tank
- Fixed Puma Gunner viewports crash
- Fixed Kubelwagen view error
- Fixed possible fps killer on old tracked vehicles
- Fixed Kettenkrad Commander variant having broken handling and tracks
- Fixed desynced Besa tank mgs
- Readded fuel tank weak points to Jeeps and Trucks
- Fixed turret track armour not rotating with the turret on the Challenger tank
- Added Hull Gunner seat with remote weapon station MG34 to the Stug III G and StuH 42
- Fixed Panzer IV H and Sherman M4A3 ammo racks being half the health of other tank's ammo racks
- Fixed side weak point on the Challenger
- Fixed non-HE filler APCBC shells doing half damage compared to their AP counterparts
- New AP/APCR shell unique impact fx to distinguish them from APHE shells.
- Set Spalling angle on all AP and APHE rounds to a narrower cone of 60 degrees, a decrease from 120 degrees
- Reduced APCR loadouts for most German tanks
- Fixed Panzer IV H Skirt variant having incorrect periscopes
- Handling tweaks on the BMW R75 bike, Laffly S20TL, Kettenkrad
- Added more mass to the Bren Carriers and little more slip to the tracks
- Handling tweaks on the Churchill tank - Slightly improved 2nd gear turning
- Increased turning capability of the Jackson in gears 4 and 5
- Reduced Sherman E8's 5th gear turn speed
- Tweaked turning characteristics on the B1 Bis tank
- Fixed Hellcat 3/4/5 gears decreasing RPM power loss, decreased turning capability on those gears
- Fixed M24 Chaffee 2nd gear and 4th gear complete RPM loss
- Fixed M5 Stuart shaking violently at high speed, fixed 3rd gear losing RPM power too quickly
- Fixed Kingtiger/Jagdtiger handbrake not working at low gears
- Jagdtiger and King Tiger handling tweaks
- Tweaked Jagdtiger sight to better account for ranges under 600m
- Tweaked Jagdtiger reload sound to better match the duration
- Fixed insufficient power to go to max RPM on geats 6/7 on the Panther
- Fixed Jagdpanzer 48/70 losing all RPM in 2nd gear when turning quickly in opposite directions
- Panzer 3 F - Fixed turning at 1/2/3 gear is extremely slow compared to later gears, slowed down turning at 7/8/9/10 gears
- Fixed Panzer 3 G turning at 1/2/3 gear is extremely slow compared to 4th gear; fixed R4 gear turns extremely fast
- Fixed Panzer 4 D 2-6th gear turning slowly
- Fixed Panzer 4 G gears 3/4/5/6 turning too quickly
- Fixed Ostwind gears 3/4/5/6 turning too quickly
- Fixed Panzer 38t displaying as a 4 crew vehicle when it's actually 3
- Fixed Stug 3 A 4th Gear turning too fast
- Tweaked Nashorn handling - Turning at 4-6 gear reduces RPM too quickly
- Improved handling on the Hetzer, Marder III, Panzer 38t and Panzer II
- Reduced top speed on the Sdkfz 232, increased wheel slippage so the vehicle doesn't flip over at high speeds when turning
- Handling tweaks on the Sdkfz 234 Puma and Stummel
- Fixed Panhard wheel lateral slipping increase so it doesn't cause the vehicle to flip at high speeds
- Handling tweaks on the Somua S35, making it easier to turn
- Improved Churchill turning handling
- Improved Matilda turn handling
- Handling tweaks on the Tetrarch and Daimler
- Updated ammo layout for the M1 ATG and QF6 (reduced HE from 45 to 15 rounds)
- Updated M1 ATG to use a different sight
- Reconfigured AEC Armoured Car periscope configuration
- Attempted fix for players using small arms to lean in and shoot through tank armour
- Fixed missing reload sound on the Panzer II main gun
- Removed unneeded reload sound off the 50mm and 88mm cannon firing audio
- Tweaked Challenger physics asset and adjusted its handling
- Fixed missing binocular overlay for the Stummel commander
- Fixed zoom sound still playing on the MG34 sight that doesn't have zoom function anymore
- Fixed Jagdtiger gunsight labeling for the ammunition
- Added a unique breaking sound when a tank barrel is broken
- Added a unique engine destruction sound when the engine is destroyed
- Added a flame explosion when a fuel tank explodes
- Tweaked appearance of the vehicle hull damage icon
- Reworked ARV Cupola on the Churchill VII, Cromwell IV and Comet
- Reworked all cupola meshes for much greater situational awareness for tank commanders
- Set faction unique periscopes and viewports for all vehicles
- Added a very slight zoom (to the 'Q' button) to all armoured periscope and viewport views (except the driver)
- Fixed M24 Chaffee winter version having bugged viewports and periscopes
- Fixed periscope overlay appearing in the vision slits for the Panzer IV D commander seat
- Extended periscope limits on all US vehicle hull gunners so they can traverse their hull MGs to the full extent
- Fixed Hetzer sight not accurately calibrated for the PzGr39 and PzGr40 AP rounds
- Increased max Puma Sdkfz 234 PzGr39 APC-HE-T's penetration from 86 to 102
- Simplified Vickers tank collision to make hits more reliable
- Increased size of player collision mesh on the Panzerwerfer 42
- Fixed poses on the Sherman E8 riding passengers
- Fixed a large number of external decoration elements to be invisible to vehicle riding passengers
- Fixed flak 36 emplacements has no material on it
Other
- Main menu: Fixed social buttons are not usable + added correct "X" Logo
- Amended main menu background map
- Set hardcoded max player count from 80 to 100p
- Changed font on the VOIP list to use fonts in the Squad 44 style
- Possible fix for "Team Unbalanced" widget blocks interaction
- Implemented camouflaged parachutes for the US
- Bugfixed C47 Dummy plane show UI on minimap
- Slightly increased stamina regeneration
- Possible fix for RP UI gets invisible on destroying with "F"
- Possible fix to soldier without helmets
- Possible fix of auto-spawn on local start for virtual range and hanger
- Enabled logistics shovel faster speed on Maleme and Rethymno for all factions.
- Added a minimap for Virtual Range
- Possible server crash fix
- Fixed a bug that Japanese and Korean language was not supported in in-game chat
- Fixed Role Icons incorrectly assigned.
- Deleted old outdated Chapter Mercury virtual range showcase
- Added a nearest soldier info on the incap UI
- Reduced FPS usage of the incap ui
- Fixed french flag being flipped on the endscreen
- Updated Server config to actual version
- Added some UE4 optimizations for replication that will now allow 100 player servers
- Fixed floating patches on 1st Airborne characters
- Fixed DeadInfo forcing the spawn screen to be visible
- Removed "Fallschirmjäger" class on Gruppe-West/Mitte to avoid new players only spawn in with a pistol only.
- Multiple Endscreen Bug Fixes
- Multiple Level design Bug fixes
- Fixed Maginot surrounding mountains having no player collision + Filled 3 holes nearby OOB you can use to place radios underground
Big shoutouts to Russo and MDGS who helped us gather screenshots.
