Darkest Hour: Europe '44-'45 News

We hope everyone had a good holiday break. 2019 is going to be a big year for Darkest Hour. We plan on polishing features we are happy with and making changes to features we are not. A big focus this year will be on brand new maps!

Here is a recap of changes to DH in 2018:
2018 started with v8.0 (squads + construction + Advance) being just released in late 2017.

• By February, we added Assistant Squad Leaders and more constructions.
  
• In March, we had the frag grenade update, which reduced starting grenades to 1, max carriable to 3, and added grenade boxes.
  
• In April, we had changes to soft vehicles so they no longer instantly explode; giving soldiers a chance to bail out once the vehicle becomes disabled.
  
• We saw the 10th anniversary of Darkest Hour in June!
  
• In July, we had new construction (Dragons Teeth and Panzerfaust Crates) and a complete overhaul to the scoring system.
  
• In August, we saw improvements to blood and hit impacts on players.
  
• In September, we added a zoom-able overview map.
  
• In October, Theel launched his Patreon campaign.
  
• In November, he launched the London high performance server.
  
• Finally, in December we improved on the in-game chat and added squad merging.
  

We are now at v8.4.0! Over the last year we have added (I believe somewhere around 42) maps, implemented many other features not mentioned above, improved many existing features, fixed bugs, and many other things.

The official server has been going great, if you enjoy playing on it and want to help, please donate here: https://www.patreon.com/theel By becoming a patron, you'll get access to private news, discord roles, and in-game rewards.

Patison is hosting an event tomorrow (DH Campaign Night - Sunday 06/01/19 @ 10PM GMT)! For more information, please join us on Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/RKpwrbr

Thanks for playing Darkest Hour in 2018 and as always see you on the battlefield!

We're back at it again! This update's a bit of a hodge-podge, but the tl;dr is that we've added a new squad merging functionality, a couple new work-in-progress maps, and made some balance changes, including a change that should make light vehicles much more fragile.

• Added DH-WIP_MyshkovaRiver_Advance
• Added DH-WIP_Klin1941_Advance
• Added a new control for placing a Rally Point (default key is: “J”)
  
• Added a new splash screen
  

Need to consolidate a bunch of itty bitty squads? Well, we're here to help! You can now offer other squad leaders to merge their squads into yours!

• As a squad leader, right-click another squad leader on the squad menu and select “Request to Merge”
  
• The squad leader that sent the merge request will become the new squad leader
  

• Changes to soft vehicles (cars, trucks, halftracks):
  
  • Increased damage from small arms fire
    
  • Vehicles are now more easily disabled
    
  • Reduced engine health on cars and trucks
    
  • Halftracks now climb up slopes more effectively
    
• Updated DH-WIP_Cholm_Advance
  • Axis now have a new approach for the final objective
    
  • Second to last capture (Stronghold) can be captured from the ground level.
    
  • Added a couple weapon pickups
    
• Changes to several constructions:
  
  • Panzerfaust Crate:
    
    • Raised cost from 750 to 850
      
    • Lowered Panzerfaust count from 4 to 2
      
  • Increased cost of Grenade Crate from 300 to 400
    
  • Increased cost of Supply Cache from 250 to 500
    
  • Increased cost of Watchtower from 750 to 900
    
  • Platoon HQs can no longer be crushed by vehicles
    
  • Platoon HQs now take more damage from grenades and satchels
    
• All vehicles have had their reinforcement cost reduced
  
• Levels’ weapon pickups no longer respawn by default
  
• Reduced the high player count requirements for voting larger Advance levels
  

• Fixed a bug where most functionality was broken in the Admin mutator.
  

See you on the battlefield,
Darklight Games

We're back at it again! This time bringing a big quality-of-life improvement to the chat system.

While typing, you are now able to cycle through chat modes by pressing the Tab button!



Since the RO1 days, there has been three buttons for initiating chat in certain channels (team, global, vehicle). When we added the squad chat channel, we had to take up another keybind on our already crowded default key mapping. The old system is just not tenable for extensibility and is very be cumbersome to use (e.g. accidentally hitting the wrong button and needing to hit escape and try again).

Additionally, you can now simply hit your Enter key to start typing a message to your previously selected chat channel! Please note that backwards compatibility is maintained if you prefer to use the old system instead.

Here are a few more notable tweaks and additions:

• There is now a colored line drawn between the player and the squad's current order marker on the situation map (this should help highlight the orders more prominently)
  
• All anti-tank guns now must be placed at least 15 meters from each other.
  
• All anti-tank guns have had their supply cost increased (in some cases significantly) in an effort to reduce AT gun spam.
  
• Increased the "block" time penalty for spawn kills on Platoon HQs from 15 to 30 seconds in an effort to reduce repeated spawn killing.
  
• Increased the duration of the " Have Won The Battle!" message from 5 seconds to 15 seconds.
  
• Fixed a bug where players would be told to wait for 5 seconds before voting for another map before they had voted for any maps.
  
• Fixed a bug where the crescent sandbag construction could seem to disappear if it was in your peripheral view.
  

Thank you for continued support and feedback! We have some very big and exciting plans that will be coming to fruition in the winter months, so watch this space!

See you on the battlefield,
Darklight Games

Event This Thursday! @ 4pm EST (9pm GMT) @ Darklight Games London Server (185.38.151.35)



New London Server! Thanks to past and present Patrons, the new high-performance server has arrived! This server uses an i7-7700k processor, the best marketable CPU for single-threaded applications. This is also a dedicated server, not a virtual server, meaning the processing power is not shared. This means we can easily host multiple 64 player servers without seeing the tick rate drop!

This server is not cheap, but we also got a very good deal. While the Patrons do pay for it, I want to be as responsible as possible with that money. This means that we promote the server and try our best to see that it is actually used. However, I also want to be fair to the community and not just use my developer authority to dictate player choice.

Ultimately, it is the player's responsibility to choose which server to play on. So we have decided AGAINST doing a server white list, which would allow us to select which servers would show up on the server browser by default. However, it is our responsibility to give players accurate and useful information in making that choice. We hope to figure out a fair and accurate way to inform players of how a server performs and indicate that on the server browser. Until then, we can only inform players in announcements and ask that players choose responsibility, especially on weekends.

Though there is no noticeable incentive for players to play on better performing servers. What we can offer is the London server will be running metrics; which is statistics of kills, deaths, damage types, and other information that we plan on making public via a web tool.

Why London? DH has many European and North American players; ideally, we would have two server locations. However, until we can consistently fill multiple servers on weekends, one will have to do. That means selecting the best affordable location to make everyone happy.

Let's play on the new server tomorrow night, prime time! Come join around 4pm EST (9pm GMT) Thursday the 15th, try out the server and get an early weekend Darkest Hour fix!

See you on the battlefield,
Theel

Hey folks, we're here again with another update! This one's short and sweet, here are the highlights:

• Added La Gleize (Advance) map
  
• Squad members can now volunteer to be the squad's assistant by right-clicking on the squad leader's name on the squad menu.
  

• Fixed a bug where spawn points would be incorrectly positioned when the map was zoomed in.
  
• Fixed a bug where anti-tank rockets could kill Platoon HQs in one hit (it now takes 3 direct hits).
  

• Adjustments and improvements to Noville (Advance) map (extended boundaries etc.)
  
• Slightly increased respawn times of players spawning as non-rifleman roles.
  
• Very slightly increased the spread of the MP40 (our telemetry found it overperforming at long ranges).
  
• Change team interval increased from 2 minutes to 5 minutes.
  
• Increased cost of vehicle pool constructions from 1250 to 1750.
  

See you on the battlefield,
Darklight Games