Tank Squad News

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 55th Development Status. You can see what we were working on in three weeks!

[h3]Difficulty settings[/h3]
We have begun to design two difficulty levels for Tank Squad: Normal and Hardcore. In both difficulty settings, we are going to modify some of the game parameters:




[h3]Gameplay from Battle of Steppes[/h3]



In this gameplay preview, we would like to show you a fragment of the footage showing the second main objective. The task of the players is to locate the enemy artillery position, which can be located in one of three positions - where two of them are decoys.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]New UI elements[/h3]
During mission selection, we have added additional overlays showing main and side objectives as well as enemy forces positions etc. This should give a more immersive and mission feeling.


[h3]Level design changes in first missions[/h3]

We have also made significant changes to the level design. The current maps for scenarios are quite large, so we decided to split some of the longer missions into two shorter ones. This aims to intensify the gameplay and reduce the distances between objectives, so players won't feel fatigued from long tank rides without combat.



For instance “old C1M1” was 5.125 km x 3.075 km, around 15.75 km2. New C1M1 and C1M2 missions will be 3.075 km x 3.075, around 9,45 km2.



Additionally, the objectives themselves have changed. We are continuously making improvements to the mission's logic and modifying the environment and terrain to deliver the best possible experience from playing through the scenarios.

[h3]VFX update - more variations[/h3]
For every ground type, we have 15 variations of VFX. Right now we have about 90 effects that correspond to the type of shell, its payload, penetration, directional impact, and ricochet. Bear in mind that as much as we would like to have it perfect, there will be inconsistencies in how things look like. The main reason why we want so many variations is to give players another visual clue, about how their shells are interacting with the enemy and environment. You can visually distinguish which type of shell is shot, and roughly what caliber it was.



Of course, most of it is just a simple approximation, just to set the adequate vibe of the fight and create space for the player to easily understand in what circumstances he currently is in the battle.

In the video below, you can get to know some of the variations we did since the previous Dev status. Type of ground shown: Vegetation, Stones, Tank hits. Types of shells presented are: High Caliber, Medium, and Light, for HE and AP rounds.

These are still works in progress, and a lot of them need adjustment. It's the first solid take on the Effects department, and as much as we need to do yet, we are proud to show what we did to this point. We want to know what you think about it.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Playtests, demo when?[/h3]

We are currently under QA from PlayWay group. More info as we will get through it :)

Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 54th Development Status. You can see what we were working on in two weeks!

[h3]Playtests[/h3]
As we wrote in our last development status. We decided to resign from Steam Next Fest with a demo build and decided to organize for example playtests for the community on a near occasion. We plan to do this event somewhere in July - so it is coming very soon 🙂
Once closer we will inform you how we will organize such an event.


[h3]Battle of Steppes Gameplay preview[/h3]
We would like to showcase the third mission in the German Kursk Campaign called the Battle of the Steppes. This mission itself is an attack scenario, where the player squads have to break through Soviet defense lines to find and destroy artillery battery locations and finally capture and hold an entrenched farm.
The battle happens on a steppe, of flat terrains with little cover or almost no vegetation protection. The player squad has to use all of the advantages they can to win the battle.
The mission begins with an attack on entrenched Soviet infantry, AT-guns, and tanks with the support of our artillery and allied forces.
The second objective is to search and destroy the Soviet M-10 artillery. The artillery battery can be found in one of three positions, the other two positions might be decoys.
The third objective is to capture and hold an entrenched farm. This objective is not yet finished and we will showcase it in the next dev log. Stay tuned.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Sound effects and overall sound settings are still work in progress. We are implementing FMOD in the project. FMOD is a sound effects engine and authoring tool for video games and applications developed by Firelight Technologies.
Right now the biggest issue here is the incorrect treatment of how many sound effects are playing at once, causing some other sound effects to be cut or missing, for example, coaxial MG sounds.
Expect the next dev vlog showcasing FMOD capabilities.

[h3]Diagnostic data[/h3]
We have begun to configure analytics to gather information about players’ behavior to improve gameplay and game design based on that data. We’ve begun to gather data about:
Mission objectives:

• How much time it took players to conquer an objective
  
• How many times which objective has been conquered
  
• How much time do players have spent on each mission

Player’s Death:

• On what level player died
  
• Using which tank
  
• During which objective
  
• At which minute of the game
  
• Position of his death
  
• What enemy unit has killed a player

Player State (How much time player spends...):

• In tank
  
• As character
  
• On map (UI)
  
• In Main Menu

Basic Game info:

• Player’s controls settings
  
• Player’s time spend in the game
  
• At which moment player has left the game
  
• Crash and bug reports

Performance:

• FPS amount
  
• Player’s video quality settings
  
• Player’s hardware (RAM, Graphic Card)

Based on that data we can balance:

• The difficulty for each objective on battle levels
  
• The strength and effectiveness of AI units
  
• Length of each mission
  
• AI behavior
  
• Vehicles and resources available for player
  

Just as an example for you to get the idea, we’ve performed tests and we’ve analyzed how many times what kind of units have killed players:


We’ve compared how many units there are on that mission and we’ve come to the conclusion that Soviet AT infantry is too effective against players. We’ve made some changes in that unit configuration and have tested the same mission again. At that time the Soviet infantry was less effective which in consequence improved the gameplay.
Another example:
How many times players have died on each objective


In that specific mission, there are 4 main objectives. As the difficulty of the level is increasing with time, players should die more often with each next objective. As you can notice on the chart, players have died fewer times when trying to conquer the last objective than in the second and third. So we have to balance those objectives to increment the difficulty linearly with time.
In conclusion, gathering data allows us to spot issues that can’t be noticed by simple observation and can help us balance the game effectively.

[h3]VFX update[/h3]
For a couple of weeks, we have started to address some of our VFX’es, that we will be using in Tank Squad. There is a lot to cover, every impact, ricochet, penetration, explosion, smoke, etc. will be done accordingly, and will not look generic (as some other games that touch WWII tend to do). The main objective was to create a believable experience, and visual information is a part of this immersive journey. As our terrains, and models were made, the same attention to detail will, and already is taken into consideration making special effects. Below you can take a look at some work in progress impacts on different surfaces.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 53rd Development Status.

Few words to you - from us, developers. We would like to let you know that we decided to resign from taking part in Steam Next Fest starting on June 19 with our demo version of Tank Squad and postponed it to playtests or the next demo.

Battle of Steppes captured from build

Ok but why? The answer is simple, we are not yet ready.

A few weeks ago we showcased the first preview of gameplay from a tech preview mission which was just a simple scenario not related to the first campaign story we are working on. It was a result of a few months' work of putting all the pieces together like gameplay mechanics & features, getting better performance, new sounds, new vehicles, characters & weapons, or new UI that we are gradually still implementing over existing placeholders. Pretty much everything that we showed in previous development statuses we wanted to share with you.

Battle of Steppes captured from build

Last few days, weeks, and months we were pushing a lot of effort into configuring and preparing playable builds. The showcased tech preview mission is just 0.25 km2 of the playable area. For the demo, we wanted to include a third mission from a Kursk German campaign that is near 5 km2. To show you that we have bigger scale scenarios, showing more sim aspects of the game.

Battle of Steppes captured from build

Unfortunately, we didn't manage yet to achieve satisfactory results with the overall performance of this mission. We don’t want to release something to you that is not finished, not polished, or not ready as we do not feel it yet as a complete game. We are still putting pieces together. More time is needed.

Battle of Steppes captured from build

Ok, what next? We will try to organize playtests on Steam for you during the next two months. Probably it will be a closed “alpha” test first and then some kind of a “beta” test more open using Steam playtests capabilities. For sure we will inform you and let you know in the next development statuses.

Kind regards,

Tank Squad Dev Team.
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 52nd Development Status. As we’re focused to increase frames per second to be able to simulate combat for 20-30+ active vehicles and around 100 infantry we were mostly working on optimization in previous weeks.

[h3]Optimization[/h3]

The main issues we are facing with optimization are:

Physics simulation:

• pathfinding - our custom pathfinding system might not be up to allow smooth calculations and pathfinding for 100-200 agents at once. The biggest issue is that currently, our AI does not follow the correct path to the next objectives/triggers/exit points and just stays idle. This in the end creates an issue with performance in late battle, as having 400+ units at the same time causes the game to have very few frames.
  
• suspension for vehicles
  
• complex models of vehicles - we’ve discovered that our vehicles and their complexity have an impact on the physics engine in Unity. We will have to make the model easier for computation
  
• VFX and colliders of vehicle wrecks - when the vehicle change into wrecks then we disable most of their physics and simulation, but not enough. Having 20-30 + wrecks on a scene still causes Unity to drop frames
  

AI animations:

• infantry needs the animator state machine working all the time, resulting in performance drops

[h3]Gameplay preview (work in progress)[/h3]

We'd like to show you an early look at the gameplay we've been working on recently. We're changing and adding a lot to get the build up to Steam Next Fest. In the video, you can see a snippet of gameplay with a village for players to take over. Along the way, the player may encounter some AT guns, which are also part of the mission.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Would you like to see such a mission in the upcoming demo? :)

[h3]User Interface[/h3]

We are in the process of designing and replacing the temporary working interface in the game with something more final that we would like to have in the game. Extensive work is underway on the in-game interface. Below are some mockups showing what you can more or less expect in the game. We want to allow players to configure what they want to be visible. For example, if someone wants full realism without any UI - go ahead. If you want a more minimalistic UI, go ahead. The mockup below shows almost everything that could theoretically appear on the interface. In practice, this is unlikely to happen. Some things will be hidden and only visible by activating tactical mode (T button) to show additional information.



Here, in turn, the following mock-up shows what this may already look like during the game. For example, only:

• markers from the main / side objectives
  
• minimap
  
• compass
  
• vehicle HUD & weapon status
  
• hints
  

We are currently testing enemy markers - they do not show up immediately. They are only visible from a certain distance - we want to try to make them more interactive, e.g. when someone in the crew or a tank from another squad spots the enemy.



Here is a mockup of the interface when spawning a unit or depot. You can see the map with the current objectives on the mission as well as the revival points.



Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 51st Development Status. You can see what we were working on in two weeks!

[h3]New weapons for infantry[/h3]
With addition to the new unity and squad system, we have introduced two new semi automatic rifles to complete the various squad variants for both Wehrmacht and Red Army. Both rifles will be issued with the “Senior Rifleman” unit class. For Wehrmacht and Red Army squad structure usually there was at least one soldier equipped with such a weapon. Of course, this was not always the case, squad line-ups would vary but for the game, something has to be adopted

Gewehr 41
The Gewehr 41, commonly known as the G41(W) or G41(M), denoting the manufacturer (Walther or Mauser), are two distinct and different battle rifles manufactured and used by Nazi Germany during World War II.


SVT-40
The SVT-40 is a Soviet semi-automatic battle rifle that saw widespread service during and after World War II. It was intended to be the new service rifle of the Soviet Red Army, but its production was disrupted by the German invasion in 1941, resulting in a change back to the Mosin–Nagant rifle for the duration of World War II.


[h3]VFX[/h3]
This week we started working on the final look of VFX’es. Our new shaders react to environment lighting and are deeply customizable in that manner. Because of that, we have enough artistic freedom to enhance all sorts of smokes and fires, and at the same time maintain a realistic look.

Our new basic shader model

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
New particles in action

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Lighting capabilities of smoke

With the option to light our smokes, we can achieve much better volumetric effects, without using actual volumetrics. That approach is much more hardware friendly.

[h3]Vehicles[/h3]

In recent weeks we have implemented German and Soviet vehicles into the game, which will be available and used during missions in the first campaign in the game. In addition to the Tiger I, there are already PzKpfw IV Ausf. H or PzKpfw III Ausf. M in the game.


For the Soviet side, we are configuring KV-1 and T-34/76. Both are drivable but not yet fully implemented. As we mentioned earlier during the German campaign players will be able to take over enemy vehicles if they are not destroyed completely. When a tank is damaged but possible to repair, it can be taken to a repair station to restore combat capability.



[h3]Optimisation[/h3]
Ensuring excellent game performance is our top priority, which is why we have temporarily halted the development of new features and dedicated our efforts to an additional optimization process. This involves optimizing various aspects of the game, such as tank physics (including wheels and tracks), environment rendering, AI behavior, and character performance. Additionally, we have fine-tuned quality settings, ranging from low to the highest settings available.



In terms of the environment, we have focused on optimizing shadow casting, configuring the level of detail (LODs) to balance performance and visual quality, and implementing impostors for distant objects. Impostors are 2D representations of 3D models that are used when the objects are located far away from the player's viewpoint, enhancing performance without sacrificing visual fidelity.

We are monitoring the game's performance primarily through two key indicators: the number of batches and frames per second (FPS). By implementing optimization techniques, we have successfully reduced the number of batches by approximately fifty percent in certain scenes, leading to improved performance and smoother gameplay.



Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals