Six Days in Fallujah News

Our highly anticipated Autumn update is coming, and we’re taking a closer look here at another major change coming to the live game. This brand-new mechanic adds a powerful new tool that can fundamentally change the many ways players approach modern combat. Introducing the Command Overlay.

Please remember all assets shown are currently a work-in-progress.

We created GO! Commands because it must be as easy for you to give orders to your team as it is to fire your weapon. Old-fashioned radial menus slow things down too much to be real. You must be able to point and tap a button. It’s about speed, efficiency, and command and control.

Hundreds of thousands of players have played Six Days, and we’ve watched their gameplay very closely. For the trained military veterans in our community, diving into our simulation of modern combat is like another day in the office. Actions and strategy are like breathing; real-world tactics are second-nature.

DEVELOPER COMMENT
In real-world combat, you don’t have time to think. Just do.

Our new Command Overlay offers three big advantages:

1. It instantly reveals tactical options that are unique to each situation.
   
2. It broadens the number of commands you can issue your team.
   
3. It lets you issue complex orders with a tap.

Previously, when holding the GO! button, players could execute one of four specific fireteam commands we’ve been calling “GO! Commands.” These are Suppress, Watch, Move, and Form Up. Now, besides offering this same set of GO! Commands, holding the GO! Button will also display 3-5 commands within the game world itself that are unique to each situation. Pointing at one of them and releasing the GO! Button executes the command. It’s that simple.


Commands are recommended to the player based on their specific combat circumstances. For example, commands suggested when house-clearing vary from those suggested when fighting in Fallujah’s city streets. Consider these “smart” suggestions in the field that take the many, many factors for both the environment and combat into account.


What’s more, these suggestions can be executed, or not. The choice is yours. But, we encourage players to at least consider the many tactical options at their fingertips.

DEVELOPER COMMENT
The Command Overlay is designed to make issuing complex commands easier than ever before, providing additional ways to command your fireteam without removing functionality. For example, with the Command Overlay you can now order your fireteam to clear staircases, rooms, and corners with just one tap. More of these kinds of commands will be added in future updates.


For those worried the overlay will “play the game for you”—we’re not interested in hand-holding. We’re interested in making it as quick and simple for you to issue orders as possible, and in broadening the tactical options in front of you. Rather than tasking your mind with how to issue an order, the Command Overlay lets you focus your attention on making the best tactical choices. In all cases, which option you chose is entirely up to you.

Finally, this is the first iteration of the Command Overlay. We plan to support this system over time, adding more fireteam commands that provide the real-world tactics required for mission success.

The Command Overlay will only be as useful as the fireteam executing your orders. As a reminder, players can expect an upgraded version of Fireteam AI with this update. Improvements include:

• Pathfinding
  • Replaced Unreal’s navigation system with a third-party solution
    • Significantly reduced the number of gaps in our nav mesh, causing Fireteam AI to get stuck less often
      
    • Smoother movement between Fireteam AI characters
      
    • Less harsh collision between Fireteam AI characters
• Movement
  • Fewer cases of blocking the player
    • Will go around or behind
  • Improved positioning when both holding and firing
    • Previously occupied the most optimal firing position (which could sometimes be where the player was standing)
  • Improved room clearing
    • Now follow exterior walls instead of cutting straight through rooms
      
    • Properly pan doors, staircases, and windows
• Combat response
  • Reduced cases of not properly engaging enemies
    
  • Reduced cases of repeating the same lethal action leading to AI death

A big thanks to our players for the passion and commitment as we continue development through Early Access to cross Six Days over the finish line!

Join the community conversation and offer us feedback on our official Discord server!

https://discord.gg/SixDaysGame

Our Autumn update will bring many exciting changes to Six Days. This SITREP describes what may look like a small feature, but it’s one that you’ll feel every time you play. Based on community feedback, we’re adding another player state to our health system.

Please remember all assets shown are currently a work-in-progress.

Previously, after taking excessive damage, players became incapacitated. In this state, players exclusively relied on their fireteam for defense and protection. And, movement was extremely limited.

Now, players enter a new “Wounded” state after taking excessive damage. This new, timed state allows slightly faster movement than incapacitated. And, for the first time in Six Days, players can now use their sidearms to stay in the fight even if they’re wounded.

DEVELOPER COMMENT
With the new Wounded state, players will now experience the following phases of damage to their health with the Autumn update: Full Health > Bleeding (self-heal possible) > WOUNDED > Incapacitated.

Keep in mind that you cannot revive yourself while Wounded (no second winds here), and you cannot fire your sidearm while you’re actively being revived. However, players now have more control over positioning, and they can take a “Last Stand” before throwing in the towel and becoming incapacitated.

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We believe the new Wounded State introduces more quality of life to our combat and health models, and we hope this leads to more mission success!

As always, we welcome more community comments and feedback on this major gameplay change coming soon. We’re anxious to hear your thoughts, and we can’t wait for everyone to experience the latest iteration of Six Days. Thank you for your support!

Join the community conversation and offer us feedback on our official Discord server!

https://discord.gg/SixDaysGame

Six Days in Fallujah is now 35% off during the Steam Autumn Sale!

Experience the first-person tactical military shooter that recreates true stories of Marines, Soldiers, and Iraqi civilians during the toughest urban battle since 1968. With eight Procedural missions, two narrative campaign missions, and a battlefield that changes every single time you play, you'll never know what to expect - just like actual combat.

The promotion ends with the Autumn Sale on Monday, October 6th.

Grab your copy here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1548850/Six_Days_in_Fallujah/

Today's patch is a small maintenance patch to keep our backend up to date. Patch 0.4.3.2 is now available on Steam!

Please restart the Steam client to download the latest build.

BUG FIXES

• Performed maintenance on our backend in accordance with Epic Online Services
  

For a full list of bugs we're currently tracking, please see our Known Issues.

Join the community conversation and offer us feedback on our official Discord server!

https://discord.gg/SixDaysGame

Our next major content update is coming this Autumn, and we’re taking a deep dive into the latest iteration of our Fireteam AI, including major improvements to our AI pathfinding and navigation system. Please keep in mind that our job’s not done yet with this release, though—you’ll still see many more improvements after this.

Please remember all assets shown are currently a work-in-progress.

All game development ultimately comes down to performance. All games must find every opportunity to reduce the burden on the processor wherever possible. One way 3D shooters do this is by pre-calculating and “baking” AI pathfinding, hints, scripted behaviors, and much more, into the level’s geometry when it is built, so much less computation is necessary at runtime.

Typically, AI operate on invisible paths that are integrated into the level geometry when the mission is created. These are pre-determined and pre-set, which means that once a map is built, polished, and tested in most 3D shooters, the map is deemed finished, and designers move on to the next.

This approach comes at the cost of a static—and therefore, arcadey—game world. Players memorize fixed positions of doorways, staircases, hallways, windows, and courtyards. And, tied to these fixed locations are enemies, who are able to spawn only in a very limited number of places. These “threats” can be anticipated, practiced, rehearsed, and cheesed. We believe this isn’t an accurate simulation of real-world combat.

What’s more, AI have more space to navigate in other games. Most 3D shooters make the rooms artificially larger than real life, the doors wider, and environments less congested. This gives both friendly and enemy AI much more freedom in their navigation. From the very start, the environments in most 3D shooters are built to minimize as much of the technical challenge as possible. In contrast, our actual-scale building geometry requires an even higher level of AI pathing sophistication as all these AI try to navigate around and support each other in tight environments while simultaneously trying to gain the upper hand in fast-moving gunfights. Urban combat is chaotic, and so is our game.

And then, on top of this, there’s the problem of clutter across the environment. Many Six Days missions, like the Northern Train Station, contain tons of debris from partially destroyed buildings. And this debris comes in all different shapes, sizes, and heights. Just getting AI to navigate environments like this is a challenge, much less giving them the intelligence to understand what they can use for cover, how to lean around debris, and how to take advantage of all this debris during combat.

Most 3D shooters avoid all three of these huge technical challenges – for very good reasons! But we do not have these luxuries in Six Days in Fallujah. As a matter of fact, we’ve done quite the opposite of our competitors so we can offer procedurally generated environments that you can’t memorize, environments that feel as claustrophobic as real life, and battlefields cluttered with the consequences of battle.

All of this forced us to re-invent many of the AI “shortcuts” games have used for years. It created an absurdly difficult challenge.

DEVELOPER COMMENT
With a nearly unlimited number of possibilities for the geometry, our AI is blind. It’s impossible for our AI to completely know the terrain. So, with every single action, we perform an analysis of the environment that dictates how Fireteam AI will respond. This analysis also considers exterior factors like number of threats and enemy positions. Our system is anything but automated, which comes at a great development and performance cost.

Making things even more difficult is that the Unreal Engine was not originally designed to do many of the things we’re now asking it to do with our AI. It has taken us a long time to realize this, but many of the underlying causes for deficiencies in our Fireteam AI aren’t actually in our code. We’re pushing Unreal Engine’s AI navigation systems so hard that we’ve exposed deficiencies. And, because these deficiencies sit inside the foundation supporting our entire game code, changing them now is like digging out the dirt underneath pillars that are holding up a bridge—while cars are crossing the bridge.

To do this, we’ve spent the last five months ripping Unreal’s AI navigation system out of our code and replacing it with a third-party solution. And here’s where things gets tricky. This AI navigation system isn’t just a single pillar. It has hundreds of connections throughout our code. In reality, we’re ripping out a full 3-mile stretch supporting hundreds of pillars holding up the bridge, all at the same time.

DEVELOPER COMMENT
The paths an AI character can follow inside a level are called a “Navigation Mesh.” Nav meshes are like carpets, and the AI can only walk where there’s carpet. One of the problems with Unreal’s nav mesh technology is that it creates islands. These are like gaps, or holes, in the carpet. When Fireteam AI get stuck in our game, it’s not because they don’t have the logic to know where to go—it’s because they physically cannot get there. Until now, we’ve had to spend absurd amounts of resources fixing these islands on a case-by-case basis.

These screenshots show some differences in how Unreal Engine’s navigation meshes (which is what we have been using until now) provide information to AI characters about where they can stand and move. Notice how the blue nav mesh (our old method) covers much less territory than the green mesh (the new method).

Our new tools ensure there are far fewer gaps in our navigation mesh, or carpet. What this means, to the player, is Fireteam AI pathfinding is not only more reliable than it used to be, but it’s also more natural. Paths chosen by AI will be more “human” with curves and bends instead of robotic lines that cut through the terrain. This also means Fireteam AI avoidance is more natural, too. Because we’ve improved pathing, their movement is also smoother around one another. Marines can more reliably pass by one another, anticipate one another’s positions, and collision between characters is less harsh.

Notice how the old nav mesh system left gaps in this staircase, causing AI to get stuck on stairs. The new system fixes this.

Now that we’ve addressed many of the navigation issues, we’ve also been able to address many other problems, some of which are able to leverage the new AI pathfinding system. In our Autumn update, players should expect:

• Fewer cases of blocking the player
  • Will go around or behind
• Improved positioning when both holding and firing
  • Previously, they’d occupy the most optimal firing position (which could sometimes be where the player was standing)
• Improved combat response
  • Fewer cases of repeating the same lethal action leading to AI death
• Improved room clearing
  • Now follow exterior walls instead of cutting straight through rooms
  • Properly pan doors, staircases, and windows

With all this being said, we want to remind everyone how massive an undertaking Fireteam AI can be, and as a result—edge-cases still exist. Fixing problems in one area can expose problems in another. There will be more improvements needed. However, we’ve massively reduced the challenge associated with their development with this update, we’ve created a much stronger foundation for future improvements, and we’re excited for the long list of improvements that will hit the live game in the coming months.

As always, a huge thank you to our community for the support! Your reports, comments, and feedback have shaped Fireteam AI into the best iteration Six Days has seen to date, and we hope you’ll continue to share your thoughts as we progress through Early Access and beyond.

Join the community conversation and offer us feedback on our official Discord server!

https://discord.gg/SixDaysGame