Beasts of Steel News

Hello everyone!

Those of you who are on Discord will know about all of what's going to follow, as this post is meant for those just looking at the page of the game on Steam from time to time.

First of all, welcome if you're new! I appreciate you're taking the time to read through this :)

Now, I know it's been a while since any changelog were published, the reason is that I am still actively working on my first published game and it takes a huge amount of my time. Working on two projects at the same time is a daunting task, especially when you are the only programmer!

My brother and associate however is focusing only on BoS, but modelling and texturing is a very slow process, he also recently had to learn a bunch of new tools and technics (to work on buildings) so this took time too.

We are currently working on making a brand new map, with all of the new tools we have acquired in the last few months.

So, yeah! That multiplayer upgrade is well under way now, we have played several playtests since then, finally with all vehicles unlocked! So, it's playable :)

I have also started reworking the ballistics of all projectiles in the game to have a super-duper detailed ballistics system with as much control as one can have, example screenshot:


Since we have over 184 weapons currently, this will take a little while to complete... Remember, I'm the only programmer, and some weapons have up to 5 or more types of shells, so this is a really time consuming task. BUT, this is for the best, we will end up having a super nice ballistics system which goes really in depth.

As part of this ballistics upgrade, I have actually finally started working on an actual 'dispersion' system for projectiles. Previously (currently) projectiles obviously have realistic physics, but the thing is they will have a perfect parabolic trajectory. No wind, no nothing. So I am working on that too, using some real life accuracy tables, which will be on a per shell type basis...

All of this on top of still actively working on our first game while maintaining a social life is obviously hard and comes at a cost... of time!

Hope you all guys can understand, it's not a 30 people team here, nor a 10, but a two people team (with external help from the community, we love you guys!)

Will be publishing more news when stuff is actually over, take care in the meantime ;)

[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]
● Re organized a big chunk of the netcode, hopefully making it more efficient :)
● Changed the way of notifying players of a host change during the game (now in the chat instead of in the killfeed).
● Frontline line of defense 1 now allows armoured cars on both sides.
● Moved flags a little on Conquest.


[h3]FIXED:[/h3]
● Zooming in on sight when in the middle of the 'animation' of aiming down would keep the camera zoomed in even though you cancelled the aiming down right after starting it.
● Kills with grenades if the player died after he threw the grenade would not be registered.
● After reloading a static weapon, the amount of ammo available would not be refreshed until you fired the first shot.
● You could kill Tiger II (H) crew members inside the tankby doing some weird ricochets outside the hull, getting inside the tank.
● Campaign not starting anymore.
● Paratroopers attack gamemode would not allow any infantry to be spawned by the player.

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]
● M3 Lee american tank with brand new armour model and physics system.
● New Steam achievement: Geneva convention (Kill an enemy medic while he is tending to someone else).
● New Steam achievement: What about the rules?? (Kill an enemy medic as a medic).
● Door logic. Doors can be opened or closed.


[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]
● Updated the armour model and colliders of the Sherman M4A3E8.
● Minor optimizations.


[h3]FIXED:[/h3]
● Units Encyclopedia: Armour hit angle when testing armour was offsetted by 90 degrees (like correct angle value + 90 deg).
● Ping value shown in the lobby was wrong.
● Time values like 'ms' or 's' were not properly being localized/translated.

Hello everyone!

Before the game releases to the public, in Early Access, there are 3 major points we need to address.

One of those 3 points is the upgrade of the multiplayer. Currently, our multiplayer system/API is slowly becoming 'outdated'.
It was first released in 2011, and did not target high player counts. It is already a miracle we've made it support up to 40 players by optimizing the netcode as much as possible.

Therefore, to support an ever bigger community and have even better performances while playing in multiplayer, an upgrade of the system is required. Work has already started.
We are switching to a newer system/API, which was designed in 2019, and is basically an improved version of our old multiplayer solution.

Nonetheless, there are major differences when it comes as how things work, and how data/state should be exchanged/synced, and this will require a huge amount of work on my end (hello, I'm the only programmer) to update the entire netcode the game currently features.

It goes without saying that it will take me some time to upgrade the entire project, weeks, probably, but this is for the best, for the future of this game.
I am slowly but surely getting acquainted with the new system, I still have some stuff I need to figure out how to convert from the old system, but I'll get there.

Just making this little post to keep you guys updated as to what's happening behind the curtains, and also so that you don't freak out if there are no updates for a while...

The Closed Beta is still running though, and you can still join by requesting access to it in our Discord server

See you on the battlefield,

Val

[h3]ADDED:[/h3]
● M3 Half Track to United Kingdom.
● Missing winter camo for all wheels of wheeled vehicles.
● New winter camo for Puma armoured car.


[h3]CHANGED:[/h3]
● M5A1 Stuart armour modelling and colliders.
● M36 Jackson armour modelling and colliders.
● M8 Greyhound winter camo and armour modelling and colliders.
● M26 Pershing armour modelling and colliders.
● M24 Chaffee armour modelling and colliders.


[h3]FIXED:[/h3]
● Being crushed by a vehicle (as infantry) would show a white square as weapon used in the Death UI.
● If more than one game was hosted, every time one game refreshed its data in the lobby (ping...) all games would disappear from the list, and only one would stay (the one that updated some data last).
● If you were healing a player, and during the healing process the player died, the UI would still display the healing UI even though you were actually reviving the player.
● If you joined a game mid-game, as a medic, you would not see the 'downed player' icon of downed player (revivable). If you were to revive them somehow, the revived player would not display its nickname but a generic 'infantry' name.