Squad News

[p]Hello Squaddies,[/p][p][/p][p]As some of you may know, we just finished up what we initially believed would be our final 9.0 Unreal 5 public playtest. Based on earlier results and performance improvements, it felt like a strong candidate for  release. However, the transition from 5.3 to 5.5 uncovered new challenges that hadn’t appeared in previous tests. We’ve since taken time to review a lot of valuable feedback from the community, and it’s clear there are still areas to improve. As a result, we have decided to regroup and rethink our plans for the 9.0 release.[/p][p][/p][p]So, what happens now? We are actively assessing and planning our next steps for 9.0 and how its release impacts the rest of the year. We will be posting another Letter from the Squad Leader mid next week to give everyone a general update on where we landed and what to expect.[/p][p][/p][p]I wanted to thank everyone for giving their honest and open feedback. Your input continues to shape the path forward and is deeply valued by the entire team. Thank you for continuing to support us through this transition to Unreal 5.
[/p][p]Like I mentioned before, expect to see more information about our next steps next week. Closed playtesting will continue to take place (More info here http://discord.gg/testsquad) as well as more “final final” public playtests. ;)[/p][p]
Thanks, Squaddies!
[/p][p]\[O] Howitzer[/p][p]
[/p]

[h2]Listen up, Squaddies!
[/h2][p]Unreal Engine 5 Public Playtest #5 is coming this Friday, July 11th 11:00am PDT!

THIS WILL BE OUR FINAL PUBLIC TEST FOR UNREAL ENGINE 5.

Here’s what to expect:

You will need to download a special Playtesting Branch of Squad, that has already been released, with access to Servers on Friday around 11am PDT. There will be multiple servers being hosted by Community names that you will know and recognize! Feel free to play wherever you like, but servers will open and close to accommodate the population needs! The general public will not be given access to the Server hosting branch for testing. There is a special Squad Testing Discord that is open to the public. Please be aware that all the normal Squad Community server rules apply in this server as well. Please refer to the onboarding channels for help if you need it! [/p][p]We have included some known issues in this post, but anything that you come up against can be reported in the previously mentioned Discord Server for testing. Testing will run over the weekend and end on Monday July 14th 11:00AM PDT, and then the UE5 Servers will be taken down. We are also hoping you can take the time to fill out a survey for us, answering some questions about your experience during testing. This will be available IN GAME, in the News Box on the main menu. We will send out a reminder of this later on as well, as it will be accessible through Discord too.
[/p][h3]The Important Stuff[/h3][p][/p][p]In place of a change log this week, we have some information to update you on regarding PiP (Picture in Picture) scopes, from \[O] Norby! [/p][p][/p][p]"We have a new implementation for the pip scopes. Why is the pip rendering such a big challenge? For high magnification optics like in Squad we need to render two scenes for the different magnification levels. Rendering creates load on the CPU, which is issuing the render commands and on the GPU. In the worst case it cuts the frame rate in half. [/p][p]Our goal is to have the same frame rate in pip mode as outside of pip. For that we need to address both bottlenecks. For the GPU the most efficient way to gain performance is rendering less pixels. We can do that for the outside scene, since there is a blur effect applied anyway. [/p][p]For the render thread we have the benefit that we're always looking in the same direction with both views. This allows us to do optimizations similar to VR to reuse resources for both views. [/p][p]The biggest challenge with this is handling the transition of render states smoothly. We pre-allocate resources when kits are switched and are spreading some of the transitions over multiple frames to reduce hitching." [/p][p]-Norby[/p][p][/p][p]We did add a bunch of fixes that came in since the last playtest, but we will be saving those for the Patch Notes of the 9.0 release, once it arrives. We are aware of a few persisting bugs, including some hitching during ADS animations, some black frames inside PiP scopes, and an issue where a portion of the PiP screen can get duplicated. [/p][p][/p][p]Join the discussion in Discord, and we hope to see you over the weekend![/p][p][/p][h2]OFFWORLD OUT[/h2]

[p][/p][p]Today we are releasing a Hotfix for both Player facing and Server side. This update is intending on resolving a PING issue that Servers were experiencing that caused servers to seem like they had a ping of 9999! You will need to update your game in order to play. That's all for today! Stay tuned for more news on the UE5 release in the coming weeks! [/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[h2]“We've intercepted new transmissions. Ready to receive!”
[/h2][p]Listen up Squaddies. The Steam Summer Sale is here! From June 26th - 10 AM PT (GMT-7) until July 10th - 10 AM PT (GMT-7), save 60% off on Squad! Now is a great time to join Squad, as we are currently working towards our most significant update yet, moving Squad to Unreal Engine 5!

[/p][p]Check out our upcoming UE5 Update Devblog HERE, and join the Squad Discord to discuss all things Squad.
[/p][h3]Offworld Out.[/h3][p]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/393380/Squad/[/p]

[h2]ATTN Squaddies![/h2][p]
Today we are releasing a small Client side update to our Anti-cheat. This will not affect servers, but you will need to update your game in order to play. [/p][p][/p][p]That's all for today! Stay tuned for more news on the UE5 release in the coming weeks!
[/p][h3]OFFWORLD OUT![/h3]