Squad News

Attention Squaddies,

We are very happy to announce that the next update for Squad will be coming on August 24th! This update will focus on some fine tuning of weapons, kits, vehicles and of course, game performance.
As we announced in the last Developer Q&A, we are taking the time with our next few updates to go through the optimization process of Squad to help with performance. Our focus is on doing it right, ensuring the larger scale changes make a performance difference, and do not degrade visual quality, or create new technical debt. Changes coming with 3.2 are some of the smaller, easy improvements that we are knocking off our list as we look to the bigger performance areas we need to tackle.

In addition to the 3.2 update, we’ve already started on an ongoing series of art review and asset optimization passes to reduce performance cost and fix technical issues, including LODs, texture memory, collision, lighting UVs and shadows among others.

Long-term improvements such as map-by-map asset audit, simplifying overly-complex assets and the like will come later down the line. Expect to hear more from us again on this topic as we continue our commitment to deliver more updates!

On the side of weapon tweaks, you will be excited to learn that the BRDM and BTR80 have been buffed, and that Sapper and Combat Engineers will receive more AT mines to deploy. The mines will now only explode when a vehicle drives directly over the mine with its wheels/tracks. And finally let’s not skip over the improved new vehicle gunner smoke effects that we hope you’ll appreciate!

While this update is of a smaller scale compared to a major one like 3.0, we are still looking forward to hearing your reactions and feedback. Everyone on the Squad team would like to thank our players, partners, and server owners for their continued support. We’ve been keeping a close eye on all of your feedback related to 3.0, and appreciate everyone that has taken the time to share their thoughts and feedback with us. This feedback has been helping to further drive our development focus for the upcoming months.

Be sure to check back next week for our Release Notes which will have the full list of additions, and fixes coming to the game in v3.2.

At ease,

- Offworld Industries

Attention Squaddies,

After a series of updates to Squad over the course of 2022 we wanted to touch base with you, our community of players, and update you on a few goings on with the game and behind the scenes here at Offworld!





The next update to Squad will be v3.2.

At the end of last year we set ourselves the goal of improving not only communication with you, but also delivering on a number of the promises that we have made over the years. We really wanted to start this year on the right foot, and work to demonstrate our commitment to Squad and to our community of players.

In 2022 so far we have released monthly Updates including a significant overhaul of our lighting and shadows systems, two new factions (the Australian Army and the American marine forces), and other improvements to the game. The team has been working incredibly hard to deliver these updates, and address issues with them through quick hotfixes when required. We’re really proud of the progress that has been made.

While it’s still too early to share a date for v3.2, we are currently on track to release at the end of August. This means that July will be the first month in a while that we spend working on Squad without releasing an update. We know that you’ve recently experienced a monthly schedule for updates, so we wanted to let you know before you start wondering where this month’s update is.

Now that we’ve pushed out a ton of great content, V3.2 will feature bug fixes, and various updates meant to improve Squad’s performance. We’ve seen a lot of requests for this focus from our community, and this is another step to ensure we are paying active attention to the feedback you all provide us with. We are already working to test some of these in our Closed Playtest Sessions with select members of the community.

We will have more details about v3.2 as it gets closer to release, and are looking forward to sharing those!





As many of you know, we have been looking to hire a Community Manager for Squad for the past few months following OWI_Krispy’s move back home to the United Kingdom. We still miss Krispy, but are delighted to announce that we have found Squad’s new Community Manager! They’re working on getting up to speed on the ins and outs of the community, and you’ll be meeting them later this week.

This addition will allow us to further level up the community team and begin to really focus on providing our players, Server Owners, Partners, and other community members with the best possible connection to Offworld Industries. More hands on deck always ups the ante on what we can do!

This also means that OWI_Wedge will slowly be transitioning to a bit more of a behind the scenes role and won’t be quite as visible in the Squad community. You may see other refinements as well over the coming weeks and months.

While we don’t want to talk too much about what we have planned at this point, more regular Development Diaries sharing what’s going on behind the scenes at Offworld Industries, and letting you know what the focus of our next release will be is a goal for our team. We are also looking at our Developer Q&As to see how we can make them more informative and useful to a wider audience.





One of the things that we will be doing in these Development Diaries is to share a bit of a peek behind the scenes here at Offworld. While not directly affecting you as a player, we hope a look at the goings on behind the scenes of the development of the game might be illuminating and add a bit more flavour!

It’s summer time here in New Westminster, British Columbia, a city just outside of Vancouver. The past few weeks the team has been preparing to move into our new offices, and many of the members of our development teams who have been working remotely will be starting back in the office a few days a week.

On days off the past few weeks many of the team came into the studio to help put together furniture, move in computers, and get the studio ready for operation. The OWI IT team had an epic weekend long move to set up our new infrastructure and were able to minimize disruptions to game development, ensuring that both the Squad and Beyond The Wire teams had everything they needed for their first days back in the office!

Offworld will continue to be a mixture of remote and in-studio development teams, but the opening of a new office and the resumption of in-person work is a big step for the studio.

We look forward to bringing you all more Squad updates, more Squad news, and introducing our newest Community Manager to you all very soon!

At ease,

OFFWORLD OUT.

Attention Squaddies,

Today we are releasing Squad Hotfix v3.1, which specifically aims to address some of the issues introduced into the game by last week’s v3.0 Update (LINK URL).

We would like to thank all of the players who used our forums (LINK URL) and other channels to report their experiences with the game. If you have further issues please report them on our forums.

Thank you to all of you for your continued support of Squad and your patience as we work to resolve these issues.

At ease,

- Offworld Industries




[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed a client crash “CreateUnorderedAccessView”, this was caused by a new water compute shader not being compatible with older machines / older GPU drivers.
  
• Fixed a client crash when returning to the main menu. This was related to the waterline post process.
  
• Fixed a client crash when loading into a map regarding replication of vehicle seats.
  
• Fixed an issue with vehicles getting launched into space after being in the water, causing very poor FPS (
• Fixed an issue with log spam "STEAM Rules response", reducing the log size on clients.
  
• Optimized networking of the environment interaction component to improve server network performance.
  
• Fixed an issue AUS F88 (old) scope water invisible through
  
• Fixed CAF Coyote ARV turret not passing damage to the vehicle.
  
• Fixed M1151 CROWS using the wrong map marker icon.
  
• Fixed an issue with USMC AAVP seat configuration on certain variants, unifying the seat configuration to 1 driver + 11 passengers.
  
• Adjusted USMC AAVP Mk19 automatic grenade launcher to improve gameplay balance:
  
• Rearm cost was increased to 75 ammo points per magazine (up from 8)
  
• Time to rearm one magazine was increased to 45 seconds (up from 3)
  
• Amount of magazines that could be rearmed at once was limited to 1
  
• Currently loaded magazine can’t be rearmed anymore (operator will need to load a new magazine for the current one to be rearmed/refilled)
  
• Projectile spread cone angle was increased to 50 MOA (up from 35)Fixed an issue with all RUS faction deployables not having a cost or limit on the Black Coast map layers.
  
• Fixed an issue with USMC LAV25 ARV woodland variant requiring Crewman kit for both the Commander seat and Pintle mounted MG seat. No special kit is required for these 2 vehicle positions.
  

[h2]Map Updates & Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Al Basrah AAS v3 - Fixed INS minsk bikes not spawning.
  
• Black Coast RAAS v1 - Adjusted one of USMC’s helipad proximity to trees.
  
• Black Coast RAAS v3 - Fixed Subpen being available in the CP pool.
  
• Black Coast Seed v1 - Fixed USMC Main’s protection zone allowing USMC soldiers to survive as frogs.
  
• Goose Bay Invasion v4 - Fixed RUS Main missing repair stations and RUS helicopter pad not having rearm/repair and ammo/construction resupply.
  
• Jensens Range v3 - Fixed USMC UH1Y helicopter exploding on spawn.
  

[h2]Troubleshooting[/h2]

•  Clear Cache to resolve residual issues If you are experiencing issues, be sure to go to Settings -> “CLEAR CACHE” after updating.
  

Attention Squaddies

Today we are releasing Squad Hotfix v3.0.1, which specifically aims to address some of the issues introduced into the game by yesterday’s v3.0 Update (LINK URL).

We would like to thank all of the players who used our forums (LINK URL) and other channels to report their experiences with the game. If you have further issues please report them on our forums.

Thank you to all of you for your continued support of Squad and your patience as we work to resolve these issues.

At ease,

- Offworld Industries

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Attention Squaddies,

Squad’s v3.0 update is now live for players to download.

For details on what’s in this latest update visit our Release Notes which we posted yesterday (LINK URL).

To report any technical issues you might experience after updating to v3.0 please share them on our forums (LINK URL).

Thank you for your attention.

At ease,

– Offworld Industries