Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront News

Community members! We are about to publish Community Update 2, after a short and successful open beta. The purpose of the beta was met; no technical issues were found. The suggestions from our feedback channel will be considered for future updates.

Since we’ve already revealed the majority of changes in development updates 126 and 127, you probably already know that this update brings quite a bit of change, to say the least.
Meanwhile, the entire franchise is on sale; the discount is insane!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15829/Call_to_Arms__Complete/

The sale ends March 23rd, get it while you can & tell all your friends!


Our “content updates” add content to the game that we desire as a developer studio; in contrast, “community updates” add changes to the game that have been requested by you, the community. If you are a regular on the official GoH Discord server, you’ve probably noticed that it features channels in which you can drop your suggestions. There are other sources for that too of course, but nowadays our Discord server is the real life of the party.
We are incredibly proud of our Discord community, which is always active and helping new players become a part of it.
With over 15.000 currently active Discord members you can expect to find out almost anything you want to know about GoH in the blink of an eye.

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Since we’ve already listed most of the changes in previous blogs, this blog is just a quick rundown of the main talking points. These are the main changes:

• Bot Update Part 1: bot behavior has been improved, influencing Conquest and PvE multiplayer
  
• Sound Overhaul Part 1: updated sounds for Small arms weapons and improved overall soundscape
  
• A huge number of new human skins has been added both the Germans and Soviets
  
• We’ve added 8 new maps to conquest

As usual we have prepared a change log for you, explaining all changes and details. It features more than 150 changes!

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Having said that, this doesn’t mean we’re done. We’re currently starting work on yet another update, however there is no date set for that at the moment.
Just as we promised, Community Update 2 will be free & available to all players.


When you launch the game after the new update, you might feel the firearms sound unbalanced. The new soundscape is designed to be balanced when the effects, vocal emotes and environment sliders in your audio settings are set to the same level. We recommend you max out these levels and then adjust down with the master volume as needed.




Besides game improvements, you probably know we’re developing the next faction at the moment. It’s turning out very nicely, and we’re all pretty excited to see it take shape. We’ve already dropped a number of hints and there’s a fair number of theories going around about the next faction. Many of them seem plausible at first sight, but are they?
We will keep the wait to a minimum, stay tuned.

That’s it for now, thanks for stopping by; tell us in the comments if you spot your suggestion in that ridiculously long changelog, and don’t forget to tell your friends about the sale!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15829/Call_to_Arms__Complete/

Community members! In our previous updates, we announced a pretty big overhaul of humanskins and sound. Both of these will be introduced when we push our next update. But what we haven’t told you yet is what else will be included in what we call “Community Update 2”. This blog is all about the rework we have started to improve the behavior of bots in both conquest and multiplayer. We are sure this update will vastly improve the player experience. Like the small arms weapon sounds and skins overhaul, this will come your way in Community Update 2!


We have embarked on a rework of bot behavior. It’s nowhere near finished yet! A large part of the work will be included in Community update 2, the rest will come in a separate update. However, we can already highlight some important changes.
Reworking bots takes a very long time, since there are countless aspects to work on. Our goal for this update was to improve the AI bots’ perceived intelligence to provide a greater challenge for players while also reducing the need for the bot to spam as many units. We also addressed pre- existing bugs that were inherent to this version of the game engine.

For the upcoming update, we have focused our efforts to improve the bots in 3 main areas:
1. Separating Multiplayer and Conquest’s AI Bot logic
2. Improving the AI’s unit purchasing decisions
3. Improving the Bot’s unit behavior after spawning

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[h2]Separate logic[/h2]
So far, we were compelled to use the same bot logic for both MP and Conquest. Even though this enabled pretty much everything you need under most circumstances, there was room for improvement. We have now separated the logic.
Since they are now separate, bots for any game mode can be controlled completely independently. This results in better adaptability, which improves gameplay.

[h2]Purchasing[/h2]
We added the ability to control the timing of bots’ first unit purchases. In MP this means the bots get their first unit immediately just like players. In Conquest bots can have different "start" times depending on whether they are the attacker or the defender.
Previously, due to the file structure and the outdated scripts, bots would attempt to purchase “impossible” units from other time periods or units it couldn't afford; in other cases, it would try to get units that were still on cooldown timers. This would cause the purchase scripts to - unnecessarily - skip or loop endlessly. As a result it would take far too long before bots were buying valid units. We have improved this by updating the file structure so only the units for the current game mode and time period are considered along with adjusting the scripts to filter out units that are on cooldown or are too expensive. We are considering making an open beta branch available in order to allow modders (and anyone else) to anticipate the update, so everyone can try out the flexibility in this new structure. If we do an open beta, we will let you know.

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Another feature that is WIP, but which won't be quite ready for the next update, is the ability to track all the unit types and how many each player (bots and users) currently have. This will allow us to create new and more advanced scripts to improve the bot's purchase decision making based on the units the bot already has, and what the opponents have.

[h2]Unit behavior after spawn[/h2]
In Multiplayer, we added a new factor that improves the AI units' initial move order (the flag they choose to move towards after spawning). Bots will not only consider which team has captured a flag, now they will also consider the flag's location in relation to their own side of the map. Bots will prefer to capture flags on their own side and the flags along the centerline, before flags on the opposing team's side.

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On top of the bots’ global movement of troops, a lot of work has been invested in cleaning up the bot algorithms and scripts. This will ensure no negative performance, as well as bringing AI gameplay closer to what an ordinary human would do. For example: bot tanks, when spotting an enemy, will attempt to "gather" a squad of nearby bot soldiers and perform various actions, from advancing and attacking, to engaging from a static location. The additional infantry squad during this period helps to protect the tank and improve its vision if it does indeed advance.

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Our first community update was published about a year ago, and like last year’s, this community update intends to reward the continued support and constructive criticism we get from you, the Gates of Hell community. Community update 2 will be free for everyone of course.
As you may have spotted in one of the images in this blog, we will also add a bunch of DCG maps to this update. The list of additions is already quite long. If you missed our blog about humanskins and sounds, we recommend you check Development update 126 as well, which details work we have going on in those areas.

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Our beta testers are working their way through the update right now, and progress is good.
Community Update 2 will probably go live sometime this spring.
Would you agree this is going to be a sizable step up in quality of life for everyone? Let us know in the comments!

• Community update 2 is the 5th large & free update for Gates of Hell: Ostfront
  
• We will do a developer Q&A on our Discord server in March.
  
• We have a map design competition going on! This takes place on our Discord server as well.
  
• You can help spread the word on Gates of Hell by linking people to our LinkTree. Thanks for your support!

This year will be all about the next faction in Call to Arms - Gates of Hell. However, while progress is good, we are working hard to complete a number of things we’d like to improve. As the title already suggests, there are 2 main topics to this update; but there’s more.


We have been working on the next faction for quite a number of months already. Despite some strong beliefs here and there, it’s not going to be Denmark!
Right, now, we are focused on making content for the new faction. A lot has already been done, such as determining what specific organizational units we want to choose for the single player campaigns, which vehicles to add and much, much more. Progress is steady, which makes us optimistic about achieving our goals in 2023.


A lot of work has gone into a rework on “human skins”. We will be replacing 300+ existing skins with new ones, complete with their respective different seasonal appearances. The new skins are a step up in quality, and will be made available for all players in the next update. These skins will probably make for even more realistic and historically-correct screenshots that we’ve seen so far.
These skins are also mod friendly and modular. We have engineered them in such a way that modders can interchange parts of the skins to create their own variations, without needing to utilize 3d software or animate them. For example, you can easily swap a soviet head into a german uniform, or replace an early-war tunic with a late-war variant.

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As we have announced earlier, the next update will also contain a sound overhaul.
The sound overhaul will provide you with a new level of realism. You may have seen a small teaser here and there; but there’s way more to it than adjusting some weapon sounds. The sounds are divided into layers; we have updated the sounds themselves and changed the characteristics and layers, for instance when you’re in 3rd person.
Depending on the view you’re using in- game, you will be able to hear more than you did before. When you zoom in on your infantry, in 3rd person the mechanical layer of sound will be audible, so you can actually hear the weapon’s mechanical action happening. The fading of sound will be different and more realistic as well, based on the way sounds fade over distance in real life.
We think you will like the new sound design, it’s going to be more realistic than it is today for sure!

https://youtu.be/Z4u-Tx4ntZo


The next update will also bring new maps to the game! That will bring up the total number of maps to a new high; we’ll be more specific about these in the next blog.
While working on these - and on the sounds & skins - we’re working on improvements to the game. This is an everyday process in which we are focused on quality; not just quality of life, but anything from tweaks to missions to refinement of what we already have and - obviously - to fix bugs where we can. Our last change log contained well over 100 lines of documented improvements and additions, and this process is always ongoing.

One highly requested feature which is slowly coming to fruition are skippable cutscenes for the original Ostfront missions. Talvisota and Scorched Earth DLCs brought skippable cutscenes into the game, and we have re-designed all of the missions to support this now, in a way that remains friendly with the netcode synchronization.

That’s it for this blog, thanks for stopping by and see you on the battlefield!

• We started a new meta game on our Discord server. Join today and win a key to the next faction!
  
• You can help spread the word on Gates of Hell by linking people to our LinkTree
• We will announce a developer Q&A on the GoH Discord server soon! Join by clicking below:

[h2]Highlights[/h2]

• Fixed server crash introduced in last update related to move orders. Crash report ended in: "> scene: quant: vehicle:buq"
  
• Added ability to rebind the "pause" key
  
• Added feature in Conquest and the general Library view to allow users to select the Season (aka texture) of a unit.
  
• Added UI support for to display veterancy levels up to 15 on unit icon. (4 bits)
  

Hello everyone, we’re getting near the end of the year, and so it’s time to get you up to speed on the next update we have planned for you. This will be the 12th update of 2022, making for a nice average of one update every 4 weeks.
It comes with new content & some QoL changes, and it will be out soon.


We have worked on a lot of different areas, and the result is a vast improvement. We have added different kinds of content like new maps; at the same time, this update will also improve loading times while also reducing the total installation size. How did we do that? Keep reading!

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The total installation size has been reduced. Your game will load slightly quicker as a result. This is in spite of the fact that we have upgraded the Ostfront ground texture quality by 4 times to match the Talvisota visual standard, so you should be able to see a visual improvement in the original “Ostfront” maps, especially in third person mode!
The original set of maps will be expanded as well; we add 4 new maps to multiplayer!
All in all, the installation size will go down by about 1 GB and the optimization will take another step.

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Generally speaking, there’s always room for more Quality of Life. One of the QoL changes is the addition of many vehicle schematic icons, replacing the old and sometimes placeholder schematics.
Another one is the camera shake. The camera shake is one of those things people seem to either love or hate; from now on, it doesn’t matter anymore - the camera shake will become optional!
Another improvement has to do with vehicle damage. On most wheeled vehicles except half-tracks, damage was irreparable if the wheel was blown off; we have now introduced the ability to replace these wheels, which takes a long time for the crew to do, but prevents these vehicles from being permanently unusable, which used to be inconvenient in conquest in particular.

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As you have already come to expect from us, we are fixing glitches and issues all the time and this update brings a good number of them. Our previous changelog had 52 lines that started with the word “fixed”. For this update, we have prepared a detailed changelog once more, which will be published as soon as possible, see below.

• All of our changelogs are posted in the Steam forums
• We’re also working on a humanskins overhaul and a sound overhaul, both to be announced.
  
• Any questions you might have can be asked on our Discord server
• You can help spread the word on Gates of Hell by linking people to our LinkTree
• We plan to do developer Q&A on that Discord server soon! Join by clicking below: