Hell Let Loose News

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #111!

This week we're previewing the MG34 and explaining how it'll fit into the German Machine Gunner's roster!

The team also have an update on where we're at in regards to tackling the current VOIP issues in-game.

Oh and before we get stuck in, you'll also notice that the map we're showing you the MG34 on isn't from the Western Front...




The MG34 will be coming to Hell Let Loose in Update 9 for the German Machine Gunner role.



A key aspect when introducing new weapons to Hell Let Loose is considering the difference this weapon will make to the battlefield, and how it will be meaningfully different to whatever is currently available. This is often based on the historical usage of the weapon, technical difficulty in achieving a significant difference (i.e. if the functionality is not something that exists elsewhere in the game and must be custom built) and then lots of testing and feedback with the community.

The issue with having a very low time-to-kill within a game like Hell Let Loose is that bullet damage values more or less stay consistent from weapon to weapon - with the largest factors being reticle shape, recoil strength, recoil pattern, ammo counts and loadout availability.



As a result of this, we’ve designed the MG34 to possess its real life rate of fire (while fast, noticeably slower than the MG42), and also a slightly lower recoil value - enabling greater precision and control. In addition to this, it has a smaller belt size, but a number of belts that matches the ammunition count on the MG42.

While the MG42 is used for pouring huge amounts of lead down range into an enormous “beating zone” (which is what ultimately made it such a unique and fierce weapon) with a large belt size, the MG34 is for more considered and focused fire at the sacrifice of overwhelming fire.



When looking at the spectrum of weapons available to the German forces during WW2, the MG34 was the backbone of the army for the entire duration of the war before being challenged by the MG42 in the later years. As such, we feel that it is appropriate to replace the MG42 with the MG34 as the Standard Issue loadout for the German Machine Gunner role. Fear not though, as the MG42 will be available as the first unlock for the role at level 3.

We also want to note that while we won’t ship the MG34 with a select fire mode, we’ve revisited select fire mode functionality and will be looking at introducing it in the future for all weapons with the setting available.

We’re excited to show off the distinct characteristics of the weapon’s fire sound and functionality below in one of our coming Eastern Front maps! Please be aware that both the texture quality of the MG34, the casing fx, as well as the map are still work in progress with more to be done!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




We want to quickly follow up with the VOIP issues some are still experiencing in game. We are in conversations with our VOIP provider Vivox to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Several fixes have already been made but we want to make sure any final aspects are resolved.

If you do experience VOIP loss, please let us know in the #voip_troubleshooting channel in our official Discord. Some players are managing to reconnect to VOIP by disconnecting and reconnecting their mic/headset. Let us know if this works for you.

Once again, thank you all for your patience and support whilst we investigate this frustrating issue.




That wraps up this week's Dev Brief!

We've got lots more to share in the coming weeks, including an updated Roadmap and a community video Q&A so watch this space!

Have a great weekend everyone.

We'll see you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #110!

This week we're showing you the reworked Barbed Wire deployable that'll be coming to Hell Let Loose as part of Update 9!

We're also taking a moment to address the current VOIP issues we're seeing players experiencing, as well as officially confirming a new weapon coming to the game, so stick around until the end!




For Update 9, alongside working through many other incomplete aspects of the game, we’ve managed to swing back and figure out a cost effective way to give barbed wire the desired effect we’ve all been waiting for.

Hell Let Loose’s damage system is designed to be relatively simple when it comes to addressing wounds. This is to not only reflect the relatively simplistic triage process during the war (with some forces not even having morphine widely available), but also to create a strong series of actions in order to bring someone back to fighting capacity.

As a result, we feel that the key with barbed wire is that it should cause noise rather than damage (and we all know how horrible the sounds of being trapped in barbed wire are) and completely slow you down for as long as you’re stuck to it. In addition, while some barbed wire can be navigated through, we obviously felt it was important that player-deployed barbed wire completely blocked you.

We’re therefore replaced the old, tiny barbed wire in the Engineer loadout with large - tall arrays that are far more effective at blocking locations and causing bottlenecks.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Please note: This is early footage and is subject to change.

Barbed wire can be blown up with Satchel Charges and well placed artillery. We’ll be testing this functionality in order to make sure it strikes a right balance of being a considerable obstacle without being too strong and impossible to deal with.

In the future we’ll be looking at letting heavy vehicles potentially crush barbed wire in order to clear it.




We’re aware that significant voip issues have been experienced for far too long. We’ve been doing a vast amount of digging and profiling, and (with help from the community and our QA team) have identified the issue.

The team are now working with the provider to rectify the issue as soon as possible. We will keep you updated via Discord and other channels as we work on this.

Sorry for any frustration caused by this, we really appreciate both your patience and reports whilst we get this fixed.




We saw many correct guesses in last week's tease, so today we're confirming that Update 9 will include a new weapon for German Machine Gunners, the MG34!



We'll be delving more into the MG34 and its role within the game in a future Dev Brief, so watch this space MG mains.

That wraps up this week's Dev Brief! Let us know what you think of the changes coming to Barbed Wire, we look forward to hearing your thoughts on it!

Have a great weekend everyone!

See you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #109 and the first briefing of 2021!

To get the ball rolling we're starting small and focused this week as we look to revealing and diving into the larger parts of Update 9 in the briefs to come.

But having said that, this week's brief will be pleasing on the eye and your weapon firing satisfaction so without further waiting I'll pass you over to Max!

Happy New Year everyone!




Hi everyone,

It’s our first week back into the studio and as a result of us getting busy again we’ve got a relatively low-key dev briefing for you this week before we can start to dive into the larger aspects of Update 9 and beyond.



A key visual element of first person shooters are the weapons, hands and arms that take up large portions of screen real-estate the entire time you play the game. While we managed to overhaul our hands and sleeves in Update 7, we didn’t manage to tackle a visual upgrade of our weapons - arguably the most significant objects in the game and certainly objects that deserve to be the best quality we can make them.




For Update 9, the art team has been keen to audit these areas and have rebuilt an entirely new procedural texture system in line with AAA workflows. Previously, older texturing workflows relied on several unique textures for each model in the game. You would have three textures that would make up the Kar 98k, and as a result of texture budgets, you’d need to either handle these in an extremely clever way, or simply downgrade the resolution of them in order to make them cost effective - resulting in a total loss of detail.

New Modelled Barrel

In the last three years, with the advent of much more widely used photoreal lighting and material creation processes, the philosophy behind texturing has changed significantly. Instead of creating three separate unique textures for each of the 40+ weapons and pieces of equipment in Hell Let Loose (roughly 120 different textures), the use of “smart materials” means that we are now able to create a “metal material”, “wood material” and “bakelite material” using three textures in each. We then take each weapon or piece of equipment in Hell Let Loose and set up one single very low res texture that acts as a mask. It basically let’s us tell the barrel of a gun to use the metal material, while the stock is told to use the wood material and so on.

The result of this is incredible. Instead of using 120 different textures, we’re able to look at guns like the Thompson, BAR, Garand, K98k and so on and simply use the same three wood textures and the same three metal textures - each contained within a custom material that lets us change the way these behave per gun. The first weapon to benefit from the early version of this system (that we’ve now taken much further) was the MP40.

So what does this mean? Ultimately, it offers a really significant optimisation for GPU and texture memory that will be best felt on low end machines, while also enabling us to maintain incredibly high quality detail very close to the camera. In essence, through some clever overhaul, we’re able to optimise and drastically improve the visual quality of every weapon in the game. In addition, it also means we’re able to create weapons far faster - as once the model is made and the single mask texture has been created, we can procedurally texture in minutes.

Kar98K Scoped - Current Version

Kar98K Scoped - New Version

This technology is also important because we’ll be implementing this into the way we work on other things in the game - like vehicles, props and other objects. The end result should fundamentally be a significant improvement to frames and visual quality. In addition, this system also gives us the ability to dynamically texture the weapon - adding fingerprints, blood flecks and eventually mud, snow and raindrops.

Luger - Current Version

Luger - New Version

As a side note, we’re also fixing any incorrect text on weapons while cleaning up each model. A small example is that the M1919 is now a far better looking gun with proper modelled holes on the barrel.




We’re also excited to announce that we’ve fixed the often talked about issue of the weapon zeroing that was introduced with the ballistics systems. Each weapon is now zeroed correctly and far better models the real life trajectory. For laymen, the outcome of this is that it no longer feels like the bullet is “falling out of the barrel” - instead travelling straighter for far longer. While this has applied to all weapons, it is especially satisfying on the lower caliber weapons and vehicle mounted coaxial and hull machineguns.

In addition, we discovered a nasty bug with regard to the tank mounted machine guns that cause the bullets to occasionally not register with infantry at certain angles. We’re currently looking at fixes for this.




That wraps up Max's post on the upcoming weapon visual upgrades and weapon zeroing fixes!

What we shared today is just the tip of the iceberg for Update 9 and we look forward to sharing lots more with you as we move through early 2021.

Now before we sign off for the weekend, can anyone figure out what upcoming weapon this belongs to?



We'll see you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

We hope you've all had a good week so far!

We just wanted to quickly update you that you’ll start to see aspects of the upcoming Steam achievements rolling through in different ways (some being listed on Steam but obscured). We’ve plugged them in as just a very minor aspect of the next update.

We appreciate that for many players achievements are not their desired priority, and we want to assure you that not only was this a very minor piece of work, it was a value-add to our work on adding additional telemetry to the game that will help us get a much greater sense of role usage, map popularity, average game length and weapon usage.

Just to let you know - In addition to this, we’re also investigating an increase in Vivox VOIP connection issues. We really appreciate your patience and reports on this while we investigate these problems as a matter of priority.

We'll be back again tomorrow for our weekly Dev Brief!

See you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #108!

To see out 2020, Max has put together an end of year review as we look at some of the biggest content drops that Hell Let Loose received over the last twelve months, as well turning our gaze to 2021...

Over to you, Max!




Hi everyone,

2020 has been an enormous and historic year - with the loss of loved ones, jobs and even just the normal rhythms of life. Amidst that, we’ve been very fortunate to be able to continue work on Hell Let Loose, and have been thankful for the support we’ve seen for the game from the existing community and new players.

Because of this, we’ve been able to expand the team and increase production on all fronts. As a result, 2021 will be a huge year for Hell Let Loose. We’ll be seeking to leave Early Access, introduce a whole new front and the Soviet forces - an entirely new army. On top of that we’ll be continuing to polish, optimise and expand the existing game.

2020 was a very challenging year for us as a dev team. It marked significant milestones in our overhauling of previous systems and has set us up well for the future - with hastily formulated solutions (line trace ballistics, the way we handle mapping, our entire animation system etc.) finally given new life with our desired solutions.

In a quick look back, here are some of the major pieces of content or overhauls added to the game:

Update 5 in February saw the introduction of Purple Heart Lane, the US heavy tank variants and the overhauled non-verbal communication system.

Update 6 in late April introduced Hill 400, as well as our ballistics overhaul, the addition of the Scout cars, the Recon Plane Commander ability among many others.

Update 7 in mid July introduced the total FPP and TPP animation overhaul, the total firearms sound effects overhaul, Carentan and the Foy overhaul among many other changes.

Finally, Update 8 was introduced in early December and saw the introduction of transport and supply trucks, satchel charges, hammers, blowtorches, the Grease Gun, the overhaul of Hurtgen Forest, the overhaul of the supply and fortification systems, the introduction of a hit box system and the total overhaul of all explosion and heavy weapon sound effects and visual effects.

Because of the support and interest of the community, we’re in the fortunate position of being able to confidently plan many more years of content to come. In what is now an established tradition, we’ll continue to share what we’re working on with you in the weekly dev briefings.

Finally, thank you for your patience in the journey of our development. While we always strive to fix, polish, optimise and expand the game in the right order and as fast as possible, we know that we often make mistakes or introduce issues - or may have prioritised something high on the list only to discover a more pressing issue emerges. While it’s happened before, we know it’ll happen again and we thank you for your patience in allowing us the time to work to fix these issues. Our commitment is to work as quickly and efficiently as possible to address all community feedback, as well as continue to expand different aspects of the game.

While we’ve often said the Hell Let Loose journey has just begun, it’s appropriate to now say that 2021 will be the end of the beginning. We’re very excited for the year ahead and are looking forward to working with you to continue to refine the game. With the Western and Eastern fronts coming into play, we still have huge development milestones to tackle - melee combat, Campaign mode and flamethrowers to name only a few. We have many more different maps to create - each with entirely new gameplay challenges. We have new vehicles, new weapons, improvements to the meta, new effects, new sound effects, new cosmetic options, new Commander abilities and more.

We hope you have a wonderful new year and look forward to seeing you on the frontline in 2021!