Hell Let Loose News

Hey everyone,

This Sunday we're deploying to the GamesRadar Future Games Show!



Standby: June 13th at 4PM PDT / 7PM EDT /12AM* Midnight BST / 1AM* CEST

*The morning of Monday, June 14, 2021

Watch on: Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or GamesRadar!

We'll see you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #130!

This week we're taking a look at smart materials and how we're applying them to vehicles to not only make them looking fantastic up close, but also improve performance at the same time.

If you're not familiar with what 'smart materials' are, don't worry - we'll be explaining all that and more below.

Also make sure to stick around until the end if you'd like to take part in next week's Kursk PTE, we'll have further details, including how to sign-up at the end of the brief.

Right then, let's get stuck in shall we...




Hi everyone,

This week, we’ll take you through the usage of smart materials when it comes to vehicles. We’re rolling this out with our new Soviet vehicles first, and we think the results are pretty incredible when it comes to preserving detail right up close - at LESS expense than any time before.

Many of you may have seen the process of implementing smart materials on handheld weapons. Normally, a 3d artist will bake unique texture sets to be used in-game on a weapon. In order to make sure those textures are optimised (and in a game like HLL with more than 40 handheld objects it’s a challenge), we are forced to adjust the resolution of them - often resulting in extremely blurry looking textures. Unfortunately, this was the same for vehicles. Crisp beautiful textures in renders were crunched down for performance purposes and ended up becoming a blurry mess. For example:



As we’ve grown and matured as a team, Danny was convinced that he’d be able to set up a far more robust smart material system for all vehicles.

In essence, smart materials take the idea that there are core materials (wood, metal, painted metal) and then use those over and over again for different objects or vehicles using unique parameters for wear, colour, roughness and so on. What has resulted is a fantastic visual upgrade for our vehicles. It also drastically speeds up the texturing process (going from 2-3 days per vehicle to 20-30 minutes!) while also enabling incredible detail up close - and best of all a significant performance increase as we move from using 24 low quality textures for our Soviet vehicles to just 6 high quality textures.

We feel the results speak for themselves:



Finally, many of you will be pleased to know that we’ve built a camo system into the new smart material system. While we’re beginning with what we’d consider the base colour scheme for the Soviet, we have the potential to apply totally completely new appearances for each vehicle - at no extra cost.





Lastly, while we’ve applied this system first to the Soviets, we’ll be retroactively rolling this out to all vehicles in-game over the coming updates.






Thanks to all who participated in the recent PTE we held on the upcoming soviet map Kursk. The turnout of players was great and higher than we had expected. Most of the development team was present in this PTE and even though a few anticipated bugs surfaced we were very happy with how this new addition is moving forwards.

The feedback that everyone provided was great to help us now work tirelessly on streamlining this map for the future. Thanks to everyone that played and took the time to post the issues that they found. The team is crushing bugs and already looking forward to the new build for another playtest later next week.

We would really appreciate the community's participation again in next week's PTE. This will be another test on the new eastern front map Kursk, including both Offensive modes. As we are still in development mode for U10, this build will be buggy, so please consider that if you are participating. We really appreciate your help in keeping all feedback to the specific channels and not streaming or broadcasting this content, as we want to build some anticipation before we reveal this to the broader community.

We will also include known issues and a changelog overview so you know what to expect. This test will be best suited for those in the GMT tz, and will take place from approximately 11am to 4pm GMT. We will look to have several more PTEs, so if for any reason you can make this one, don’t worry!.

If you want to know how to join the PTE, please join the official HLL Discord here

YES I WANT TO JOIN THE HELL LET LOOSE DISCORD

You will find all the details you need to join there.




Onwards to the weekend!

That wraps up today's brief! We'll be sharing more Soviet goodies with you in the coming weeks. We hope you are all as happy and excited as we are with this next Update. Next week we'll have a preview of the new overhaul of St. Marie Du Mont.

Have a great weekend everyone, we'll see you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #129!

This week we've got plenty for you to look at with the announcement of the winners and runners up of our video competition! The level of quality in these are amazing and well worth checking out, so get comfy and give them a watch.

On top of that we've also got news on our next PTE (Spoilers: Kursk) and an update on our current optimisation focus, including specifics on how it's being addressed from Lead Developer Max.

So, we've got entertainment, information and an opportunity to help us test Kursk ahead of its upcoming arrival to the frontline - Let's get stuck in that we...




With an amazing array of many entries it is time to announce a winner for the Hell Let Loose Video Competitions ‘Filming Private Ryan’ and ‘We Want You’.



Again we would like to express our thanks to all those who entered and helped their friends and communities in any way.

The quality and numbers of entries was fantastic and impressed us all here at Dev HQ. After a lot of consideration we have managed to (and this was no easy task) pick a winner for each genre.

Once we agreed on a winner, we hit another roadblock trying to work out a runners up for each category. After a few days of discussion and arm wrestling we have decided that the quality of the entries was so high that we have decided to have multiple runner ups.

Also ‘ALL SUBMISSIONS’ who were not a winner or runner up, will receive a prize. This will be in the form of one Hell Let Loose Steam Key.

Congratulations to all who were involved in this comp, the community is extremely talented! o7

We hope it was as much fun for you all to make those clips as it was for us to watch and appreciate them all. We cannot thank the community enough for their contributions. We have been very humbled by your enthusiasm for our game.

We look forward to seeing you all in the future, with more to come on the horizon.

And now the winners!

Filming Private Ryan

WINNER:
[EASY] submitted by Bickley with the entry ‘War is Hell - Hell Let Loose’
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


Runner ups for this category are:

[82AD] submitted by Very_Bad_Moon with the entry ‘South West’
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[18.PzDiv] submitted by Moe with the entry ‘Hell Let´s Saving Ryan’
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[NPA] submitted by Lord Vader with the entry ‘Hell Let Loose Archival Footage Preservation’
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Honourable mention:

Submitted by Richie Mason with the entry ‘German Heart Lane’
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
This was created by one man, who jumped into a random game and recorded the events.


We Want You

WINNER:

Koju Sone with the entry ‘Survive in Hell’.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


Runner ups for this category are:

Alpine Sniper with the entry ‘These Blades Only’
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Lexhy with the entry ‘Hell of a Boogie Woogie’
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Br0ken_English with the entry ‘Plink’
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

MBS with the entry ‘My First 6 Hours of HLL’
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We will be contacting the winners and runner ups directly. Also everyone else who made a submission can expect an email from us, if you haven’t had one already.

Again we wish we could have included you all, and thanks again for the enthusiasm shown! We will look at getting out as much of the content as possible via our various social channels.




We would really appreciate the community's participation in next week's PTE. This will be a test on the new Eastern Front map Kursk. As we are still in development mode for U10, this build will be buggy, so please consider that if you are participating.

We will follow up with the exact day and time next week. We will also include known issues and a changelog overview so you know what to expect. This test will be best suited for those in the GMT timezone, and will take place from approximately 11am to 4pm GMT. We will look to have several PTEs, so if for any reason you can make this one, don’t worry!.



If you want to know how to join the PTE, please join the official HLL Discord below:

YES I WANT TO JOIN THE HELL LET LOOSE DISCORD

You will find all the details you need to join there.




Optimisation is an ongoing process and challenge when developing Hell Let Loose - with a special combination of high player count, huge emphasis on replicated physics and large scale maps. We know that it’s one of the most requested aspects of work, and it’s something we’ve had a dedicated team working hard on for the last several months (as opposed to having to bounce back and forth between content creation and optimization).

One area of key significance (and ongoing pain) is the grass within Hell Let Loose. Setting a game in Normandy - amidst endless rolling fields - demands that grass not only be present, but play a somewhat active role in the gameplay - typically concealing you at close range when lying down. It also plays a large role in adding detail to large stretches of otherwise featureless landscape. As a result, we’ve tried to balance our grass to provide a photoreal look up close that is also appropriate concealment, while also billboarding it in a way that allows us to keep it present at longer distances (instead of culling it - as you’d do in games that don’t rely on longer range engagements).

At present, we’re currently working on creating much smoother blends between the different levels of detail of the grass. This will mean that you’ll notice far fewer shape changes the closer or further you walk from the grass, and that the final transition to the billboard (the version of the grass we use at very long range) will be much softer and less noticeable. We’re also performing some key optimisations to the way it’s rendered - including reducing triangle count to lower costs and increase visual bang for buck.

Next week, we’ll take you through the usage of smart materials when it comes to vehicles. We’re rolling this out with our new Russian vehicles first, and we think the results are pretty incredible when it comes to preserving detail right up close - at LESS expense than any time before.

Optimisation is ongoing and has greatly increased in the last several months. We want to assure you that it has huge priority within the team and we’re excited to show you the results.




Onwards to the weekend!

That wraps up this week's brief, thanks for checking it out!

Have a fantastic weekend everyone, we'll see you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #128!

This week we're sharing an update on the two Hell Let Loose video competitions, which have been absolutely astonishing by the way, as well as giving you all an update on what you can expect around our next steps with the PTE - Yes, that includes the upcoming Eastern Front content!

We'll wrap things up with a little look at some of the cosmetics you'll be able to wear when representing the Soviets too!

Right, let's get stuck in shall we...




Thanks to everyone for participating in the two Hell Let Loose Video competitions “We Want You” and “Filming Private Ryan”.

Wow what a response to this competition we have had! We are very hard at work on Update 10, and it’s good to be able to take a quick break and enjoy what the community is creating.

We have been super impressed with the number and quality of entries received, there were well over 100 submissions, and we have watched every single one!

We hope it was as much fun for you all to film and capture these clips as it was for us to watch and appreciate them all. We cannot thank the community enough for their contributions. We have been very humbled by your enthusiasm.

The winners and runners up will be announced soon, but as a sign of appreciation we have decided to give ALL entrants a small token of our appreciation.

Stay tuned for more updates on this soon, also make sure you are following on Facebook and Twitter as we intend to highlight not only the winners but also some honourable mentions in the coming weeks.

If you have made a submission, you may receive an email asking for the original file, so please make sure to save these and lookout for any emails from us.

Thanks again to all of you in this amazing community that is Hell Let Loose.

Below are a selection of each of the two categories. And a reminder that we will have more competitions coming up with different prizes in the not so distant future.

"We Want You!"

Lexhy - Hell of a Boogie Woogie
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Alpine Sniper - These Blades Only
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Moe Savastano - Naked Guns “Best of”
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


“Filming Private Ryan”

107th Touchdown Jesus - 107th Assemble
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Pm. Vova - Para Bellum Movie
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Team HFKT - Carentan
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




Soon we will be back into PTE testing mode, and will aim to have an initial smoke test soon. We would really appreciate the community's participation, as we have lots of new content to test (especially Eastern Front content). We will follow up with the details on how to get involved shortly. So please keep an eye on the official HLL Discord.

If you haven’t already now is the perfect time to join!

YES I WANT TO JOIN THE HELL LET LOOSE DISCORD!




A new front means new Uniforms, hats and helmets!

We will be sharing more cosmetics with you, in the coming weeks. Will will be also adding in a few more to the US and German cosmetic options but wanted to give you a tease of what you can expect to see for the Soviets.





That's all for this week's Dev Brief, have a great weekend everyone!

See you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #127!

This week we're delving further into the arsenal that will be available to Soviet forces when Update 10 arrives later this year. We're also in a position to give a first peek at what we're moving towards with the upcoming armour overhaul. This is still in progress dev side, so as we move towards finishing this substantial task we'll share more details and depth on the changes with you!

Right then, lets take a look at the first primary weapon that will be available for the Soviet Machinegunner role, the DP-27!




The DP-27, developed by Vasily Degtyarov, was the primary light machine gun of the Soviet Union in WW2. An earlier light machine gun designed in the inter-war period, the DP-27 nonetheless proved itself capable on the battlefield and served with the Soviet armed forces for over 30 years.



The DP-27 fed from a 47-round pan-shaped magazine and shared its full-power ammunition with the Mosin-Nagant family of rifles. Affectionately known as the “record player,” it put reliable automatic firepower in the hands of rifle sections. Tankers would also use the Degtyarov machine gun in a form modified to fit the cramped fighting compartments of Soviet armor. This DT variant used a different type of magazine and featured a collapsible stock.



Fierce combat on the eastern front made apparent some of the weaknesses of the DP-27. The bipod was relatively flimsy and the recoil spring was awkwardly placed, causing the weapon to malfunction as it heated up. Furthermore, while the pan magazine was successful in reliably feeding rimmed ammunition, it did so at the cost of being both awkwardly shaped and somewhat fragile. Being magazine fed also limited its firepower compared to the opposition's MG34 and MG42 belt-fed machine guns.

The reliability issues of the DP would be addressed in the wartime DPM variant, and the design would finally be converted to feed from belts in the post-war RP-46.



In Hell Let Loose, the DP-27 will be the backbone of the Soviet Machinegunner role. Due to it’s relatively low capacity magazine compared with its German counterparts, the DP-27 is best used from the deployed position. With a clean sight picture and lower rate of fire, it’s an easy weapon to move from target to target while delivering pinpoint accuracy. The DP-27 will be the first primary weapon for the Soviet Machinegunner role.




Video Content Competition Reminder

We continue to get some great submissions for the video content competition. Again If you are unsure what that is, you can find all the details in Developer Briefing #124.

We want to thank everyone who has made a submission so far. A reminder that the last day for submissions is May 17th! So one more weekend to get these in. We will start to share these via our channels shortly.

If you have made a submission, you may receive an email asking for the original file, so please make sure to save this.


Armour Update

We want to share with you some insight into what the Armour rework will involve. We will have a more in depth view in an upcoming Dev Brief, but this is a total overhaul to remove the instances where projectiles will clip on smaller external geometry and cause one hit kills or points of invulnerability.

Here you can see what the new hitboxes look like.




25% Off Hell Let Loose in the Team17 Publisher Sale!

Join the frontline for less until May 14th with a tasty 25% discount on Hell Let Loose! It's a great time to jump in, join the community and get a feel for the game ahead of the Eastern Front coming to the game for all players as part of Update 10.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/686810/Hell_Let_Loose/

If you're fresh on the front feel free to stop by the following locations to squad up with other players, join a clan or just chat with the team and other players:

HLL Reddit HLL Discord

If you're looking for something to do between battles you can check out the full Team17 Steam Publisher Sale here.


Onwards to the weekend!

That wraps up this week's Dev Brief, thanks for taking the time to check it out!

As always, let us know your thoughts and feelings in the comments below, we really appreciate hearing what you think.

Have a great weekend everyone!

See you on the frontline.