Hell Let Loose News

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #79!

This week marks Hell Let Loose's first anniversary since it launched into Steam Early Access. Time has been flying by and so much has changed since we first clashed on the frontline of Hurtgen Forest.

To mark the occasion Lead Developer Max has stopped by to put together his thoughts and thanks to you, our community. Max has also taken the opportunity to look back at exactly how Hell Let Loose has grown and developed over the last six months, whilst also looking ahead to what the future holds.

Oh and we're totally revealing some new helmets for the German forces...




Hi everyone,

We’re excited today to mark exactly 364 days since Hell Let Loose launched into Early Access on Steam on June 6th, 2019. It’s been an enormous and exciting journey so far, and it’s felt like the year has flown by. Indeed - if Hell Let Loose launched with the Allied invasion force on D-Day, then we’ve been fighting in-game nearly a month past the German surrender! During this time we’ve had huge amounts of fun watching as you - the community - deliver us excellent feedback in order to help us continue crafting the best experience we can.

It’s hard to believe that the initial Early Access build featured only one tank per team, no leaning or vaulting, one gamemode and only three maps (Sainte Marie Du Mont, Hurtgen Forest and Foy). With more than 5000 submissions to our version control, and not a single day without one (including the weekends!), we greatly enjoy our work.

Below we’ve included an image that breaks down the largest additions or changes to the game. That said, for the best idea, the notes for each patch and update truly detail the full scope of the changes. For those of you who have not played for a couple of months, you’ll be returning to a very different game. For those of you who haven’t played since release - it may as well be an entirely new game altogether!






We want to say a huge thank you to the community - not only to those of you who have just joined recently, but particularly to the very first backers of our crowdfunding campaign - all the way back in 2017. Without your initial support, Hell Let Loose would not have got off the ground.

Over the coming months we’ll be making good on any final rewards promised to each Backer tier.

Because of the continued success of Hell Let Loose, we’ve been enormously proud to build the team up to better support the title in every department. Our small team of 7 at the launch of Early Access has now transformed into 15 - enabling us to overhaul fundamental aspects of the game in our ever present push to deliver the best experience possible.




If you’ve followed the development of the game so far, you’ll know that we enjoy dropping as much content as humanly possible - alongside large scale bug fixes and systems overhauls. The future for Hell Let Loose is incredibly bright, and our initial plan to support the title across new theaters.

We’ll be releasing huge amounts of information over the coming weeks about what our roadmap to leaving Early Access looks like - and we’ll also hint to the future beyond it. Please be assured that this is still the early stages of the development of Hell Let Loose. There is so much more for us to do - including new fx, sounds, environments, maps, customisation options, weapons, Commander abilities, optimisation and many other things.

Every step we take will be taken as it always has done, side by side with the community. Your thoughts, suggestions and feedback have been integral to Hell Let Loose's development and will continue to do so.

Our current goal right now is to integrate many of the new optimisation and mapping techniques that we’ve refined into all current maps. We have a good idea of what our 1.0 map list looks like and so we’re excited to make sure that each map is just as performant and fun to play as all the others. Once we release Update 7, we’ll be pushing forward to finalise a version of the game that we feel reflects a successful 1.0 launch, before we move on to more new features, content and lots more.

While so much has happened in a year, we expect the gap between version quality and total breadth of content to be even more significant this time next year. Some of the largest quality overhauls that you’ll experience are yet to come!

From myself and all of the team, thank you.




That wraps up Max's message!

So, at the start of the brief we mentioned new German helmets that are on the way - let's take a look at a few that you'll be getting your heads on in the near future:












Thank you for an amazing first year.

We'll see you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

We're just letting you know that Hell Let Loose is currently 20% off as part of the Team17 Publisher Sale!

If you've been waiting to join the frontline at a discounted price or looking to get your friends into the action now's a great time!





We're closing in on Update 7 and we're incredibly excited for what's coming with it:

• Full 1st & 3rd person animation overhaul
  
• New firearm SFX
  
• New urban map
  
• Further optimisation & bug fixing
  
• And more!
  

If you'd like to learn more about the Hell Let Loose community, come say hi / join a team or clan feel free to visit our Steam forums, Discord channel and sub-reddit - newcomers are more than welcome at all of these places.

You can find the Developer Team chatting in all of the above locations, we're all about listening to and engaging with our community as we journey through Early Access together.

Welcome to Hell Let Loose, we'll see you on the frontline.

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

Hi everyone!

While we’re busy at work on Update 7 we wanted to get a release out to fix the persistent crashes and other issues present in Update 6 as soon as we can. Whilst Patch 11’s primary purpose is to address the crashes introduced by Update 6 it also targets as much low hanging fruit as possible.

As a team, we’re currently working with military precision to achieve our Update 7 release goals. It is absolutely enormous and will be one of the most significant Updates to Hell Let Loose during our Early Access journey.







Sainte-Mère-Église

US Offensive Layer Added - US forces can now go on the attack in Offensive Mode!




The M43 Combat Uniform entered use in the European theatre in late 1944. After D-Day, Paratroopers were issued complete M1943 uniforms, and infantry units began receiving the uniform parts issued individually.



Just like the Winter Warfare pack, this seasonal DLC is free to anyone who owns the game.

To get this seasonal free DLC you must download it from the Hell Let Loose Steam Store page.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1313020/Hell_Let_Loose__Summer_Warfare_Pack/

Please note, whilst the uniform will be added to your Barracks inventory, you will still need to fulfil the required role level requirements to equip it in battle.



Our Seasonal DLC is designed as a thank you to our dedicated community and to reward veteran players. Please rest assured we will re-activate these DLC packs throughout the year - for free - so stay tuned for the return of the Winter Warfare pack later this year.

We've also got something for the German forces in this patch with the addition of three new customisation options in the form of our first hats and caps. No download required here, you'll find them in your Barracks upon downloading the patch:

Please note: Glasses / goggles & smoking paraphernalia are not live yet, these will arrive at a later date.

eins

zwei

drei

Enjoy!




Performance

• Optimised all character models through fine tuning of LODs. This will lower CPU burden across the board.
  

Crashes

• High probability speculative fix for “ballistics crash” - the key crash affecting both servers and clients (96% of all current client crashes and 100% of all server crashes).
  
• Fixed secondary crash (3% of all current client crashes).
  

HUD/UI

• HUD image for a Recon vehicle's 3rd seat does not correctly scale when zoomed in on certain resolutions.
  
• 'Refresh Servers' button will be unresponsive to user interaction if the cursor has not been moved off of the button since the last click
  
• Users will be unable to change between 'All Servers' and 'Favourites' if the user already has the cursor positioned over the unselected heading before servers are found
  

Visual Improvements

• Fixed lighting issues across most maps - where shadows at a distance where not rendered (SME, Utah etc).
  

Customisation

• Added German Visor Cap
  
• Added German M40 Side Cap
  
• Added German M43 Field Cap
  
• To access head cosmetics click on your chosen face to open a new menu
  

Bug Fixes

• All closed buildings are now blocked to stop players spawning in them.
  
• Added additional names to in-game credits to reflect new team members.
  
• No window model present while sitting within the 5th seat of the Greyhound Recon vehicle
  
• Clipping issues present on multiple German Uniforms when using the Winter ‘Hans’ head variant.
  
• Graphical issues with various Winter Heads are observed on US/German in active gameplay.
  
• 'Hans' and 'Karl' have distorted textures on their balaclavas.
  
• Puma recon vehicle moves constantly after firing main weapon
  
• Recon tooltip for "Surveil"
  
• The German Puma and US Greyhound does not give any combat score when destroyed.
  
• If a player selects the Officer role after they've been kicked from a unit, they're unable to join any unit.
  

Purple Heart Lane

• [PHL] Bridge has no collision with players and has one way bullet collision in sector C4
  

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #77!

This week we're happy to be sharing with you the date for Patch 11, talking about what's next for your Uniform suggestions as well as revealing a new Uniform that's coming soon. We'll also be showing off a bit more of the revamped Foy that you'll be getting in Update 7...

I'm going to hand things over to Max now as gives you his update from the team!




Hi all,

We’re currently hard at work on Update 7 - which is shaping up to easily be our most significant and large Update yet.

Normally, it’s a very easy process for us to put together a dev briefing, as we simply deep-dive into the coming features, artwork or other systems. However, in this case we want to maintain some excitement and surprise for what’s to come, so we’ll be starting to unveil the full scope of changes closer to the release date (and there are a LOT of things that we’re excited about!).

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll also be taking the opportunity to look at some of the methods and processes we use currently in the game to create the various different aspects of it.




We were blown away this week when a very talented Hell Let Loose subreddit member u/Tommy2Legs who put together an incredible Hell Let Loose style tactical map of Juno Beach - the famous Canadian D-Day landing site.

Featuring the same visual language as our own maps, as well as near-perfect scale and layout, we thought it was an incredible piece of artwork.



We not only wanted to show off the incredible work they did on it, but it has also provoked some discussion about pulling back the curtain on the huge amount of work that goes into creating these highly detailed maps, so watch this space!




Patch 11 will be dropping shortly on Thursday, May 28th.

While it feels small to us compared to our usual Updates, it fixes some aspects we’ve had fed back to us in regards to Update 6, as well as laying the groundwork for our push towards Update 7.

On top of the above Patch 11 will also include some additional customisation options for your soldiers.

We’ll be releasing the full change-log which will include all the bug fixes, adjustments and new cutomisations closer to the release date.




Well, what a fantastic response!

Thanks for all your feedback on the Hell Let Loose subreddit with suggestions for new uniforms, helmets and other cosmetic additions. We’ve collated and saved all submissions we’ve received, as well as the additional information you provided.

Soon we’ll start the process that’ll allow us to continue adding these to the game in an ongoing fashion in every patch and Update. We’ve also read much of the additional feedback about the customisation system itself and are looking at any changes that need to be made.

We've also got a little extra something for you! Below you can find some beautiful new renders of the in-game models for the new M43 Combat Uniform for the US forces. This will be added to the game shortly.










Alongside work on 3 unannounced maps, we’ve also been overhauling and upgrading nearly every other existing map in the game. We thought we’d show off a bit more of the Foy work to tide you over while you wait for Update 7.

We fully intend for Update 7 to drastically improve your gameplay experience across many of the most beloved maps - while at the same time we’re also working to make those less popular maps just as successful as the others.

We’re paying particular attention to creating viable infantry paths from Strongpoint to Strongpoint, while also enabling access for vehicles. While open 200m fields lead to poor infantry gameplay, cluttering the entire map with constant objects will harm vehicle gameplay. We’ve played a huge amount and identified a relative cover density per meterage. With this in mind, we’ve been making copious notes on particularly challenging or boring Strongpoints or map locations and have been building them out with greater detail and level of interest.

Please bear in mind that the following images are as work-in-progress.



We’ve built out many existing Strongpoints with additional approaches.

Studying the farming infrastructure of the Belgian countryside, we’ve worked hard to create interesting and varied approaches. Previously, a great weakness of Foy’s gameplay was the un-ending and coverless fields - where wire fences would often result in an impossible assault across 200m+ of open ground. With these changes, we expect armour to be just as potent, but with greater and more intense and interesting infantry battles to take place on and between the Strongpoints themselves.



The AA position has had several open and closed buildings added, with particular attention paid to eyelines and access points.



The push between the AA position and Trainline now features a pleasant birch forest on the east side of the trainline, including semi-destroyed German positions and supplies placed in the forest to conceal them from the air. While the fastest route is to push along the train line itself, capturing this wooded area will provide a defensible spawn location and an easy place to support the fighting at both Strong Points.



Dugout Barn has been overhauled, retaining the tiny farming buildings at the corner, but expanding it with a trench network and several other larger structures. We’ve created more openings in the wire fences, and replaced several of them with stone walls so as to create more hard cover for the open-field battles. These deeper trench networks feature locations designed for in-cover spawn placement, and will provide tense CQB gameplay as they’re flushed out.


That wraps up this week's Developer Briefing, we hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

See you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing 76!

This week we're sharing with you some news on: an upcoming patch, fixing server crashes, how Update 7's development is going and how we want YOUR suggestions for what customisation items you'd like to see in-game.

Let's get stuck in shall we.




We’re currently finalising the lock off for Patch 11. Patch 11 will sit between Update 6 and 7. It's designed to reduce the amount of server crash, and client crash issues that we’ve had reported since the release of Update 6.

In Patch 11, we also fix some low-risk key issues reported by the community in Update 6, as well as introduce some new customisation options and a new Offensive mode overlay for an existing map. We also introduce some optimisations.




Things are full steam ahead as we work on Update 7. It’s an absolute beast of an update, and one we’re incredibly excited to release. At the moment we’re adding smaller touches to the animation system (eg. bespoke camera animations for reloads and gadgets/tools/meds), as well as working through any bugs.

In addition, we’re revisiting absolutely all connected areas of the game to make sure that we fix historically disliked aspects - such as MG deployment and vaulting/mantling. We’ll be revealing much more of it closer to the release date of Update 7 so watch this space.




As many of you will be aware, we’re in the continual process of adding new customisation options for you to use in battle.

We love seeing the community suggest different variants they'd like to see. This has led us to want to formally open up and collect all of your ideas.

Once we have a comprehensive list of them we’ll create a poll and open it up to a vote. The most voted options will then be prioritised for production. That's right, community customisation content - put forward by and voted for by you.

Please post your suggestions on the official HLL sub-reddit HERE



When suggesting a customisation option, please include:

• As much picture reference as possible - with colour reference where possible.
  
• Suggested roles (where necessary).
  
• Rough time period of use.
  

Our intent with the customisation options for Hell Let Loose is to display the broad spectrum of appearances on the battlefield during World War Two. We do not mind offering rare uniforms or helmets, so long as they are grounded in reality and were present on the battlefield during the war. As such, please bear in mind that we won't consider:

• Prototypes that never saw action.
  
• Uniforms/helmets never used during the war itself (1 Sep 1939 – 2 Sep 1945).
  
• Uniforms/helmets that would be considered highly improbable to see on the battlefield (like a soldier wearing a flight mask or a parade uniform).
  

Please note: We are currently deciding on a special uniform for our high tier Kickstarter backers. We will be releasing this in the coming months as we continue to fulfill the backer rewards.




As mentioned earlier in the week, the server crash investigation is still ongoing. Although we are seeing a bit more server stability with reduced use of RCON, we are still investigating a critical crash that we are seeing in our log reports. So the more information we have, the easier it will be to narrow this down further, and we can then introduce the potential fixes.

So that being said, we are asking the community to join the punching bag servers again over the weekend.

We would like to thank the entire community for the effort so far in helping us with this, we thank all the server owners and admins for your patience as we continue to tackle this together!

If we can keep the following servers as full as possible as often as we can, by rejoining if they crash:

NA #1 TEAMDIXX.COM :: BM/T17 COMMUNITY PUNCHING BAG :: ALL MAPS
EU #1 TEAMDIXX.COM :: BM/T17 COMMUNITY PUNCHING BAG :: ALL MAPS

Black Matter and Team 17 would like to thank Team DIXX for the server administration, and the reporting of the crashes.




Finally, we’re continuing our work across all maps - upgrading the visual quality, increasing micro-terrain, introducing new gameplay dynamics and working on optimisation. You can see the introduction of a small fighting position between West Bend and the N30 Highway, as well as some farming out-buildings.





Thanks to the entire HLL Community for the ongoing support and feedback, have a fantastic weekend!

See you on the frontline!