Hell Let Loose News

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!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #107!

This week we're talking about the meta! Specifically what we feel is working, what we think isn't and what we're doing to change it.

We were originally planning to talk about this over the last few weeks, but due to Update 8 and Patch shenanigans we had to push this topic back slightly... But now the time has come!

Project Lead Max has put together the team's thoughts on what we're seeing and what we've learned from all of your feedback on how the meta plays and feels at the moment.

Now, lets get stuck in shall we!




Hi everyone,

Now that the dust has settled on both Update 8 and Patch 14, we thought we’d take the chance to address several large metagame issues that we’ll be looking to solve in the near future. In order to best address them, we’re keen to not only discuss them here, but use this dev brief as a jumping off point for wider community discussion.



Initial Issue

Previously, defensive players would often be incredibly overwhelmed and hamstrung by attacking players who would sneak into the strongpoint (or just behind it) and drop down a Garrison (referred to as a “ninja garrison”). This would then negate all measures the defenders had in place, by enabling the attacking team to dump their entire force onto the point extremely quickly.

The key issues here were that this completely dissolved the “frontline” aspect of the game and enabled near instantaneous leverage of entire teams into action behind or on top of the enemy line. In effect - 1 (and at most - 2) players could leverage the entire attacking team into a single location, with the defending team unable to parry this attack by virtue of it being so easy to initiate.

In order to preserve the sense of a front line, and better telegraph the loss of ground and enemy thrusts, the ability to place Garrisons in “red zones” was removed. This was largely to see if teams could successfully leverage an assault with 3-4 Officers using OPs in the red zone instead of the single Garrison.

Positive Result

The positive result has been in far more stable front line combat. The movement back and forth of teams directly correlates to their positioning, and attacks can be telegraphed and thwarted by defenders.

Negative Result

The downside has been the often-stagnation of teams into pure attack or defense - largely due to the asymmetry of leveraging assaults. Instead of being able to move 4-5 Officers into an attacking position using a Garrison, multiple individual Officers must now attack together in order to present a significant enough front to successfully push a defended strong point.

For example, in the following image we can see more than 6 individual Officers have manoeuvred to the same location in order to place down OPs. While this is encouraging to see, the inability to quickly deploy attacking Officers (and therefore OPs and units) into flanking or attacking positions (that have won ground against the defenders).






Ultimately, we do not want to return to the days of ninja garrisons that enabled one or two players to leverage the entire attacking team into the point in the blink of an eye. At the same time, we want to enable attacking teams to be able to properly establish an assault with a Garrison from an offset or close location in territory that has already been cleared and won by them (instead of only ever being able to move individual OPs forward).

The intended design for Garrisons is such that a team can place one in order to support an attack or defence - but that they are not the key instrument in the attack. We have designed the shorter spawn times on the OPs, as well as the less restrictive placement rules to facilitate OPs as a way of moving your individual unit forward from the Garrison up to the point (or, sustaining your unit on a defensive point while the Garrison is designed to sustain the individual units from a lower risk position).

With this in mind, the best outcome we feel would be to enable the placement of a Garrison in the first row of red zone (critically - not deep behind enemy lines) in order to enable a forward assault starting point, but ideally not within 250m of the strongpoint itself (therefore preserving the ability for the defenders to engage in meaningful combat without immediately being overrun).

How to achieve this:

We feel that there are several options here, each with different levels of work attached.

• Change the rules to exclude enemy garrisons from 250m of the defenders strong point. We feel that this would solve the issues experienced by defenders, but also enable attackers to open up flanking fronts to assault the strongpoint (critically, enabling a spawn location for Officers to begin their assaults using OPs). While this idea would most likely solve the issues, we feel that stopping players from building near the very place they want to attack will feel unintuitive and too gamey.
  
  
• Alter the fragility of Garrisons in red zones. This could be done by making them inactive with a larger enemy radius (ie. if an enemy is within 100m of the Garrison, it becomes locked), able to be destroyed by large proximity (ie. removed if an enemy is within 100m) etc. This would encourage players to place attacking Garrisons in safer locations that promoted more telegraphed attacks.
  
  
• Enable players to build Garrisons in adjacent sectors in the row, but not in the active sector (similar to Offensive mode). The key issue we see here is that central sectors will always struggle more as they will need to fight a two front war - although this is something that will always be present within the game to a degree.
  

Airhead

Typically with Hell Let Loose, we like to try and make sure most game problems are solvable by the Commander, the Infantry or the Armor. This issue when it comes to the Commander leans heavily on the use of the Airhead.

In playing consistently with this feature, we feel it’s wise to greatly increase the time the Airhead is active from one minute to five. Design around the airhead is to create a fragile but potent spawn location that can be used by attackers to begin an assault from within the redzone. While this is working - the short duration it’s active means that the opportunity is often missed. To counter this, we will be extending the duration, while also messaging to the team that an Airhead is active.

Halftracks

We’re yet to add halftracks, but our design for them positions them very much as a mobile garrison that is able to be used within the red zone. While “one man with a box” is extremely difficult to counter by defenders, we feel that a large and fragile vehicle represents an acceptable visual and sound signature to enable Garrison functionality within the defenders territory.

Our feeling here is that the halftrack - used cautiously - could work as either a fallback spawn point for defenders, a wide flank launch point for attackers - or a creeping garrison pushing directly towards the strongpoint.



We want to preserve the frontline push and pull of the teams, but better enable attackers to “solidify” their gains into enemy territory by being able to place a Garrison, instead of being arbitrarily locked to sector edge garrisons.




Issue:

Something that can be seen both in the competitive scene as well as the public scene is that the nature of scoring wins and losses in Warfare mode promotes stagnant “hold the middle” gameplay. Teams will often push to the center, take the neutral sector and then hold the point for the duration of the game. This leads to boring gameplay - including forced total time limit game - and overly simplistic victory conditions.

Proposed Fix:

Instead of awarding victory based on whoever has the most territory at the end of the game, we will change the sector reward value to represent a score. Capturing the third sector will still award victory, but the scoring will be cumulative instead of fixed.

• For capturing the middle territory, your team will be rewarded with 1 point.
  
• For capturing the first enemy row, your team will be rewarded with 2 points.
  
• For capturing the second enemy row, your team will be rewarded with 3 points and Victory.
  
• For retaking your own previously captured rows, you will only be rewarded with 1 point for each row retaken.
  

For example:

• Team 1 takes the neutral territory and is rewarded with 1 point.
  
• Team 2 attacks and takes the neutral territory off them. Both teams are 1-1.
  
• Team 2 attacks and takes the first row of Team 1. Team 2 is rewarded 2 points and now has a total of 3 points. 3-1
  
• Team 1 attacks and retakes their first row. 3-2
  
• Team 1 attacks and takes the center row. 3-3
  
• Team 1 attacks and takes the first row of Team 2. 3-5
  
• Team 1 attacks and takes the second row of Team 2, winning the game: 3-8.
  

Public Games:

In this way, we feel that public games will become far more dynamic, and that aggressive teams will be rewarded for successfully pushing forward. In order to encourage this, we may look at rewarding greater total victory experience to teams that capture row 3, as opposed to trigger a score victory.

Competitive Games:

In terms of the competitive scene, we feel that this is a great way of scoring games across a season - encouraging each team to try to win the highest number of points within a game to enable them to compete on a broader scale.

Instead of a binary “win/loss”, this would represent a much deeper idea of how the game progressed, as well as create greater competition as each team is trying to earn as many potential points as possible to keep them in best standing for a season.

Eg.

• Team 1 wins 9-4 in game 1 against Team 2.
  
• Team 3 wins 5-3 in game 2 against Team 4.
  

The result would be:

• Team 1
  
• Team 3
  
• Team 2
  
• Team 4
  

As opposed to the current system in which Team 1 and Team 3 are considered equal - despite Team 1 playing a better game.




Our ongoing commitment to you - our community - is to attempt to find the best solutions for each issue that arises over the course of development - from TTK issues to fences to armour hitboxes to metagame. While we often don’t get things right the first time, we are committed to continuing to find the best possible fixes and solutions that capture the spirit of the game, while also dealing with endemic issues.

Next week the team will continue talking through through the meta issues, as we’re aware that there are quite a few. Increasingly in development we’ll start to use dev briefings as a platform by which we can share our thinking about key issues. Obviously, we’re also aware that with a community this size - answers are very rarely monolithically correct, and that many people may love an idea or feature, while others may despise it. As developers, this is a very difficult line to tread, but we’re keen to keep as much transparency as possible during our update cycles.

In any case, we’re very excited to work with you to improve Hell Let Loose as much as we can. We’re already hard at work on continued polish, optimisation, future content and solutions to the issues discussed above. We’re particularly excited to follow the conversations around this dev brief and will be keen to see the conversation evolve.

We'll see you on the frontline!