Hell Let Loose News

Hey everyone,

We hope you're enjoying Update 7 and battling through the streets of Carentan.

The team have been hard at work combing through all of your feedback, from bug reports to your thoughts on the new features and changes that came with U7.

Thanks to your bug reports the team were quickly drawn to FPS issues and game crashes reported in Carentan and in some cases, other maps.

We're pleased to announce that Update 7 Hotfix v1 will go live tomorrow (Friday) morning BST.

The main focus on this initial Hotfix will be:

• Optimisations for Carentan
  
• Optimisations for new assets
  
• Player model optimisation
  
• High certainty fix for Crash 01
  
• Speculative fix for Crash 02
  

To tell you more about Hotfix v1, as well as the follow up Hotfix v2 that we're already working on, Lead Developer Max took a moment to pen a Hotfix and Development Status update for you all:




Hi everyone,

Thanks for jumping into Update 7 and for the great feedback.

We're keen to give you the full status update of the immediate next steps.

As many people have reported, several significant issues presented themselves immediately once a large number of players joined the game for this new update. While we QA each release for weeks, the largest issues normally only present themselves as soon as you start throwing tens of thousands of players at the game. This is always hugely disheartening for us as a team, as we've spent the better part of 6 weeks QAing the game and fixing more than 900 issues to prep the Update for launch. As you can imagine, having the work overshadowed by frustrating issues for you all is unideal at best! Fortunately, we've been provided with huge amounts of very useful feedback by you - the community - as well as our brilliant QA team who have been able to live-test in-game all week. We're also fortunate that our crash uploader has been working perfectly, enabling us to quickly assess the frequency distribution and triage the most common occurring to the least occurring.

The whole team has been working overtime on this as we know how fundamental many of these issues are to a great experience.

Current client crash breakdown:

- Client Crash 01
Makes up approximately 28% of crashes experienced.

- Client Crash 02
Makes up approximately 40% of crashes experienced.

- Client Crash 03
Makes up approximately 30% of crashes experienced.

FPS Dip:

We are actively investigating a severe FPS drop of approximately 20-120 seconds that can happen mid-game on Carentan (we are looking to see if this is happening elsewhere). We are confident that we will be able to find and address the issue, but it will require some time and QA testing to make sure we understand the problem to its fullest, and make sure we don’t introduce new bugs and issues upon trying to resolve.


Carentan Optimisation:

While we had been continually testing and optimising Carentan on a huge variety of machines prior to the Update, there is something unusual occurring specifically with Carentan that emerges at 100 players, and varies wildly from machine to machine - often a mixture of different hardware causing very mixed outcomes. Players with traditional middle-spec machines have experienced higher FPS in Carentan than players with high-end machines. In addition, there have been other complicating issues caused by what we are terming the “FPS Dip”.

What we do know is that optimisations were needed on the CPU side. Ironically, the map itself culls objects too effectively, and those objects (and the act of culling them) are run through the CPU - often locking the CPU up and causing all sorts of issues as a result.

To this end, we have implemented several fixes that should immediately see a performance increase. With the performance increase, we will start to get a better idea of what are standalone issues, and what are issues that are a result of that poor performance (CPU bottlenecking as a result of poor performance may be contributing to or causing the FPS dips experienced).

We also want to let you know that Carentan - like all maps we release during Early Access - will be subject to continual fixes and optimisation. We will be working continually to improve all aspects of all 9 maps we have currently in the game to meet a series of benchmarks for minimum acceptable FPS. Now that the animation systems update has been completed, we’re in a great position to dedicate our time to this and the polish and fixing of bugs that have arisen.


Immediate Plan:

Hotfix V1: Friday Morning BST

We have been testing a Hotfix to address a majority of the issues experienced over the last two days. As soon as we started to receive crash log uploads and could profile more broadly in Carentan we began immediate work on troubleshooting them.

The Hotfix will address the most common crashes, as well as include optimisation for Carentan that will improve frames across all machines.

• Optimisations for Carentan and all new assets present.
  
• Optimisations for player models (will list frames across all maps - especially in high population servers).
  
• High certainty fix for Client Crash 01
  
• Speculative fix for Client Crash 02
  
• Ongoing investigation Client Crash 03 (this may be tied to or solved by the fix for CC02)
  

Hotfix V2: Release TBD

While Hotfix V1 aims to address the majority of issues the player-base is experiencing, Hotfix V2 will address any issues that Hotfix V1 failed to solve, or any that crop up after the deployment of HF V1. As a team, we always want to build contingency plans out to make sure we have the best ability to solve any recurring issues quickly - as opposed to leaving these issues live in the game until the next Update.

We will be deciding on the timing of HF V2 immediately after assessing the effectiveness of HF V1.


Free Weekend:

As many of you may already know, we have a Free Weekend organised for this coming weekend. Fortunately, one of the reasons we brought forward our Update day to Tuesday was to give us several days of buffer in order to apply a Hotfix before the Free Weekend got under way.

During Early Access, it’s always a tricky balance to combine marketing events with significant systems overhauls. We really appreciate your patience with us as we work to get this right.


The New Meta, Loadouts, Content, Bugs and Everything Else

While our focus has been on addressing the immediate critical issues affecting players, we’re collating all feedback from our channels and building out a document to capture all perspectives and feelings about the new meta, loadouts and general game functionality.

In addition to this, some small but humorous animation bugs have popped up - most around leaving a vault or climb. We also have recorded various bugs and issues regarding black marks on the map and Recon marks capturing your own team, as well as the turnback mechanic on Omaha Beach not functioning properly.

While technical issues and bugs will always be triaged and fixed, we’re making sure we play the game continuously in order to get a sense of the new meta. We’re reading all feedback and are playing alongside the community in order to watch where it develops.

Generally, we like to give each meta shift several weeks of playtime to watch as the community evolves with it.

After this time, we’ll be looking at what changes should be made, balanced with coming features and changes to specific roles.

Finally, we’re also looking at the option to disable or scale all camera movements. We can see that some players are experiencing motion sickness due to new camera animations.


Roadmap

Due to the hotfix and patching that will be undertaken, we’ll be revising the next roadmap to address any residual issues, as well as to make sure release timing is correct.

As soon as we have revised timings, we’ll be releasing the roadmap.

It’ll feature a huge list of everything you’d expect, but with a particular focus on optimisation and bug fixing.


Conclusion

While Hell Let Loose is an Early Access game, we are very keen to not use that as an excuse for poor performance, crashes or any other issues you may experience.

Moving forward, we’re now free to spend significant time optimising all the content that has been added in the last year. Fundamentally, we’re incredibly relieved not to have any entire systems overhauls necessary to complete.

Update 7 was a huge and very risky step forward for Hell Let Loose, but it was a necessary step in order to make sure we were set up correctly for the future. As with all fundamental overhauls during Early Access, it’s always a fine line to navigate between marketing the game and managing the risk associated with the changes.

We’re very excited as a team to work from our new benchmark to continue to improve all aspects of the game, as well as implement new features.

As a team, we’ll be playing a lot this weekend and next week. If you see us in-game, please come and say hi!

Lastly, thank you for all your patience with us during the course of this Update and the ones before. Updating such fundamental aspects of the game has come with huge challenges and we appreciate that it’s been a turbulent experience. Please know that moving forward the technical risk we’ll need to undertake will be much less significant, and that the work done so far puts us in a great position for the future.




Following on from Max's update, lets take a look at both brand new and updated tactical maps for your strategic pleasure!

First up we've got the newest addition to the game, Carentan!



Next up we have the freshly overhauled Foy!



As well as the updated Omaha Beach map!



Last but not least we have the classic HLL map, Hurtgen Forest!



Not only are these maps a fantastic way to plan your battle strategy before the bullets start flying, but you can even line them up with real-world maps to see exactly where you're fighting in-game.




Those looking to join the frontline or get their friends to join their unit, we've got good news!

Starting at 6pm BST / 7pm CEST today we're hosting our next Steam Free Weekend.

The free weekend will run until 6pm BST / 7pm CEST on Monday 20th July and includes a 25% discount on the game!

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

This is an incredibly exciting time for all of us as we open the landing craft doors to both new players and those who want to see how the game has progressed though Early Access alike!

We know that as a community you'll welcome these new recruits with open arms, bringing them into your units, showing them the ropes and maybe even giving them a spin in your shiny new Shermans and Panthers!

Genuinely, we can't say thank you enough to you all for that - those actions really show off the best of the Hell Let Loose community and keeps it growing.

If you happen to be one of the new free weekend players, we've got various global community hubs (Including here on Steam) where you can chat HLL, bask in glorious memes and find yourself some other players or a clan to play with on the regular!

HLL Reddit
HLL Discord

Before we wrap up we'd just like to say thank you to every once again for your support this week.

From the huge game changing Update 7 deployment, to your patience and feedback so we could create a Hotfix for FPS and crash issues you have all been fantastic - thank you.

We've always believed that you, the community, are the heart of Hell Let Loose and this week, once again, you showed us why.

See you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Update 7: Battle of Carentan!

We’re incredibly excited to launch this game-changing update today. This has been possible thanks to your continued support and feedback, thank you.

There’s a lot of awesome new content, quality of life improvements, bug fixes, optimisation and more - So before you get stuck into finding out what’s new, check out the new Update 7 trailer below:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]






FPP

Our entire first person perspective animations have been overhauled in two ways - first in all the underlying systems, and then in the way the specific animations look. You can read more about this in the specific Developer Briefing here.


TPP

All TPP animations have been overhauled at a systems level in order to make them procedural, as well as at an asset level - to incorporate the use of motion capture movements. You can read more about this in the specific Developer Briefing here.




All TPP and FPP firearms sounds have been overhauled. The full details can be read here, in our sound-specific Developer Briefing.




Carentan is our first majority-urban map.

You can read more about Carentan the specific Developer Briefing.

Please note: The sheer density of the map has been a huge challenge to optimise, and while we have made many large scale improvements to the performance, there are key aspects of optimisation that we are now working to improve. Over the course of Early Access Carentan will receive the same continued attention as all other maps as we seek to improve frame rates across the board.




Both Foy game modes have received a photoreal lighting pass, including a change to all atmospherics.

Foy itself has had nearly every Strongpoint assessed and revised based on feedback and player experience within the game. All are overhauled - to provide either a visual upgrade, fix collision bugs or improve gameplay.

We’re working to create variation of experience in each location across the map, as well as maintaining open fields for vehicle movement. Cover density has hugely increased too, while map flow has been revised to allow for better armored encounters and easier placement of spawn points.




While more work is still to be done on Omaha, many locations - including Vierville and outlying Strongpoints - have had a significant rework to include new assets - including more optimised and gameplay friendly structures and layouts.

Omaha has also been re-lit to better build the mood of the fated morning.

More work will be done to Omaha during the course of Early Access.




We’ve listened to all the feedback regarding Garrison bombing and the dissatisfaction with the metagame. Our design policy is to gently move the meta back into line with the outcomes we desire.

Garrisons cannot be placed on neutral or enemy controlled sectors.

We are delineating the usage of Garrisons to be positions behind the front that are designed to feed attacks and defensive locations, as opposed to functioning as a “bomb” or the tip of the spear in the assault. To this end, OPs will now function as they are intended - as faster forward spawns used by assault units. Our desire here is to encourage more intentional offensive and defensive behaviour around a defined front line, as opposed to just dropping a Garrison and flooding the point. We feel this will make defending far easier as it is less likely that a defensive unit will be attacked from any direction.


Enemy Garrisons now take 5 seconds to be dismantled

This replaces the proximity takedown, as the opportunity cost of removing a Garrison was too easy and low previously. To counter any spawn camping this may encourage, we’ve made additional changes below.


Players cannot spawn on a Garrison if an enemy player is within 15m

Garrisons now lock spawning if an enemy is within close range and moving to dismantle it. This will reduce mass spawn-killing, as well as incentivise the attacking player to close the distance to remove the Garrison.


Minimum distance between friendly Garrisons is now 100m

This change is to enable more even placement behind the front line and give more contingency should a key Garrison go down.


Outpost cooldown has been reduced to 120s in order to allow players to maintain them

In order to effectively assault into enemy territory, OPs are now able to be placed far more frequently.


Sector Capture time is now reduced to 2 minutes

In order to create more decisive conflicts on the point, we’ve slightly lowered the total time to capture the point. We found that in Offensive mode particularly, the contested nature of flags as well as the total time needed to capture them meant that games could run well over 2 hours, resulting in tedious gameplay and lack any decisive victory or defeat.

As always, we’ll be monitoring all of these changes and the way they affect the flow of the gameplay. We are currently preparing two significant meta-changing new features: transport vehicles and Support/Engineer changes and are keen to make these adjustments before these hit the battlefield. We’ve also added the new Commander “Airhead” ability (details below) in order to enable each force better strategic ability to mitigate breakthroughs or strike into enemy territory.


Teamkills

Team Kill penalties now stack. Additional TKs will extend your next redeploy time by 10 seconds for each teamkill.


Redeploy

Using the Redeploy function on the In-Game menu now has a 20secs redeploy time
All self inflicted damage that leads to death, now gives a redeploy time of 20secs


New Commander Ability

Airhead

Defined - an Airhead is a bridgehead established by aerial drops - often into enemy territory. In Hell Let Loose, an Airhead can be established by the Commander at any location of their choice.

After using the ability, your team-specific supply plane will drop a temporary Airhead spawn point at the target location.

Cost: 75 Manpower
Cooldown: 10 minutes

• All Infantry and Recon players can spawn on it.
  
• Players can spawn on it every 30 seconds for 2 minutes (approximately four spawn waves).
  
• Be careful when dropping the Airhead into enemy territory - as enemy presence can destroy it immediately - rendering it useless.
  
• Unlike the new Garrison changes, the Airhead is destroyed by enemy proximity.
  

Recommended Uses:

• An Airhead can be used with coordinated Units to effectively flank and deep strike into enemy territory.
  
• An Airhead can effectively be used to save a collapsing front line.
  

Gameplay

• Introduced the ability to use your mouse and turn your head in vehicle viewports. We have parented hull machine-guns to this movement to enable a smooth firing/looking experience. Please note that viewports will be overhauled to re-introduce both depth of field effects and much higher texture detail.
• We will also be changing the hull and coaxial MGs in vehicles to use the ballistics system now that we’ve profiled performance costs.
  
• MG’s can now be deployed while the player is still moving, instead of requiring the player to stop moving first.
  
• The M1 Garand can now be reloaded mid-clip.
  
• Hovering on any Unit Officers on the map highlights all of their Unit members.
  
• Vehicle name plates to only show when pointed.
  
• We now show the health status of Unit members in the member list on the HUD: Unit members appear white when alive in-game, grey when dead/in the deployment menu, and Red when in critical state in all listed locations.
  
• Every weapon now has a recoil pattern that can be mastered.
  
• Introduced new ways for experience to be gained. Eg. experience is rewarded for placing the ammo box, as well as for each time the ammo box is used by another player.
  
• Added gameplay option to hide vote kick notifications
  
• Unit list automatically expands in the deploy menu when you join or create a Unit.
  
• Implemented an autosprint. Players can autosprint by double tapping the W key. We will refine and expand this functionality for U8.
  
• When a player is crouched, enable the pressing of the space bar to stand them up.
  
• Force dominance to going ADS while crawling.
  
• When pressing jump while prone, transition the player to crouch.
  

Performance

• Continual performance updates across all aspects of the title.
  
• Lowered dead body despawn rate to 30 seconds as default.
  
• Please note: we have many aspects of optimisations still to come. Now that U7 has been released, we will be focusing our efforts on this in the near future.
  

SFX

• Introduced Sound Mix Modifiers for different Seats in a vehicle. This will allow us to give each vehicle seat a different audio treatment.
  
• Number of Audio Channels exposed as a game option. Default value increased from 32 to 128.
  
• Fixed: No click SFX when interacting with the 'Invite Players to Unit' UI
  
• Fixed: The SFX for bandaging will play in its entirety if the user cancels the bandaging animation
  
• Fixed: Body hit sound. (NOTE: depending on feedback will allow you the ability to disable this in the sound settings).
  
• Fixed: Quickly traversing the cursor over the buttons within the frontend menus restarts the frontend's SFX and music
  
• Fixed: [Omaha] Ocean audio abruptly stops at a certain point of the map.
  
• Fixed: When firing and leaning right, the shell casings sound can be heard in the left ear.
  
• Fixed: The player can hear the water SFX after they have drowned
  
• Fixed: Heavy breathing audio can be heard if the player is wounded and underwater
  
• Fixed: The audio cue for confirming a new marker will play even if the marker is not placed.
  

HUD/UI

• Fixed: Multiple spawn points can be highlighted by clicking on a new spawn point as the animation for the previously selected spawn plays
  
• Recon marks now pulse and are darker red to better enable them to be seen on the map. They also layer correctly in the context of the other icons on the map.
  
• Visual overhaul for EA Disclaimer when launching title for the first time.
  
• Changed the red skull icon for a revivable player to a morphine icon - to better signal to new medics that the player is revivable.
  
• Fixed: Sector names on the map will flash blue once the map is viewed for the first time during the player's life
  
• Fixed: No tooltip available for Light tanks when hovering the mouse cursor over the map key for deployment menus and overview map
  
• Fixed: Visual inconsistency between the Commander player icon on the key and in-game
  
• Fixed: The "x" icon for kicking players from the Unit is missing a tooltip
  
• Fixed:Inconsistent font and spacing in the 'Vehicles', 'Deployment', and 'Overview Map' sub-menus of the Field Manual.
  
• Fixed: US wrist watch icon is present on the German HUD instead of the pocket watch icon
  
• Fixed: [Omaha] When a strong point is nearly captured, the strong point emblem will appear full when it has not been captured yet
  
• Fixed: Inconsistency in HUD element's design during the 'Loading' and 'Loaded' stages on the artillery
  
• Fixed: Tank icons appear to be of a lower resolution than the map itself
  
• Fixed: [Map] Missing tooltips for the Repair and Resupply stations at the spawn points
  
• Fixed: On the scoreboard, there are no tooltips present when the Resource icons are hovered over
  
• Fixed: Red mist effect overlaps the ‘You were wounded by ???’ pop up.
  
• Fixed: There is no bandage icon shown when being healed by another player.
  
• Fixed: [UI] Multiple UI elements are overlapping when using certain screen resolutions
  
• Fixed: [PHL] The map title text is offset when viewing Purple Heart Lane on the Vote for Map screen
  
• Fixed: There is no red blur effect on the 'Equip Bandage' button prompt
  
• Fixed: Outpost icons are inconsistent on the Deployment Screen and In-Game Map
  
• Fixed: Long server messages set via the RCon's broadcast tool do not wrap, and will go off-screen as a result
  
• Fixed: On the Deployment Screen, the tooltip for hovering over an Outpost or Garrison icon inconsistently displays "Enemy Near" when an enemy is within 50m of the spawn points
  
• Fixed: Visible blank space on Commander order tooltips
  
• Fixed: The thumbnails shown for creating the 3 unit types are incorrectly scaled when not selected
  
• Fixed: [PHL] Strong point and underwater HUD elements can overlap
  
• Fixed: Loadout descriptions have inconsistent text size
  
• Fixed: The Artillery UI icons is difficult for the player to observe in the in-game environment.
  
• Fixed: Multiple Loadout icons appear squashed in-game.
  
• Fixed: Missing HUD icon for anti-tank gun
  
• Fixed: In the Field Manual, the Maps section is missing images for all maps
  
• Fixed: [PT] Tanks' Gunner seat is missing a "Zoom out/in" prompt
  
• Fixed: [Foy-O] Inconsistency between the ingame HUD timer and the Scoreboard timer when entering Overtime.
  
• Fixed: Fix issue where the unit letter isn't showing on the voip notify.
  
• Fixed: Turning the 'HUD Display Mode' to 'Always On' after joining a server results in the HUD to fade out as the user loads into gameplay
  
• Fixed: Cooldown timers for commander orders will be removed when the order is no longer in effect.
  
• Fixed: Various issues where tooltips and cosmetic preview heads do not update when the item is embedded in a sub-menu.
  

Visual Improvements

• Suppression has been reworked to optimise the visual effects, make the blur far less ugly while still maintaining the intended effect. Previously, it was very difficult to determine whether you had been wounded as the suppression would darken your screen. We’ve worked hard to distinguish these two states.
  
• The “bloody screen” wounded overlay is now far more distinct and obvious. As your wounds become more severe and stay untreated, the pumping heartbeat sound will pulse with the overlay and become faster and faster.
  
• When killed by small-arms, your player camera will tumble much faster to the ground in line with the momentum of your body. Previously it would float down to the ground.
  
• Overhauled camera shakes when firing weapons to be calibre-specific
  
• Overhauled camera shakes when explosions occur nearby (including while in a tank).
  
• Reworked gore and dismemberment. Many features were not working as intended - including blood trails, fx and better visuals. This has all been fixed.
  
• Fixed: The Colt M1911 and Luger P08 will display a bullet model inside the chamber even though the gun is currently empty
  
• Fixed: No rotating animation present on the player in the second seat of the artillery
  
• Temporarily disabled map vote function as it was non-functional and visually irritating. We will be introducing a much nicer end-of-round map vote function in U8.
  
• We have set traditional TAA to be the default game anti-aliasing, as this looks better in video footage. However, Clarity TAA and all exposed AA settings are still available.
  

Customisation

• Introduced the new Fallschirmjäger uniform for German forces, including the Fallschirmjäger helmet.
  
• Introduced the 1942 Airborne uniforms for the US forces.
  
• Overhauled Barracks to use photoreal lighting.
  
• Introduced the ability to zoom into the upper portion of the character using the mouse wheel.
  
• Fixed: The Albert head model's neck slightly clips with multiple uniforms
  
• Fixed: Clipping visible on the character shoulder when equipping the Paul head on the Heer summer and Winter uniforms
  
• Fixed: Multiple Winter Heads are missing "Winter" on their icon tooltip
  
• Fixed: The Winter Wolfgang head icon is not in the correct icon order
  
• Fixed: Visible clipping issues on the back of all German Winter head variants while crouched.
  
• Fixed: Winter Erich and Winter Alfred head variants cause clipping issues with certain German Helmets.
  
• Fixed: The Heer Panzer Cap is not properly aligned with the character head
  

Bug Fixes

• Opened up collision on the drystone wall gaps
  
• Fixed: Commander Ability tooltip cooldown timers start when the user joins the server
  
• Fixed: Supplies from Supply Drops that land in high altitude assets may fall through the ground.
  
• Fixed: The audio cue for confirming a new marker from the radial menu will play even though the marker is not placed onto the battlefield
  
• Fixed: All active sectors are briefly shown as neutral when first entering the deployment menu.
  
• Fixed: Supply Drops can be placed in the out of bounds area
  
• Fixed: Karabiner 98k - sometimes will not shoot a bullet when fired
  
• Fixed: Player death is counted as a team kill after bleeding out from damage caused by their own grenade.
  
• Fixed: The player's helmet will pop off of their corpse when they 'Let go'
  
• Fixed: Being killed by a teammate that is currently on the deployment screen does not show the 'You were killed by teammate...' message
  
• Fixed: Tooltip Cooldown timers for the Commander orders will be removed when the order is not longer in effect
  
• Fixed: German Recon vehicle can be spawned on top of Players on all maps.
  
• Fixed: Shooting dead bodies with a sniper rifle causes unrealistic movement
  
• Fixed: The 'Head' list will not reset back to the initial roster of heads if the user leaves the 'Barracks' with the head variants list open
  
• Fixed: [TPP] Various US helmets fall under the map when dying
  
• Fixed: Opacity settings don't affect friendly tank crew icons and names
  
• Fixed: Causing a teammate to enter Critical State and them "Letting Go" does not penalize the teamkiller's Death Screen Timer
  
• Fixed: Attempting to join a server that has available spaces but is currently in the post-match screen will place the user in the server queue
  
• Fixed: Accepting a Steam invite while Hell Let Loose is running will send the Player to a random server.
  
• Fixed: Cannot Deploy here message stops player being able to use mouse
  
• Fixed: ‘Match is over’ error message was displayed in German after a failed attempt to join a German server when the game had been booted up in English
  
• Fixed: Aiming down sights immediately after entering or leaving the prone position results in the player's camera zooming in before the iron sights are brought up to the player's POV
  
• Fixed: When a server is full, only the first attempt at joining a friend's game through Steam places the user in the server's queue
  
• Fixed: The HUD element 'Strong Point' will show for the attacking team if they are standing within a locked strong point
  
• Fixed: Player will die if they exit the German Heavy tank while it is moving in 2nd gear or higher.
  
• Fixed: The 'Cancel' button on the 'Connecting...' notification will become defunct shortly before the loading screen is shown
  
• Fixed: All players that are unable to be invited to a unit will appear greyed out on the 'Invite Players to Unit' list
  
• Fixed: The user cannot find servers for nearly 2 minutes after losing internet connection within a server
  
• Fixed: Unable to open the Map after using a Smoke Grenade
  
• Fixed: Inconsistent appearance of locked strong points between Warfare and Offensive game modes
  
• Fixed: Bullet decals can be produced inside the Greyhound Recon vehicle
  
• Fixed: Player crashed after unplugging their monitor and opening the pause menu.
  
• Fixed: Clicking 'Confirm' multiple times when entering a password for a server will produce a 'Join Failed' message and the user will be removed from the server when loaded in
  
• Fixed: The "Can't deploy at that location" prompt is displayed on screen if the spawn point is destroyed just before deploying into active gameplay.
  
• Fixed: Nothing happens when the player opts to deploy when the previous Outpost has recently been moved
  
• Fixed: The player will receive two 'Can't deploy at location' error messages if they select an Outpost that is later moved
  
• Fixed: The 'Fullscreen Mode' option will reset to the previously applied setting when changing the 'Master Quality'
  
• Fixed: Using a Steam direct link to join a server will connect to an incorrect server
  
• Fixed: Some servers may not update their map rotation list after a Patch/Update
  
• Fixed: Users may appear falling under the map and get disconnected during map transitions on a specific community server
  
• Fixed: Creating a Unit causes all other different Unit types to not be visible in the Deployment Screen.
  
• Fixed: Vehicle trail fx are kicking out far in front of the vehicle.
  
• Fixed: Manual bolt cycling.
  
• Fixed: Shadows are removed from the frontend (Barracks) when the user leaves a server.
  
• Fixed: Blood and Gore Decals not visible and causing SSAO/Lighting issues.
  

We have begun taking a look at the armoured gameplay ahead of introducing new vehicles into the game. We will continue to work on more improvements as we iterate.

• Reduced the damage that carries over from the tracks/wheels to the hull, so body shots are more effective and efficient than repeatedly shooting the tracks/wheels.
  

• Exposed weapon player is killed with.
  
• Added ability to identify players in chat log.
  
• Fixed: The server broadcast message will not show correctly if it has been edited via the internal Rcon
  
• Fixed: Internal Rcon cannot be accessed while on the scoreboard
  
• Fixed: An inconsistency of the current map can occur between external RCon tool and the Enlist screen if the user changes map twice in quick succession
  

• Fixed: [PHL] Possible exploit locations because of no collision.
  
• Fixed: [PHL] Confirming a Fuel order on the middle US HQ spawn will block the main path for tanks
  
• Fixed: [PHL-O] There is no "turn back" boundary that prevents Defenders from reaching the Attacker's initial HQ
  
• Fixed 18 minor collision issues.
  

• Fixed: [SMDM] The US Commander cannot place Fuel Abilities on the mid HQ.
  
• Fixed: [SMDM] Placeholder text is present when loading into the map.
  
• Fixed 10 minor collision issues.
  

• Fixed: [Foy][C10] The Greyhound Recon vehicle can become stuck if the player drives over the snow mound directly in front of the Fuel Order spawn
  
• Fixed: [Foy-O] The attacking German team does not have any tanks available at the start of the game on the left or right HQs
  
• Inconsistent sector names between Offensive and Warfare modes. Both points are now referred to as “Flak Battery”.
  
• Fixed 56 minor collision and visual issues.
  

• Fixed 6 minor collision and visual issues.
  

• The US Top HQ Heavy Tank spawn location has the exact same spawn point as the Commander's Fuel abilities spawn location.
  
• Fixed 25 minor collision issues.
  

• Fixed: ‘Out of Bounds’ area overlaps all US HQ sector strongpoints.
  
• Fixed 13 minor collision issues.
  

• Fixed: [SME-W][A6] Player is unable to exit the top two German Artilleries.
  
• Fixed: [SME-O] German resupply stations are present in the US HQ’s.
  
• Fixed: [Sainte-Mere-Eglise] Observing the sun at a specific angle creates a powerful lens flare.
  
• Fixed 22 minor collision issues.
  

• Some HLOD issues exist in Carentan (the buildings that appear to be “melted ice-cream”) and some other maps. We’ll be focusing on addressing these issues shortly.
  
• Some collision issues exist in Carentan - we will be fixing these shortly.
  
• We’re aware of some bugs causing small ditches in specific locations of Omaha Beach.
  
• The blurring effect during suppression is currently at an unintended low intensity, and will be increased back to normal levels shortly. This was introduced accidentally when reworking the suppression visual effects.
  
• The zeroing on many weapons currently sits at 0m. We will be fixing this shortly.
  
• We temporarily needed to remove the player’s own FPP shadow as it was continuously casting shadow on the player rig no matter the angle or orientation. We’ll be revisiting this.
  
• We’re aware of the FPS “hitch” that can occur every couple of minutes for some players. We have a fairly good idea of what is causing this and will be giving it a lot of attention moving forward.
  
• As with all huge infrastructure changes, we do expect both server and client crashes to increase in frequency. We are committed to isolating and fixing these as soon as possible, and are very thankful with your patience as we iron these out.
  

• Engineer functionality - including building useful defensive locations.
  
• Support functionality.
  
• Tank and vehicle physics and functionality revisit - from collision in maps to potentially introducing turning out.
  
• Investigating freelook implementation.
  
• Investigating ways of allowing players more control over which uniform is automatically applied per map.
  
• Investigating “Historic” setting in options menu for players who only want the historically accurate uniform per map. This would be a non-default client-side setting that would not be mandatory for all players.
  
• Crewman functionality.
  
• Continued refinement of TPP animation systems (to iron out any issues presented in U7, and to build in greater procedural cycles).
  
• Overhauling ammo box and supply types - including the Support and logistics gameplay loop.
  
• New Commander abilities.
  
• Overhauling SME, SMDM and Hurtgen Forest, as well as continued work on Utah Beach, Omaha Beach and PHL.
  
• Transport vehicles and supply vehicles.
  
• Investigating melee implementation.
  
• New weapons for new loadouts (FG-42 and more).
  
• 3 new unannounced maps.
  
• New customisations.
  
• A new front.
  

Thank you so much for your continued support over our Early Access. We’re already hard at work on Update 8 - working over a huge number of bug fixes, new features, new vehicles (and vehicle types) and many of the things we’ve listed above.

If you’re enjoying Hell Let Loose, we’d love for you to leave us a review on Steam.

See you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #84!

This week we're very excited to share with you not only the TPP Animation Overhaul but now also details on our audio redesign, which includes a full sweep of all firearms in the game!

We've also received a priority message from HQ with a release date for Update 7...




We are excited to let you know that we will be releasing Update 7 on Tuesday the 14th of July at approximately 11am BST / 12pm CEST / 6am ET / 3am PT.

We want to thank the entire community for your support and patience, and we can’t wait to see you on the frontline!




The best way to check out the new look TPP Animations will be in game next week, but we wanted to give you a sneak peak to let you know what to expect in the next update.

TPP Details Upper body and lower body is now procedural
This system is going to be foundational, and we can now create unique elements in it (procedural aspects such as idle animations of a character smoking, or mixed varieties of sprints and walks)
We will take this further, but focused on FPP first due to it influencing the entire feel of the gunplay

We would need to spend hours showing you all of the new animations, but with the new update just around the corner our time is best spent making sure we get this out to you asap.

Check out the introductory TPP video below!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We will continue to smooth out and bug fix all animations following Update 7.

If you missed the FPP Animation showcase last week you can check it out below

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Take a look behind the scenes at how we created the new animations!
















If you’ve followed Hell Let Loose for any significant time you’ll know that we’ve undergone a long process of upgrading the systems and the sound engine that lie behind all the sound effects and treatment in the game. Update 7 will introduce some of the first fruits of these massive back-end upgrades, with a particular focus on an overhaul to every single firearm within the game - when heard from both the first person perspective, as well as at close, medium and distant ranges.

When returning to overhaul the weapons, we spent large amounts of time looking for a sound treatment that the community would enjoy. Unanimously, feedback on our work-in-progress sounds currently in the game was that they lacked satisfactory “punch” - due to the fact that up until this point the current sounds were very dominant in the upper frequencies.




In order to remedy this, we’ve built an extensive library of high quality recordings in order to work as the toolbox in the redesign of the weapon sounds. Instead of relying on single assets (ie. mp40_shotsound_01) to convey the gunfire sound - like our animation system - the new sound design is procedural and is composed of many different elements of a single gunshot (bass, high-end frequencies and so on). This means that each weapon feels contextually correct (you can now far more accurately estimate the calibre of weapon type from range, as they are all sorted per calibre).

In addition to tackling the specific weapon sounds, we’ve also begun marking up exterior areas. Essentially, this allows for us to dynamically alter the weapon sounds according to the environment in which they’re fired.

What you’ll experience in Update 7 is the first iteration of our Open Field, Urban and Forest weapon treatments. With later updates we’ll be applying similar treatments to the interiors of all types of buildings currently in the game.

Adam, our audio designer, has quickly captured some of the above mentioned for you in this DEV WIP video.

Have a listen!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




The method to which we trigger automatic weapons has also finally undergone a re-work. The old method would see us triggering a sound every time a bullet was fired from the weapon.

While this is accurate, it also resulted in the audio being very obviously tied to frame rate. As a result, many players would report that numerous weapons weren’t matching their real-life rates-of-fire, and at worst - poor frames-per-second would induce a stutter effect (especially on weapons like the MG42).

Fortunately, we’ve now switched to a looping method - where the sound and visuals are disconnected from your frame rate. You’ll notice that no matter the framerate, your audio should be consistent and smooth.

Weapon animation sounds have also been redesigned and in future we will improve on how the weapon movement sound is reflected as the player moves around and interacts with the environment.

We will also be reworking footsteps, sounds to indicate stance changes, vaulting and mantling sounds and every other aspect of audio in the game.




We’re continually working on both the technology, assets and mix behind the way we handle vehicle audio.

This coming update has seen the inclusion of sound mix modifiers which reduce the volume and high frequencies of exterior sounds when the crew are inside the vehicle. The volume of Interior and Exterior vehicle sounds have been reduced to better aid with mixing and also crew communications when inside the vehicles.

We have also removed a bug that would ramp up the vehicles volume when traversing up terrain. For reference we are aiming to design the vehicle experience around the historical accounts of crewmen during the war, gameplay functionality and also take inspiration from films and media such as ‘Lebanon’, ‘Battle of tank T-34’, and of course ‘Fury’. These vehicles became home for the men who crewed them, and we’re excited to continue improving all sound aspects of these into the future.




An Audio Channel Voice Count option has been added to the Audio Option Menu. This setting allows user control over how many audio channels are used up at one time. A mono sound file uses one channel of audio and a stereo file uses two channels of audio. Up until this update we had a limitation of 32 audio channels playing at once and in some cases one weapon fired in TPP would use up to 12 channels of audio, now weapons never use more than 5 for the core sounds. Currently, the game consists of an equal mix of mono to stereo files, but to aid in better pinpointing the location of certain sounds we aim to replace some stereo files with mono files in future.

Option in Audio option menu (Default is set to EPIC)

We would advise players to adjust these settings to suit their own preference and PC specs.

LOW = 32 Channels
MEDIUM = 64 Channels
HIGH = 96 Channel
EPIC = 128 Channels

• Footstep volume slightly increased.
  
• Rocket fly by sound added to Panzerschreck and Bazooka Projectiles.
  
• Sound mix modifier additions applying volume and EQ ducking to weapon firing, explosions and when the player is underwater.
  
• Fuse sound added to german grenades.
  
• A few additions of foley to certain animations (Throwing Grenades, Vaulting, Weapon equipping).
  
• Vehicle internal MG reflection sound.
  
• Volume radius increased to AT impact sounds on vehicles.
  
• New Bullet Fly By sounds. In Future we will add sounds for subsonic rounds.
  

Looking towards the future, we’re going to be tackling the following:

Explosion Overhaul

We have now begun working on explosion and heavy weapon sounds (grenades, rockets, mines, tank rounds, artillery etc.). Like the firearms, these too will be modified by the environment in which they occur. We will take a modular approach to the explosion sounds by layering and randomising sounds to play based on the size of the explosion ie. small, medium or large and also where that explosion occurs.

Ambience Overhaul

With the focus and attention being given to the more prominent sounds, we’ll also be addressing the per-map ambience. While not as important as the weapon or explosions, ambience is essential in building out the game world and immersing you as a player - from wildlife to wind, to the quiet creak of idle machinery. As our latest maps have been released we have been testing ways to randomise ambient sounds with the inclusion of wildlife ambient spawners in Purple Heart Lane and Hill 400.

Foley overhaul

Foley is another area we identify that has lacked attention but is one we are excited to improve. Whilst ambience brings life to the world, the foley soundscape is crucial for reflecting your interactions within the world - whether it be leaping a wall, adjusting your stance or changing a barrel. We have ideas to improve and add additional footsteps, the sound of the gear worn, the interaction of the weapon by the player and much more.

Engine Features new and continued

• Mixing
  
• Occlusion
  
• Reverb (Potentially)
  
• Listener Focus
  

Naturally, we'll continue to work on improvements and tweak for all weapon sounds.




That wraps up this week's Dev Brief!

We hope you liked what you saw and look forward to hearing your feedback on our new animations and audio, both now and once you've got stuck into Update 7 next week.

You deploy to Carentan July 14th.

See you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #83!

Before we get stuck in we'd just like to say welcome to the new players that have joined us recently in the Steam Sale, we hope you're having a great time with Hell Let Loose - you've joined the frontline at a very exciting time for us.

This brings me on to today's Dev Brief, the First Person Perspective (FPP) Animation Overhaul Reveal!

Thanks again for everyone's patience whilst we prepared for this moment. To give you an in-depth look at what's coming in the near future Max and Spono have put together a walkthrough video for your viewing pleasure.

Over to you Max!




Hi everyone,

Initially we weren’t quite sure how best to show you what we’ve been working on today, to fully explain all the changes under the hood - and then how it feels to play - would take the better part of a day.

Finally we settled on putting this video together in an effort to describe what you can expect in Update 7. In watching it, we realised we missed talking about several huge additional new features and changes. We’re going to try and produce another video next week to describe everything we missed, as well as dive into the TPP side of things too!

What you’re seeing today has been the product of months and months of work from our incredible animation team. Rick, Jacob, Niko, Roman and James have all done huge amounts of work and re-work to deliver the system you’ll see in the video. Like the ballistics system, it’s not something you’d usually do with a live game, and to manage to integrate this, as well as optimise it has been nothing short of an Herculean effort.









From all of us here at Black Matter, we’re so excited to let you get your (photoreal) hands on it so that you can truly experience it.





Finally, we want to apologise for our delay in releasing Update 7. Many issues arose that we felt could compromise the introduction of the new system, and so we decided that several weeks more worth of QA testing would be the best strategy for ensuring the best experience possible. That said, we failed to properly communicate that, and as such we’ll be making larger efforts in the future towards transparency. We'll have news on a firm release date for you in the rather near future.





We want to remind everyone that Hell Let Loose is still in Early Access. We still have a huge amount of optimisation to do, as well as continual bug fixes and the introduction of more content. We continually read feedback given to us across our channels - please keep contributing, as it’s very valuable for us as a team - Thank You!

Enjoy the video:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




That wraps up this week's Developer Briefing!

We'd love to hear what you think of the FPP Animation Overhaul that we shared today, so let us know in the comments and over on the forums.

As always, thank you so much for your continued support - you, the community are the heart of Hell Let Loose! We look forward to taking you through the Third Person Animation Overhaul next week.

If you liked what you've seen today and are yet to join the battle, Hell Let Loose is currently 25% off in the Steam Summer Sale:

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

See you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #82!

This week we're starting to formally reveal and go into detail on some of the content you'll be diving into when Update 7 drops in the near future.

This week, Lead Developer Max is taking you on an introduction to the next map coming to Hell Let Loose... Carentan!




Hi everyone,

Max here!

For a long time we’ve wanted to put together a proper urban map that took the more open-field combat of Hell Let Loose and placed it in a dense, built-up environment. To do that effectively and in a way that captured both the best of gameplay and the best visuals relied on us building up a huge asset library that would allow us to curate gameplay, as well as create a convincing urban landscape.

We’re incredibly proud to finally reveal that our next map will be Carentan - coming in Update 7 alongside our animation overhaul and many, many other additions.



Carentan is very different to every Hell Let Loose map you’ve played before. We studied all the feedback from Sainte-Mère-Église (our urban test-run). From this we boiled down key elements that made up great urban warfare and then set about building a pipeline that would allow us to deliver this in an optimised way.



Carentan is hugely iconic - first made so by Band of Brothers, and then by the countless iterations of the location in games - starting of course with Call of Duty 1. We wanted - in typical Hell Let Loose fashion - to recreate the town exactly and lay it out in a way that enables you to fight the battle at the scale of the real-life engagement. All the most iconic locations are present, but in their own location. You’ll be able to fight from the Cafe Desire Ingouf and the Cafe De Normandie, through the train station and all the way to the Arcades of the Place de la République before crossing the canal locks into the countryside.









As you can see from the tactical map below, the key to Carentan is owning and protecting the bridges crossing the canals to the north, as well as the four main thoroughfares through the town itself.



The town is huge - easily the largest playable urban landscape that we’ve ever attempted. Building a photoreal town from to-scale reference is no easy feat - and to achieve that we’ve taken the liberty of closing off many of the 2000+ gardens that lay nestled behind the street fronts.

Like the battle itself, we wanted to consolidate the combat to the streets, squares and houses. As such, we’ve curated key locations and access points as happened in the real battle. We’ve tested player density considerably and are confident in the brutal street-to-street and house-to-house fighting.

We’ve changed much of our level design ethos and systems in the last six months. We’ll explain this far deeper in it’s own Dev Brief, but you’ll notice that Carentan has a much higher level of consistent detail in every location.









Beyond the town itself are the low lying flooded fields, the outlying farmhouses and the Mont Halais position - a hilltop flak position that overlooks the train station.





We’re starting to prepare for the launch of Update 7 in the coming weeks and the coming dev briefs are going to contain some of the biggest changes to the game that we’ve ever made.




Thanks for all of your submissions to the recent HLL subreddit competition that was run by our very talented community illustrator MoscaTnT. We were very taken back by the response from the community and we will be sure to do more of these or similar comps in the near future! So if you haven’t done so yet, make sure to follow the subreddit for all the glorious future content!

If you would like to check out the other submitted captions here is the link

The Winners

We decided to give an extra key away, as the judges were torn because there were so many good captions!

1st Game Key goes to _SGP_
For:


2nd Game Key goes to PANZERmx
For:


*Drumroll*
And the winner of a Custom Designed Avatar from Art creator MoscaTnT and Game Key goes to

Uomodelmonte86
For:


The prize in all its glory:





Prepare for Carentan, grow your unit, join the battle right now in the Steam Summer Sale with a 25% discount:

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

The battle for Carentan draws near. Be ready for battle.


Now, about Dev Brief #83... We can confirm that next week's Brief will be on the Animation Overhaul!

You've all been very patient, thank you. We're incredibly excited to finally share this game changing overhaul with you.

To tide you over until then, we've got a screenshot for you...



See you on the frontline.