All Quiet in the Trenches News

With the upcoming Gas Update 0.9, there will be new tactical challenges in battle that restrict visibility and movement. These new features are primarily intended to provide more depth and more dynamic gameplay in battle.

Today we would like to take a closer look at one of these new features:

Fires caused by artillery strikes

Artillery is already a relentless threat on the battlefield. With version 0.9, it will be expanded by one more dimension: As soon as an artillery salvo hits the battlefield, there is now a chance that areas will be ignited by the detonations. These (smaller) fires then produce dense smoke that spreads across the terrain depending on the wind direction. After a random number of turns, the fires extinguish themselves.

Restricted visibility due to smoke

The emerging smoke blocks the lines of sight, obscuring troops at a certain distance behind it. They can then no longer be suppressed or focussed in any other way. ‘Fire on sight’ is still possible, but the chance to hit is greatly reduced.

Comparison of the fields of vision of the French and German troop.

Impassable positions

A burning position is also impassable for a certain period of time. Especially in narrow trenches, this can mean that certain routes are blocked or that favoured positions with good cover can no longer be used.

The position further ahead would have been passable under normal circumstances.

In early January, we started working on the Gas Update 0.9. The first thing we did was to revise the save system in response to numerous requests from the community. We would like to present the changes to the save games that will come with the 0.9 update in a few months today.

Saving After Every Turn

From the beginning of development many years ago until today, All Quiet in the Trenches has undergone many changes. The decision to only save at the beginning of a level was made at a point when the playing time of a single level was still considerably shorter. This system was easy to implement and served its purpose well at the time.

This system became increasingly impractical the longer a single level took to play. This revision of the save system has therefore been on our to-do list since the beginning of Early Access. Due to the many requests from the community to adjust the save system, we felt it was important to address this now.

With the 0.9 update, the game will save at the beginning of each turn. While saves at the beginning of each level will remain permanently, there will be a certain number of save slots (currently 10, but there may be an option to set this in the settings) per game for turn-based saves.

Revision of the User Interface


The most important changes to the UI are as follows:

A thumbnail for the game is created when saving, which improves the overview and identification of the individual saved games. The active soldiers are displayed as icons. The saves for each playthrough are grouped together to provide better structure in the window, and the key information has been restructured.



Further Changes

Due to the aforementioned changes, it will no longer be possible to open older saves from version 0.8 and earlier.

However, the system revision will also bring other improvements: the size of the individual save games has been reduced somewhat, whilst the performance when loading the information has been significantly improved. This has eliminated the lag when opening the window.

One year ago today, we released All Quiet in the Trenches in Early Access. It has been a very exciting year for us, with difficult moments but also many wonderful experiences. Thank you for accompanying and supporting us on this journey.

During this time, we have concentrated our updates on the trenches and the battle. The upcoming update aims to focus on the gas war and extend the playable time to the spring of 1917. We then plan to look more closely at the soldiers, the military hospital and the French civilian population before tackling the final year of the war. You can find a detailed list of all previous and planned future updates here: https://totallynotaliens.com/aqitt#roadmap


Your feedback and your opinions have repeatedly given us new insights and perspectives on our game over the past year. We are happy and grateful to have found such a thoughtful and pleasant community in you.

We are looking forward to the coming year, which will continue to be dedicated to our Early Access, and wish you many exciting and memorable experiences with All Quiet in the Trenches!

Your Totally Not Aliens team!

With the update to version 0.8.4, we are releasing a few new features in addition to some bug fixes.

In addition to a new offensive level and two Christmas stories, there are also new settings for a new game. We have split Hard Mode into smaller modes, added a few new modifications and made balancing changes.



It is now possible to select only some of the Hard Mode options. If you select all Hard Mode sub-options, the game will be slightly more difficult than before.

Game saves from version 0.8.3 should be compatible with the new update, but the new stories can only occur in a new game. If you still encounter errors, you can switch back to version 0.8.3 at any time via the Steam beta.

And here are the full patch notes for 0.8.4:

Features:

• Added new difficulty settings, hard mode has been slightly rebalanced and divided into:
  
  - Hard times
  - Ailing troop
  - Outsider
  - Out of luck
  - Incompatible ammunition
  
  
• Added two new stories around Christmas
  
• Added new offensive level MG Decoy

Improvements:

• Added a bonus for Trained in first aid in Assist in the hospital
• Added a chance of mood Disgusted when failing to loot corpses
  

Bugfixes:

• Fixed game over in battle not working when a soldier is in the hospital in the camp
  
• Fixed soldiers may not automatically return even if they are in close range at the end of a battle
  
• Fixed some stories that deal with the death of a soldier happening for a soldier who didn't know the dead comrade
  
  
• Fixed an error when a machine gun is repositioned while it's firing
  
• Fixed not cleaning up the Drive away MG-troop task at the end of a battle, which leads to an error in the camp
  
• Fix an error happening in camp, when a soldier lost his glasses in battle and died
  

Bugfixes:

• Fixed Trench Defend MG defensive battle level was not finishable when winning
  
• Fixed Sneak To Disturb MG offensive battle level optional move to area task was always returning, when failed
  

Balancing:

• Minor balancing adjustments in Trench Defend MG defensive battle level