All Quiet in the Trenches News

Hello everyone!

Version 0.8 is almost here and we would like to give you a few insights into the new gameplay with machine guns. If you haven't seen the last dev diary with the graphics yet, you can watch the showcase again here:

[previewyoutube]All Quiet in the Trenches - MG08 Showcase for Update 0.8[/previewyoutube]

For the Machine Gun Update, we have focused on the MG08, which was already in use on the German side at the beginning of the First World War. So when we talk about MG in the following, we are referring to the gameplay with the MG08. If other types of machine guns are integrated in future updates, it is of course possible that they will have different modes of operation.

The MG has a longer range and a limited firing radius.

When you click on a firing machine gun troop, the range is indicated by a cone of light. This does not necessarily mean that every area is affected by MG fire. As with rifle fire, all areas are tested beforehand with raycasts to see whether they can be hit at all from the respective position and it is calculated how good the cover is. If an area is completely behind a hill, for example, it is not visible to the machine gun. Each area that is under machine gun fire is therefore also marked accordingly.



MG suppresses all troops in the cone simultaneously.

The logic is similar to the existing suppression system, except that all troops in range are suppressed simultaneously. This means that these troops cannot shoot or throw grenades. Furthermore, it is not possible to shoot back against MG suppression. So there’s only one choice: persevere or flee?

Movement under machine gun fire is dangerous.

Here we were able to fall back on our existing ‘Overwatch’ system. Depending on the terrain, movement distance, etc., the system simulates how dangerous the corresponding movement is.



Persevering under machine gun fire increases soldiers' stress.

Continuous machine-gun fire demoralises the affected soldiers. The ‘stress’ increase under machine gun fire is therefore very high. Poor cover can also be fatal.



Machine guns must be reloaded.

Machine guns can fire for several turns. They then take a complete turn to be reloaded. This can be the moment to flee the danger zone.

Machine guns can be repositioned.

When balancing, we realised that all these brutal effects are useless if you simply stay out of range of the machine gun. The possible angle of rotation of the gun on the mount is limited by the mount, so we built in the ability to slightly move a machine gun in the same area. This is not possible at every position and the possible positions are predefined. Such an action also takes an entire game turn.



Machine guns can also be used by your own troop.

In the First World War, there were specially trained machine gun troops. However, in situations where your own troops occupy a machine gun position, we thought it would be useful to at least allow interaction with it.

We therefore decided that firing with a machine gun is allowed for non-specialised troops, but is associated with greater obstacles. This makes firing much less effective and can lead to jamming, for example, which has to be fixed.



New levels have been designed.

New levels have been designed for battles with the MG, which can occur randomly after the introduction is completed and are primarily centred around MG positions. We have slightly increased the chance of these new levels for update 0.8 and will lower it again with update 0.9. This means that although it is unlikely, you may not run into a battle centred around machine guns in a playthrough until home leave.

Hello everyone!

Today we would like to show you the graphics, animations and particle effects of the machine gun that will come with the ‘Machine Gun’ Update 0.8 (planned for early December).

The machine gun is modelled after the heavy MG 08. For the gameplay in the early years of the war, we wanted a stationary machine gun, which most closely resembles the weaponry used by the Germans, since the light MG 08/15 was not distributed until 1917. A stationary machine gun also has the advantage of creating more points of interest in the gameplay. The MG 08, which weighed over 60 kg (133 lbs) with cooling water and mount and was therefore too heavy for its infantry to follow on foot, was well suited for these purposes.

We plan to tell you more about the gameplay in another Dev Diary. In this Dev Diary, we want to give you a brief impression and have therefore put together a video:

[previewyoutube]All Quiet in the Trenches - MG08 Showcase for Update 0.8[/previewyoutube]

106 years ago today, on November 11, 1918, the Armistice of Compiègne was signed in the early morning hours, which silenced the guns a few hours later, at 11 o'clock, and heralded the end of the First World War. This was preceded by more than four years of endless bloodshed.

In some countries, such as the United States, France, Belgium and many Commonwealth countries, today is a special day of remembrance for the fallen of the First World War.

In Germany, today is not a national day of remembrance, but November 17th is this year's Volkstrauertag ('people's mourning day'), which is intended to remember the victims of violence and war of all nations.

This day is also a special one for us personally. We started developing All Quiet in the Trenches about seven years ago. It was supposed to be a small, short game about the First World War that we wanted to release on November 11, 2018. 100 years after the end of the First World War.

However, after the first prototypes and playtests, we realized that we wanted to delve deeper into the subject matter, both narratively and mechanically, and give the game more time and space to develop in order to do justice to the complex issues and their impact on all involved. So it has been with us for many years now and will continue to be so for years to come.

Nevertheless: Without the original idea of making a game for the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, All Quiet in the Trenches would probably never have existed.

We plan to release the next major update at the beginning of December.

Hello everyone!

For version 0.8, we have made changes to the cutscenes in the battle. The new system offers us new possibilities for further features and for balancing the levels. The new cutscenes are generally completed faster and can also be skipped once the NPC troop calculation is complete.

What has been changed?



The situation is as follows: Troop I moves from A to B. Troop II then throws a hand grenade at the new position B, causing a soldier from Troop I to flee to position C. Troop III then moves to position C and captures this soldier. The calculations for the NPC troops are turn-based, so all this happens in a single cutscene.

Due to the way the individual events were linked, the NPC troops' calculations were previously paused in certain situations (e.g. when a hand grenade was thrown and a soldier's position changed) until the in-game display caught up. This was the easiest way for us to implement and didn't pose a problem prior to version 0.7, as such links occurred very rarely. However, with the introduction of melee combat and the revision of the grenade mechanic, the cutscenes sometimes became very long, which is why we decided to write a completely new system for them.

With the new system, the display is completely decoupled from the logic. Actions, movements, injuries and other value changes now take place in the background. All these things are then forwarded to a system that progressively processes the actions in the display.

This not only results in a better and clearer code structure, but also makes it possible to skip the cutscene once the calculations are complete. Furthermore, the cutscenes are also faster because events that occur independently of each other are played in parallel.

The gear symbol in the bottom right corner indicates that calculations are still being carried out. If it is no longer displayed, the cutscene can be skipped by pressing the ESC key.

The new system also offers us further possibilities:

Previously, if a soldier was wounded by a rifle shot, we had no ‘proper’ display for this in order to avoid further chaining and thus slowing down the time between rounds. So far, the soldier has walked to his target position and played his wounding animation there. We have found that this automatically led to the effectiveness of, for example, overwatch being rated as too low, because it was often not clear what exactly the consequences were. With the new system, we can now better depict such moments.

From version 0.8 onwards, rifle shots will be assigned directly to a specific soldier and displayed accordingly.

Furthermore, the new system now allows us to do a text-based simulation of a battle in the engine to better balance the individual levels. This involves replacing the player group with a NPC troop and running through a level multiple times at the push of a button. This allows us to see which levels have one-sided odds and adjust them again.

The rework of the cutscenes was not originally planned for 0.8, but arose from the frequently expressed feedback to be able to skip cutscenes. We are looking forward to your feedback on the new system!

Bugfixes:

• Fixed an occasion where escorting soldiers would never return to the troop
  
• Fixed separated soldiers not regenerating physical exertion (a hidden value that causes the 'Out of breath' attribute and increasing exhaustion per turn)
  
• Fixed that soldiers that are already retreated still can get wounded by artillery
  

Balancing:

• Influence of the number of active soldiers in melee increased
  
• Influence of morale in melee combat slightly decreased