Vanguard: Normandy 1944 News

Thank you to everyone who participated in our last community test. We have been listening to your feedback and we have incorporated as many changes as possible into the latest build which we will be testing again on Saturday.

v0.6 Testing: Today (Saturday 2nd May)

5PM UTC / 6PM BST / 7PM CEST / 10 AM PDT / 1PM EDT

Sign-ups are already open and can be found here:
https://doodle.com/poll/h73g42ygpb8h57hp





We were very pleased at how the last test build was received. Server stability in the last build was significantly improved with zero server crashes.

Since the last test we have focused our energy on a few key gameplay points and we wanted to break down some of the major changes which have resulted in the upcoming build.

Replayability: We have created seven new map variants and adjusted the mission rotations so they are now randomly selected rather than preset. These variants are experimental with new objective locations, some making subtle changes while others have more major changes such as attackers coming from a completely new direction or fighting over a different part of the maps.

Teamwork: This is a continuing theme and we will be doing more on this subject in future v0.6 builds but in this test we are introducing three major changes:

1. Prompt system: We have introduced a new prototype system to prompt players into acting as more of a team player. For example if there is no NCO in your squad you will get offered the option to switch to NCO by pressing F1.
   
2. Auto squad assignment: For the first time the game will now assign players who have not already joined a squad to one when they first spawn.
   
3. Focusing HUD on objective: We have reduced the visibility of objective markers and other markers in the HUD to focus attention on the current order from the NCO.
   

Loading times: We previously made huge improvements to loading times but in some of the recent v0.6 builds the loading times have been extremely long. We have now slashed by 70% to the same (or quicker) speeds than 0.5.9.

Scoreboard: Has been updated and redesigned to make more information available during the round for your own team and to make it easier to read and glance over.

That’s all for this update. Come join the action this weekend to preview these and the many other changes we have made to v0.6 as we prepare for the free weekend!

Over the past months we have continued our hard work on v0.6 which will add Canadian Forces, the new map Carpiquet Airport, in-game map, leader boards and numerous tweaks, changes and balance improvements.


Our successful community testing goes on and we would like to thank everyone in the community who has participated in the tests to date and provided us with your feedback on the pre-release preview of the update.

The next community test is scheduled for:
[h2]Saturday 4th April @ 20:00 GMT.[/h2]

You can sign-up by clicking here and find instructions on how to download the 0.6 version via steam on our in the announcements channel of our discord community or by clicking here to go straight to the instructions.

Anyone is welcome to join in the fun to help us balance and bug fix ahead of the release and free weekend.





The planned free weekend must be a stable and smooth experience for new and existing players to have maximum impact. For this reason we have not yet fixed a date for the event as we have known bugs to squash and feedback to address first.

As soon as we have fixed the date for the event we will announce it to the community and make a big push on marketing and raising awareness of the upcoming free weekend to reach as many new players as possible.


The new map, Carpiquet Airport introduces Canadian Forces for the first time and we have been making major changes to the map, particularly inside the boundaries of the airfield itself.

Overview of Carpiquet Airport

The new map offers a range of different environments as the operation progresses, from wide open countryside to the confines of house-to-house fighting and into the airfield itself with a mixture of open spaces and tighter areas which leave plenty of space for different tactics and angles of advance.





In addition to the new map we have also continued to refine and improve the previously announced features including the new tactical map, spectator camera for streamers and all important stability and bug fixes. They aren’t as exciting as new features and maps but important for the overall experience.


Our community translators have been doing an amazing job of translating the game into Simplified Chinese, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Finnish. These are in addition to English, French, Spanish, German, Norwegian & Swedish which we already supported.

If you would like to help the team and community with translations for any of the above languages or any other languages we would love to hear from you by joining our #localisation channel on our public discord (discord.gg/vanguardww2)

Since the launch of Vanguard: Normandy 1944 onto Steam Early Access we have released 9 updates and over the past weeks we have continued our push towards the 10th update, the first major content update for the game. With only a few weeks left of 2019 we have finally had to admit we aren’t going to be able to release version 0.6 before the New Year.

The community will not have long to wait to try out the new update however. We are planning beta tests open to the community from early January to gather feedback and to ensure the game is rock solid stable before the full public launch.

The date of the public launch will be decided following community testing. We then intend to launch the update with a free weekend and a discount as part of a marketing and promotional push to reach as many new players as possible.



What to expect
The 0.6 update focuses around the introduction of Canadian Forces to the game including a brand new map as well as several major new features to promote coordination and teamwork.

• Canadian Forces
  
• New Map: Carpiquet Airport
  
• New Tactical Map (and order markers)
  
• Expanded NCO Orders to Alert, Attack, Defend & Move
  
• Restricted Access Spectator Mode to free roam over the battlefield
  
• Player Stats Leaderboards
  
• Private Servers
  
• Improved New Player Experience
  
• Individually mutable player VoIP
  
• New localisations including Russian, Portuguese, Italian & Polish.
  

The new spectator camera support allows server administrators to give access to chosen users to observe the battle from the sky with enhanced camera controls such as adjustable camera speed.

Unfortunately not every feature we want to add can make the cut and we are not able to add either prone or bipod weapons in 0.6 as these both require animation for which we do not currently have the resources. We are looking for assistance with animations and these features are high on our list of priorities.


Do recognise this plane? This photo, taken amongst the aftermath of the fierce fighting over Carpiquet Airport, shows Allied officers. The question is though – what aircraft is this?




We are disappointed not to be releasing v0.6 in 2019 but we are excited to involve the community with testing the update in January and will confirm the date of our first free weekend as soon as the testing shows that the update is stable and ready for wider release.

Since our last update, 0.5.9 we have been hard at work behind the scenes working towards the largest content update since the start of Early Access.

Since the launch of the game we have released 9 updates containing 466 changes including huge performance improvements, up to 75% faster loading times, new features, new improved scoring and persistent stats tracking, reworked capture design, expanded maps, custom keybinding support, sound and UI improvements amongst many other changes. Compared to the initial release onto Early Access the game is significantly improved and polished from a lot of hard work and the community’s feedback.




Before we talk about what comes next it’s time to address the elephant in the room, a subject we often discuss with our community on our official discord channel but we haven’t so far talked about in an article… server population. Simply put, there are not enough players playing the game. Most of the time players turn up and cannot simply join a game in progress to have fun. It’s a problem we all face, devs included when we want to play the game.


The game needs a lot more players so we are planning big. Most importantly we are focusing our energy on a large content update which we plan to release as part of a major event (and promotional discount) and which we will be marketing & advertising heavily. In this way we plan to bring a large influx of new players to the game all at the same time and light up the battlefields with a new fierce intensity.

The new update will bring the first new faction to Normandy since the launch of the game and a brand new map alongside other new content, changes and improvements. For those of you who have been following us since our Kickstarter you can probably guess who’s boots will be hitting the ground next.

We can’t wait to share the new content with you all but experience shows that a larger update is more effective than many smaller ones. For that reason alone we are holding back what we have been working on to consolidate into a larger update which we can effectively promote.

In the meantime though we will be organising more community events so existing players can join the devs on the battlefield and we are reaching out to new groups to try the game. We will also be doing more targeted key giveaways to introduce new communities to the game.


In recent weeks we have overhauled our localisation of the game to allow us to expand support to more languages beyond English, French, Spanish, German, Norwegian & Swedish.

We want the game to be accessible to as many players as possible and we are therefore looking for help from the community to expand our language support and to improve our existing translations. No technical knowledge is required only language skills (sorry Google Translate does not count).



If you are interested please drop us a message either via the forum thread or on our new official #localisation discord channel

Today we have released a comparatively small, but still important update to the game. This patch brings together all important bug fixes and stability improvements following the very successful release of 0.5.8 a couple of weeks ago.

We will be in-game later today playing the latest update, so jump-in and join us on the battlefield and let us have your feedback!



Whilst important, bug fixes aren’t very exciting but don’t worry we do have new content and events in the pipeline! More news on that another time.


In other news. If you hadn’t noticed, our discord is now verified! It can now be found at it’s new permanent home at https://discord.gg/vanguardww2

If you haven’t already joined the server, we would highly recommend it! For all keen players it is the best place to meet other players and to find out about pick-up games outside of the organised events.