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Developer Briefing #104 - Crafting Update 8 Together!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #104!

With Update 8 arriving in the very near future, this week we’re taking the opportunity to share with you some actions we’re taking in time for its arrival following player and community feedback from the PTE, last week’s Dev Brief comments and the following conversations here on Steam, as well as on our official sub-reddit and Discord.

The actions we’re taking are focused on re-arming, which we revealed last week, hit box changes to maintain a low TTK and a change to friendly fire to reduce some instances of accidental teamkilling.

We’re also pleased to share that as part of our continued effort to support Hell Let Loose’s global playerbase, three new servers in Japan have been added to our Asia region selection and are live now!

Full details on all of the above can be found below:

Changes to Re-Arming

We’ve read all the feedback both in Discord and on the Reddit thread about our plans for re-supplying and re-arming Supply Boxes and Ammo Boxes. As such, we tested and then locked in the suggested changes that were most popular among the community after first implementing and testing them in a closed environment.

As such, moving into the trigger range of the Resource Nodes now halves the 5 minute re-arm time on these inventory items, while otherwise they’ll recharge on a global 5 minute cooldown. This will mean that Support players will retain their key feature without being entirely dependent on Resource Nodes, while being in the vicinity of a Resource Node will still have a positive effect on in-field efficiency.

In addition to this, we’ve increased the total number of Nodes able to be built, as we currently feel that even with the full complement built - teams were still running a large resource deficit.

Changes to Hitboxes

Our PTE sessions gave us some great insight into the real gameplay effects that the introduction of more specific hitboxes would have on TTK. We found that the inclusion of the upper arm (above the elbow) and area above the knee meant that targets travelling perpendicular to the shooter would often soak up far more damage than desired - making the TTK feel far longer than desired.

We know that much of the appeal of Hell Let Loose is in the lethality of the bullets and the feeling that you don’t need to expend entire magazines to kill a target. Therefore, we’ve adjusted the location of the “extremity” hitboxes to only incorporate below the elbow and below the knee.

In testing, we’d found that this strikes the right balance between rewarding accuracy, while also maintaining a quick TTK for rounds placed at center mass.

Changes to Friendly Ballistic Damage

We’ve looked long and hard at the teamkilling within the game, and the way in which the kills occur. Oftentimes noting that it’s nearly entirely accidental, and that any additional time after the killing shot is fired often reveals that your target was a friendly.

Therefore, we’re going to be trialling a new system in Update 8 that halves friendly player ballistic damage. Obviously, this will have no effect on damage dealt to enemies, but we feel that this will give single hit kill weapon-users the ability to realise their mistake without killing the friendly player. In our PTE, we found this has a perceptible effect in drastically lowering the number of teamkills across the game.

New Asia Region Servers

We’re very excited to announce that we’re now hosting three official Japanese-based servers on top of our existing Asia region support. We’ve watched players in the broader Asia region jump into the game but find that there are no appropriate servers with a good ping.

We’re now working on hosting Chinese and Korean servers.

Over the next month we’ll be working to address server absences in all other notable regions.

And Finally...

That wraps up this week’s Dev Brief!

Thank you to everyone who takes a moment to share their thoughts with us on Hell Let Loose on any of our platforms. As today hopefully shows once again, your voice matters and helps us shape the game - even including features that aren’t live in-game yet!

As per usual, we’ll be playing the update a large amount after introduction and will make any further changes based on community feedback. We look forward to watching the way these changes shape future gameplay and will be working to iron out any potential issues where and when they emerge.

If you’re yet to join us on the frontline, we’re currently 25% off in the Steam Autumn Sale!

The Steam Awards - Hell Let Loose Needs You!

STEAM-AWARDS NOMINIEREN
BEGINNT IM DEZEMBER(WEITERE INFORMATIONEN)
Nominieren Sie Hell Let Loose unten für die von den Entwicklern vorgeschlagene Kategorie oder wählen Sie eine andere Kategorie

NOMINIEREN FÜR:

Werk der Liebe Dieses Spiel ist bereits seit einer ganzen Weile auf dem Markt. Das Entwicklerteam hat den Schleier seines kreativen Schatzes längst gelüftet, doch als gute Eltern feilen sie noch immer an ihrer Kreation. Dieses Spiel wird bis heute unterstützt und bekommt nach all den Jahren noch immer neue Inhalte.

Hey everyone,

From our early backers and seasoned veterans, to our newest recruits - thank you for your support!

The Early Access journey so far has been incredible, and we look forward to continuing it with you - we’ve got so much to come.

Update 8 is just around the corner, so if you haven’t played for a while, there’s no better time to jump in and take a look at what we’ve been up to.

Things you may have missed

• New Animation System
• New XP & Progression system
• New Ballistics System
• New Vehicles
• New Maps
• New Loadouts
• New Cosmetics
• Optimization
• Bug fixes & much much more!

Things coming in Update 8

• Hurtgen Forest Overhaul
• Support & Transport Trucks
• Satchel Charges
• Upgradeable Fortifications
• Veteran Progression
• Bullet Penetration
• Further Optimisation

To top it off, Hell Let Loose is currently 25% off on the Steam store now!

Update 8 - Hotfix 1: Live Now!

Hey everyone,

We've just deployed a Hotfix after seeing feedback that the Vote Kick system wasn't behaving as intended.

Hotfix Notes

• Fixed an issue that allowed players to vote kick members of the enemy team
• Fixed an issue that allowed players to be vote kicked with only 2 votes

We hope you're all enjoying Update 8 so far!

Rest assured we're eagerly going through everyone's feedback and will continue to do so over the coming weeks.

Winter Warfare Helmet Pack

The Winter Warfare Helmet Pack free DLC is live now!

1 x US Winter Toque

1 x German Winter Toque

1 x White Painted M1

1 x White Painted M42

Hell Let Loose - Winter Warfare Helmet Pack pasted-from-clipboard.png 19. Dez. 2019 Strategie Action Indie Simulation Gewalt Winter Warfare Helmet Pack Get ready for Christmas in Hell Let Loose with the Winter Warfare Helmet pack. Pack Includes: 1 x US Winter Toque 1 x German Winter Toque 1 x White Painted M1 1 x White Painted... Kostenlos spielbar Kostenlos spielen!

The pack is only available for a limited time, so grab it while you can!

See you on the frontline!

Developer Briefing #105 - Update 8 Feedback & Server Provider Info!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #105!

This week's brief is going to be pretty short and sweet as we focus on gathering and working on everyone's feedback over the last 24 hours and beyond.

We've been blown away by the support and feedback we've seen and we really appreciate everyone who's taking a moment to share their experiences with us, what they like, what they don't like and any bugs they've encountered.

The team have already deployed a Hotfix to address an issue with the Vote Kick system which wouldn't of been possible without your feedback on it - so thanks for that!

Now, what else are we looking at? The following bullet points highlight some of the main feedback / bug reports we've seen, but it is not exhaustive. If you do not see something you've fed back don't panic, because we're almost certainly aware of it due to combing through Steam, Social Media, Reddit and our Discord server.

Selection of common U8 feedback areas

• Grass can render slowly / pop-in
• Bullet Penetration inconsistent
• TTK of Rifle / other small-arms to infantry can spike upwards in certain circumstances (we have a couple of theories on why this can occur and are looking into it)
• AA is very sharp
• Small selection of players reporting an FPS drop, whilst many others reporting an increase
• Changes to weapon balance / availability

As you can see, some of the above are bug reports and others are player feedback and opinion such as weapon balance.

The team are aware of all of the above and more and highly encourage anyone with something they'd like to let us know, be it the good, the bad or the 'bug'ly to make a post on any of our platforms, including here on Steam.

Hell Let Loose Game Server Providers

Now onto some cool server news!

Firstly we want to thank all of our veteran, and newer server hosters! We have a very dedicated and loyal community that we are extremely grateful for.

We have had such a massive interest in HLL server hosting over the Early Access period, but even more so in the last 24 hours! So If you are looking into hosting a Hell Let Loose server for your new or existing clan/community, now is as good as time as any!

Here is our list of official server providers across multiple regions:

G-PORTAL

GTX Gaming

NITRADO

We want to make sure you have the best experience possible, so if you have further questions about renting a server, you can DM Spono in the official HLL Discord - https://discord.gg/QaYSzpjC

We will be looking to expand the above list in the future, to give our community more choice. Unfortunately we do not currently allow access to our dedicated server files.

Again we want to thank all of the server owners, admins and volunteers who make sure you can enjoy your HLL experience and are with you battling it out on the frontline!

The Next Steps...

The team are going to be continuing to collate your feedback and work on addressing any issues that have arisen in Update 8.

We'll keep you in the loop on where we're at with things where possible, so watch this space!

We hope you're enjoying Hurtgen and Update 8 so far, have a brilliant weekend everyone.

See you on the frontline.

Developer Briefing #106 - Patch 14 Preview!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #106!

This week we're using the Dev Brief to give you a preview at an impending patch that, all going well, will be arriving on the frontline next week.

Your feedback and willingness to be open and honest with us about all aspects of the game has been greatly appreciated. The team have worked tireless since U8 launched to not only collate everyone's feedback across all our channels - but take action on it!

I'm going to pass you over to Lead Developer Max now to let you know where we're at, as well as what we're addressing in Patch 14.

A Message From Max - Patch 14 Preview

Hi everyone,

It’s been a huge week for us with the release of Update 8 and we’re really excited to watch how many of the changes have been enjoyed by the community - especially the changes to FX, the soundscape, quality of life, new Hurtgen and many more.

Simultaneously, we’ve spent a lot of time in game with you, as well as reading all of the feedback across all our channels.

While we do test as much as possible during QA and then in the PTE’s, we often miss things due to the sheer size of the game.This is equally frustrating for us as a team, because we’d much prefer to ship an update with very few obvious issues as possible.

All going well, late next week we’ll be releasing a patch that will cover as many of the quickest fixes we’ve been able to accomplish this week (a huge thanks to the production and QA team to get this out the door!). Obviously, more complex issues will take longer to resolve, but we wanted to make sure you knew that many of the issues you were experiencing were unacceptable and we’ve prioritised a fix.

Without further ado:

• Bypass server queue not allowed - bug fixed where it was causing mass disconnects on map change.
• Vote kick threshold raised - will require a much higher % of the team for a vote to succeed. This is one of the most painful features we’ve ever worked on in HLL. Too low and people continually troll by
• kicking people - too high and it’s useless. Ultimately we’re looking at the ability for server owners to enable/disable vote kick and also player reporting and admin logging for U9.
• Vivox/Voip issues, we are watching this closely and have made one or two bug fixes.
• Fix for super grainy/sharp broken AA. While these changes benefitted TAA, they multiplied the effect on other forms of AA. We will be hand implementing these settings to TAA for Update 9.
• Fix fallen burned tree collisions on Hurtgen forest so players can step over them.
• Make all wire fences ignore collision from bullets, tank shells and heavy weapons.
• Changes across the BAR, Thompson, MP40, K98k, Garand, G43, M3 Grease Gun weapons to reduce damage drop off at range, as players landing difficult, accurate shots were punished for their efforts.
• We also increased the shots to kill on extremities for some of these weapons, while returning the STG and BAR to their OHK status. The result is that all of these weapons now play closer to their U7 variants, while still punishing shots that hit the lower legs and feet.
• Fixed: The SFX for exiting ocean water can be heard within 500m.
  Slightly lowered semi-automatic recoil. It now sits just above half way between the original and the new. We played with this every day since the Update and found that the new recoil was slightly too strong.
• Applied bullet penetration to many irritating materials that we’d missed (wire fences, small wooden posts).
• Fixes for collision occurring on things it shouldn’t (grass on the top of embankments, some reeds, some other foliage, window and door openings on some buildings).
• Fixed a few dozen map bugs reported by QA and the Community.
• Partial fix for grass loading slowly. Much more should now have loaded when you spawn, but there’s still more work we can do here.
• Removed medals from the player nameplate HUD icons, as their scaling often totally broke the visual and was more distracting than useful. We’ll look at implementing this after we revise the idea. The medals are still present in the scoreboard and Barracks.
• Various server crash fixes, and improvements made to address reports of ‘rubber-banding’

Run Speed:

We tweaked the player run speed for U8 in order to watch the resulting flow of combat and the effect it would have on intentional movement across and around the front line - rewarding intentional movement and decreasing the amount of “zig zag” “mosquito” movement.

We’ve often gone back and forth with regard to a stamina system for Hell Let Loose. We’ve frequently decided against it, as the core essence of Hell Let Loose is the emphasis on the courage to push forward bravely and efficiently - knowing that to take any ground requires forward movement. If we start rewarding players for slow or static play (whether by making out-of-stamina players find it harder to aim, or by increasing the aiming stability of stationary, crouched or prone players) we felt that it would fundamentally discourage the core of our attacking gameplay.

Counter to this, we’ve also been aware that our previous run speed was high enough (and our player acceleration matching this), that enemy targets could go from a walk to full sprint incredibly quickly, and that quickly strafing side to side in a gunfight was often advisable.

As such, we wanted to find the best of both worlds - making sure our system didn’t punish forward movement (or reward static play) - while also creating a more realistic time to accelerate and total movement speed.

We are still playing this change and watching the way this affects the metagame.

We also wanted to note that our crouched player run speed is slightly slower than our standing one. However, due to the camera being closer to the ground, there is a perception that it’s faster or as fast as the standing speed.

Finally, we fully acknowledge that this change to player speeds should have been acknowledged in the patch notes. Its absence was not intentional and was a result of the change taking place very early in the dev cycle. We’ll make sure in the future that we work harder so this does not happen again.

In Conclusion

There is still a huge amount more to address from both this Update, let alone what we’ll be doing for Update 9. If we haven’t mentioned a specific issue in this dev brief (metagame, armored issues and gameplay etc.) or addressed it with this patch - it does not mean that we feel it’s acceptable or are totally happy with everything that is unmentioned. Hell Let Loose is in Early Access, and as such will continually be worked on in coordination with community feedback.

We’re very excited to get this patch out and are looking forward to revealing more of what is to come in both Update 9 and 2021. Hell Let Loose is still relatively young in its development and there’s so much more to come. Fortunately, the incredible feedback you give us - as well as the passion you have for Hell Let Loose - gives us enormous amounts of energy to keep polishing, improving and optimising - let alone creating new content.

While continued development and updating a live game is a rollercoaster, we’re looking forward to an even bigger year for Hell Let Loose in 2021.

Onwards to the weekend!

That wraps up this week's Dev Brief and today's update from Max!

As a little reminder, if you haven't grabbed the free 'Winter Warfare Helmet Pack' DLC you grab it for a limited time below:

Patch 14 - Live Now!

Hey everyone,

Before we delve into the patch notes we just want to say thank you to everyone for your support and feedback following Update 8's arrival!

Today's patch is a possible thanks to the community's feedback, patience and comments both here on Steam as well as our other social hubs.

If there's something you've fed back that hasn't been addressed or mentioned today, fear not - just because it isn't in here doesn't mean it isn't on our radar.

Now, let's get stuck in shall we:

Patch 14 - The Notes

• Bypass server queue not allowed - bug fixed where it was causing mass disconnects on map change.
• Vote kick threshold raised - will require a much higher % of the team for a vote to succeed. This is one of the most painful features we’ve ever worked on in HLL. Too low and people continually troll by kicking people - too high and it’s useless. Ultimately we’re looking at the ability for server owners to enable/disable vote kick and also player reporting and admin logging for U9.
• Vivox/Voip issues, we are watching this closely and have made one or two bug fixes.
• Fix for super grainy/sharp broken AA. While these changes benefitted TAA, they multiplied the effect on other forms of AA. We will be hand implementing these settings to TAA for Update 9.
• Fix fallen burned tree collisions on Hurtgen forest so players can step over them.
• Make all wire fences ignore collision from bullets, tank shells and heavy weapons.
• Changes across the BAR, Thompson, MP40, K98k, Garand, G43, M3 Grease Gun weapons to reduce damage drop off at range, as players landing difficult, accurate shots were punished for their efforts.
• We also increased the shots to kill on extremities for some of these weapons, while returning the STG and BAR to their OHK status. The result is that all of these weapons now play closer to their U7 variants, while still punishing shots that hit the lower legs and feet.
• Fixed: The SFX for exiting ocean water can be heard within 500m.
• Slightly lowered semi-automatic recoil. It now sits just above half way between the original and the new. We played with this every day since the Update and found that the new recoil was slightly too strong.
• Applied bullet penetration to many irritating materials that we’d missed (wire fences, small wooden posts).
• Fixes for collision occurring on things it shouldn’t (grass on the top of embankments, some reeds, some other foliage, window and door openings on some buildings).
• Fixed a few dozen map bugs reported by QA and the Community.
• Partial fix for grass loading slowly. Much more should now have loaded when you spawn, but there’s still more work we can do here.
• Removed medals from the player nameplate HUD icons, as their scaling often totally broke the visual and was more distracting than useful. We’ll look at implementing this after we revise the idea. The medals are still present in the scoreboard and Barracks.
• Various server crash fixes, and improvements made to address reports of ‘rubber-banding’.
• Fixed Sapper being available before level 3 for the US Engineer.

That wraps up today's patch notes!

As always we'll be watching for and collating your feedback on these changes and fixes as we continue to craft Hell Let Loose throughout Early Access.

If you haven't already downloaded the free 'Winter Warfare Helmet Pack' you can do so for a limited time below:

Developer Briefing #107 - Metagame: What Works, What Doesn't & What's Next!

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!

A Message From Max - The Metagame!

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.

1. Red Zone Garrisons

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).

Thinking Around a Fix

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.

A Side Note

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.

Conclusion

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.

2. Win and Loss Scoring

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.

To Wrap Up

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!

Developer Briefing #108 - The 2020 End of Year Review!

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!

A Message from Max - The Hell Let Loose 2020 End of Year Review

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!

Developer Briefing #109 - Weapon Visual Upgrade and Corrected Zeroing!

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!

A Message from Max - Weaponry: Visual and Zeroing Upgrades

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.

Weapon Visual Upgrade

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.

The Technical Side

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.

Weapon Zeroing Fix

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.

Weapon Tease!

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!

Developer Briefing #110 - Barbed Wire Rework & VOIP Info!

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!

The Barbed Wire Rework

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.

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.

VOIP Issues

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.

Introducing the MG34!

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.