Developer Briefing #114 - Early Access Roadmap Update 2021!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #114!

This week we're pleased to be sharing with you our updated Early Access Roadmap for 2021!

We'll also be sharing with you the key parts of Update 9 today! On top of that we're letting you know how you can test out these new additions and changes ahead of Update 9's launch to give us your thoughts and feedback before they go live.

We'd seen from various parts of the community that you'd like to get more involved in changes to the game ahead of their implementation and we're looking forward to further embracing that mantra with you.

Now I'm going to pass the Dev Brief over to Lead Developer Max to show you what's next for Hell Let Loose -

A Message From Max - Roadmap Update!

Hi everyone,

We are excited to share the first roadmap update of 2021! This will show what’s coming up in Update 9 and what is still to come this year and beyond. We also want to give you more info about some of the changes well in advance of Update 9 itself, in order to keep new and veteran players better informed and to provoke conversation before we open testing up in the PTE.


Hell Let Loose PTE Application

Within the next few weeks we will begin testing U9. This is to make sure we have stable servers and clients before the update gets pushed live. We will have a focus on specific things we want the community to test and give feedback on, and will let you know what these are closer to the test date. We are happy to tell you it will now have a separate Steam application dedicated to testing.

While this was a large amount of work to set up for previous playtests, it had always been our desire to provide you with a separate app for quick access. We were able to take the time shortly after the launch of U8 to establish this new system.

Updated Roadmap - 2021!

Update 09: Q1 2021

• Melee
• Server Admin Camera
• Implement correct weapon zeroing for all firearms
• Beginning the armor system rework
• Community Voice Overs
• Steam Achievements
• Barbed Wire functionality
• Added and refined localization
• MG34
• Additional loadouts
• Continued Bug & Crash fixes
• Warmup Staging Period for Warfare Mode
• XP level increase
• Sound Improvements across the board (BAR to footsteps to death)
• UI Changes
• Max level Increase
• Improve optimisation
• Grass and Foliage spawning improvements
• Utah Beach Offensive mode for both German and US forces
• Weapon visual quality overhaul
• Improved Damage Occlusion System

And many more changes!

Medium Term Still To Come:

• Continued improvements to armor systems
• Campaign Mode
• SMDM Overhaul
• Russian Forces
• Russian Weapons
• Russian Vehicles
• Flamethrowers
• Kursk
• Unannounced Eastern Front Map currently in development
• 2 Unannounced Western Front Maps currently in development
• Continued in-game FX overhaul
• Continued in-game SFX overhaul
• Continued implementation and expansion of RCON features

Beyond this Roadmap

We want to assure you that there’s tons to come beyond this roadmap, we simply can’t fit it all on here and feel it’s more important to communicate short and medium term goals on this image.

Armor System Rework

One of our toughest challenges has been how we tackle the armor bugs and inconsistencies, and get it to a place where it is fun, satisfying and consistent.

Update 9 contains many changes to armor. Some large ones are:

• Increased the MG belt size to 200.
• Fixed zeroing on the MGs resulting in far less drop off.
• Reworked several associated sounds.
• Created new FX to better designate non-penetrating hits.
• Reworked HE shell damage tracing to make them ignore smaller occluding collision (ie. a fence won’t protect you from the damage). Includes all radial damage on explosions.
• Buffed HE shell damage radius on all vehicles.
• Began reworking smart materials and geometry on all vehicles and vehicle viewports to increase visual fidelity and lower vram requirements.
• Altered Fuel costs
• Hitbox adjustments
• Collision adjustments
• Penetration values & angles
• Armour values
• Tank handling and stability

We will continue work on the many different aspects of the armor system in response to community feedback, taking into consideration but not limited to the following:

• Main gun alignment
• Coaxial gun alignment
• Vehicle PhysX
• Handheld AT Damage
• AT Gun Damage and distribution
• Mine Damage
• Tank Speed
• Turret speed
• Switching seat speed
• Expansion and balancing of vehicle rosters
• Reconsideration of vehicle componentry
• Repairing
• Rearming
• Tank commander loadouts
• Crewman loadouts
• Introduction of new vehicles
• Ongoing hitbox adjustments
• Ongoing collision adjustments
• Ongoing penetration values & angles
• Ongoing maintenance and balancing of armor values

We want to acknowledge that the current tank play can be very frustrating, and we are 100% dedicated to improving the overall armour and vehicle experience based on the community's feedback. This will not come all at once, as it requires rigorous testing and significant development time, but we want to reaffirm this is a top priority. The reason we’re unable to achieve this in a single update is due to the intense complexity behind the scenes as to how the vehicle physics model works. Often, adjusting one aspect of the vehicles will cause unintended other issues.

For example, while we can easily alter some aspects of penetration or armour values, we feel that there are endemic issues in the way the physics model works that will require a bigger relook.

We still have a lot to do, and are far from happy with it’s current implementation. We will be continuing to make significant changes, and will be asking the community for feedback when we have more focused PTEs post Update 9.

We are aware of some current optic and gun offsets that can arise during gameplay. We understand why this is happening and are currently troubleshooting the best approach, however this is likely a significant rework and will require a lot of development and QA time.

There are some immediate collision and hitbox issues that we will be looking to resolve for U9, but will require additional work to make this more consistent and intentional. We will do our best to eliminate as many armour bugs we can for U9, and we appreciate the patience as we work to fix this for the community, especially for those who main tanks.


.INI File & AA Settings

We have made the decision to lock the .ini file to avoid exploits and game-breaking alterations. As we’ve had to lock this, we’ve collated a huge number of community-specific AA settings and have included these as an AA setting (this can be accessed in the Options menu under “Community”).


VIVOX / VOIP

We have seen some significant improvements to the in-game voip since last week due to changes made by Vivox. We are going to continue to troubleshoot with them and we will continually provide updates as we work to resolve these issues.

We have also included in U9 the ability to re-connect to the VIVOX server via the game options menu, this may resolve your VOIP bug, depending on the issue you are experiencing.


Grass & Foliage

We’ve rewritten the way we spawn grass so it is now near-instant. This will provide a significant upgrade to the cover and concealment within the game - especially near spawns. We have also worked through all maps to make sure that grass and bushes are not affected by setting scaling. This means that low foliage quality settings will no longer remove concealing bushes.


Loadouts

We are looking at ways to balance loadouts as we look to introduce the Russian forces and therefore more weapons into the game. The current loadouts are by no means final and will be something that will be constantly tweaked for gameplay and balance throughout ongoing development.

Also we will be introducing some new loadouts specifically to those roles that lack a second loadout.

• Commander
• Machine Gunner
• Sniper
• Tank Commander

Warfare Forward Garrison Meta

The Warfare Garrison meta has been updated and the rules around their placement have been adjusted to encourage offset placement, but to discourage ninja-garrison spawn bombing.

• Garrisons can now be placed in the first row/column of the red zone.
• Garrisons placed in the red zone cost 100 supplies.
• Garrisons placed in the red zone are disabled if enemies are within 100m of them. This is to encourage conservative placement.

NOTE: We will be testing this during the PTE and specifically observing the placement and effectiveness of these in opening up a more circular frontline.


Achievements

As mentioned when we released achievements, we want to reiterate that many will not be available to unlock until we make client and server side changes in Update 9.


UI Changes

We’ve reworked the deployment screen format and main menu to better include explanatory descriptions and format the text better to multiple resolution scales. This also includes adding an available spawn point list in the deployment menu.


Weapon Zeroing

We’ve fixed the zeroing across all firearms. Effectively, this means your sights are adjusted to compensate for bullet drop, meaning you’ll need to aim a smaller amount above your target's head to correct for bullet drop.


Max Level Increase

We have increased the max level from 200 to 500. For those who are already at level 200 you can expect to see your level jump to your new level, based on your existing experience points


A Note on Dev Briefs

We’ve noticed that the content of dev briefings tends to be angled towards one of two parts of the community: one side is keen to hear about future content or to look behind-the-scenes at the development process, while the other is interested in granular updates on specific technical issues.

While in the past we’ve tried to balance the briefings between addressing hot button issues and future content or things we’re working on, we’re now going to do our best to include running status updates on hot button issues - even if we’ve addressed them in previous dev briefings. We will include these at the end of the dev briefing to try to keep you as up to date as possible.

Tell us what you think!

That wraps up this week's Developer Briefing!

We're really excited to be sharing more on the future of Hell Let Loose with you, we'll be delving more into Update 9 and its contents over the coming Dev Briefs too so watch this space!

As always we love to hear what you think, so feel free to share your thoughts on the Roadmap, Update 9 and PTE changes in the comment section.

If you're yet to join us in battle Hell Let Loose is currently 25% off until Feb 15th
https://store.steampowered.com/app/686810/Hell_Let_Loose/


Have a great weekend everyone!

We'll see you on the frontline.