A year ago, it all started with a few lines of code written by a GWOT veteran, to help purge his demons. To bring up some firefight scenarios on demand, with a bunch of mechanics merging together to create an emergent and evolving fight. No one would know what happens next. No heroes, no bull$hit power fantasy. Just combat. Raw, violent, unceremonious and comical at times. Some sort of way to celebrate the gold ol' days of flash while paying the rightful respect to modern conflict lethality. You know, that despite the losses and the size of the $hit sandwich, at the end of the day must you fight on.
And to this, I say thank you to the 7000 of you out there that were willing to back this thing out. I'm grateful for all of you and feel very fortunate that you were willing to pick a rifle and venture into this valley of death with the rest of us. Hearing about your tales of bravery, sacrifice, loss and victory was a pure blast. I'm 100% all about building my dream game and having you guys along for the ride.
This patch brings a few new elements and paves the way for what is ahead which is third-party AI such as the Frenchies and allied units. It brings in the special event for Xmas in classic and some new Battle conditions for the Campaign mode.
New campaign battle condition: Crucible
This battle condition spawns a group of 6 Branderburgs that are an even match for your squad. This is the closest thing to a boss fight you can get in Mud and Blood. The Brandies will be modelized after your own squad matching your experience level, combat skill and veteran saves. They will fight dirty and hit you as hard as they can. They work very well as a team and maintain cohesion at a higher level than normal units. Almost like you are fighting another player if you will. The good news is that you only have to face 6 enemies on this map mostly. Counterattacks are still active so you must push your squad into contact earlier than later.
Visual fidelity
Some of the battle conditions such as rain and heavy clouds were just notional up to this point. I was initially hesitant to add the rain effect since the addition of particles could affect some of us, keeping the lower-end rigs in mind. The solution I found is to tie the rain effect to the particle settings set by the player in the options panel. Now the rain is very present but in proportion to your settings. Honestly quite relaxing at times in between sessions of high-intensity murdering.
Forest fires
In earlier versions, the fire was spreading to everything besides trees. I now added a two-stage tree-burning mechanic which will spread fire to trees and around if the fire is big enough. This can lead to some pretty uncontrollable situations where the vegetation is pretty dense and all the factors are lined up properly. One more thing to pay attention to. Setting a forest on fire can also be an available option to deny the enemy. Just remember, if it is hard to get in, it'll be hard to get out.
Intel can now interrogate
The Intel has a new passive ability which is interrogate. If there is a bleeding German just place your intel nearby and your soldier will attempt to extract information once per action. This is an xp driven action so the more experienced your soldier is the faster this will be accomplished. Upon success, the intel will reveal all hidden mines, crates and enemies with 500 px from the bleeding German.
Night Raid
It is now possible to have a battle condition that will make you fight the map at night. It is often mentioned that the 29th was often confronted with what seemed impossible grounds to take. Sometimes the only option to break the stalemate was to use unorthodox tactics. Night fighting at that time was not as common as today. but when carefully employed on an unsuspected enemy this could change the dynamic and tip the balance in your favour. In order to represent this the game now rolls in night fighting Battle conditions. quite naturally when you roll that battle condition it'll be darker. The detection range will be halved for all troops. Although the engagement range has not been reduced so once the fight has started it'll get pretty hairy like most night fights. they start close up and end up involving more people in the party that was not initially invited. The enemy since generally not expected to get raided at night will have a 10% reaction malus. I've built an in-house dynamic lighting system for this. Currently, it changes the exposure based on how close the camera is to fire. This will ultimately also affect nearby soldiers' ability to detect enemies if close to a light source. Note that You can turn on the muzzle flash effect in the options panel.
Xmas special events!!
We're going to Bastogne for Christmas boys! It was requested by many, the classic gib Santa special event is back. For a limited time, there is a chance that Santa take a stroll in your AO if you deploy with the Xmas special event. If Santa is gibbed you will get the special ribbon which gives a pretty cool reward. There are also a few gift boxes around the map that offer minimal cover and may contain surprises if blown up! Bastogne is a pretty messy place to fight with widely dispersed LOS blockers which are mostly trees. This usually means a pretty tight early game with close encounters until the map gets destroyed which turns the entire thing into a WW1 scenario.
This is pretty much the highlights of this patch folks, but here all the details:
0.4.1 patch notes
- Fixed a crash induced when a soldier was tossing an empty Faust
- Fixed some turret logic that was making the turrets shake or not engage on some occasions
- Supply crate won't be capturable by the enemy in the campaign anymore
- Increased the healing speed of medics by 5%
- All sectors have their proper picture in the briefing panel now
- Fixed an occurrence where the river sound in Roer would still play after a game
- Fixed an occurrence where the sdkfz222 turret sound would not load correctly
- SS, Volks, and some Wehrmacht gunners would not get the correct specialty
- Bofor explosions buffed considerably
- Changed the rocket sounds for the P38
- Added new sounds for destroyed trees
- Added Santa and his gibs
- Increased slightly the density of fire smoke
- Added an additional option panel for future implementation
- Rejiged the timings for the P38 animation to match the sounds better
- Changed the AI to be more conservative with maneuvering when holding an MG
- Dead trees will have a significantly smaller line of sight block area
- Officer skill rally in the campaign also cancels panic
- Intel can now "interrogate" bleeding Germans to reveal nearby enemies, caches and mines.
- Added clouds animations for when Dark Clouds BC is active
- Added rain effect for when the rain BC is active
- New BC, Night Raid which makes your team conduct this attack at night. This involves a few new mechanics and a dynamic lighting system.
- New BC: Crucible, kill a squad of 6 heavy Branderburgs in your AO. Pretty much a boss fight.
- Trees can now spread fire.. oh boy.
- Gunners will receive a BAR when caught with non-standard guns during a standardization battle condition
- Firing a flare will now stop the soldier
- Soldiers who are tossing grenades will stop their movement before the throw.
- Third tier weapon for heavies in the campaign is the now t20
- Night-Ops medal for soldiers who survive 3-night missions
- Shock Trooper Medal for particularly competent shooters with shotgun-enabling slam fire
- Dead and German soldiers don't complain about back blasts. They lost that privilege.
- Fixed the München-Gladbach ribbon
- Adjusted some of the German weapon tables to be more realistic.
Community round-up:
Here's a over view of what happened in the community in the last few weeks.
Check out Masked Terror (which beat the campaign lately congrats buddy!!). I personally really enjoy watching MT's mission since his fire and movement is deliberate and make it easy for the new players to catch a notion or two about when and where to move next in a fight. In this particular vid the fight at the end of Brest gets pretty personal.
Check out this hilarious clip by Mentally where his squad gets flamed right off the starting line but luckily his troops were knee-deep in the Roer.
Zeterman is back with a full Hurtgen pass in one vid. There is a lot to learn in this vid since, as you may know by now Zeter pioneers some of the most daunting tactics with his fast micro squad composed of commandos. It creates pretty exciting assaults to watch with an insane amount of unforeseen events. Who dares wins!!
Scion Galaxy tackles the DDay landing and Aure valley with no problems. Watch this if you are looking for a way to beat the early missions of the campaign but still can't put your finger on how to move.
Check out Comtastic killing it (and also getting killed) in the Hedgerows.
With all this folks, I thank you for taking the time to read these patch notes. I hope you guys will have a good holiday season, good coffee, late mornings and decadent foodage if possible. I'll catch you in mid-January for the next content drop and until then stay safe out there.
respectfully,
urb
Changed files in this update