Welcome back to the fourth of Verdun’s “Weapon Wednesday”, we use these media updates to tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the game development.

Our focus for this week will be on some awesomely destructive firearms:

MG08/18
In preparation of the great spring offensive of 1918 the Germans looked at upgrading their infantry's assault capabilities. One of many innovations undertaken was modifying the heavy and cumbersome MG08/15 (which itself was a lighter version of the MG08 HMG) The water cooled barrel was replaced by an air cooled variant and a carrying handle was fitted, making the weapons much lighter and easier to handle. Very few eventually saw action on the front, with most being used to counter the Allied 100-day offensive in 1918.



The MG08/18 will see reduced accuracy to simulate the loss of performance of the gun due to barrel overheating (the air cooled barrel wasn’t particularly effective vs a watercooled one). With the lighter weight the recoil will be a little more aggressive when compared with the mg08/15, however overall handling will be slightly better.

M1897 Trench Gun
When the U.S joined the war in 1917, they arrived in France with a wide arsenal of weaponry. They did not, however, arrive with the necessary experience needed for the ‘modern war’, trench warfare. Throughout the conflict, European armies had never really looked into using shotguns, such weapons were seen as cruel, and military leaders on both sides considered shotgun use to be ‘barbaric’. The generals of the European forces prefered the bayonet, the rifle, the machinegun as a less ‘barbaric’ weapons. German forces would often execute U.S soldiers caught with shotguns or shotgun ammunition, as the weapon was utterly devastating when used within an enemy trench.



The M1897 will be a weapon choice for one of the US marine squad roles, it will be the duty of the soldier to use their weapon to reduce entrenched defenders to nothing. The shotgun will be extremely effective in the confined spaces of the trenches, but will be almost useless at mid-long range. It will be contrasted with the German close range assault weapon, the flamethrower.

Development status
The last week has been very interesting as the new M2H office have been taking shape, which will increase team cohesion and overall awesomeness.

We have also been very happy with the overwhelmingly positive community feedback for our Verdun sector map ‘Fort Douaumont’. Douaumont is very close to being finished, as we add the final touches before internal testing commences.

We’ve also been very busy with the Horrors of War free DLC, while we aren’t yet ready to release any teasers of the gore system, our first steps seem to be very promising. We have created systems which will allow us to show the true effect of artillery and high caliber weaponry in a much more immersive way and the resulting effects are truly terrifying, as is the artwork.

The new animation system is encountering a little delay as we want to guarantee the best quality first person animations we can offer, the animations require a little more polishing but progress has been promising. In game the weapons should feel much better.

Game update status
After announcing the our upgrade to 5.2 last week we’ve been conducting internal testing which has resulted in the discovery of additional bugs with the new performance system, which has been designed to handle the addition of the smaller detail assets in the trenches much more effectively. We are working on fixes for this system, alongside other optimizations elsewhere, including the UI code. The UI code needs to be fixed as it does not work correctly with some resolutions. In addition to finding some bugs, we have had a general bug pop up with Unity regarding Mac input. We are waiting on these fixes before the next build can go live, so bear with us!

Screenshot of the Week
Gas attack at Loos, again supplied by community member echo1. We thoroughly enjoy browsing the screenshots you guys take, so please keep hitting the f12 key!


Again, stay tuned for next week’s update and thanks for tuning in! Next week we will introduce an all-time favorite and a most surprising firearm!

Welcome back to the fourth of Verdun’s “Weapon Wednesday”, we use these media updates to tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the game development.

Our focus for this week will be on some awesomely destructive firearms:

MG08/18
In preparation of the great spring offensive of 1918 the Germans looked at upgrading their infantry's assault capabilities. One of many innovations undertaken was modifying the heavy and cumbersome MG08/15 (which itself was a lighter version of the MG08 HMG) The water cooled barrel was replaced by an air cooled variant and a carrying handle was fitted, making the weapons much lighter and easier to handle. Very few eventually saw action on the front, with most being used to counter the Allied 100-day offensive in 1918.



The MG08/18 will see reduced accuracy to simulate the loss of performance of the gun due to barrel overheating (the air cooled barrel wasn’t particularly effective vs a watercooled one). With the lighter weight the recoil will be a little more aggressive when compared with the mg08/15, however overall handling will be slightly better.

M1897 Trench Gun
When the U.S joined the war in 1917, they arrived in France with a wide arsenal of weaponry. They did not, however, arrive with the necessary experience needed for the ‘modern war’, trench warfare. Throughout the conflict, European armies had never really looked into using shotguns, such weapons were seen as cruel, and military leaders on both sides considered shotgun use to be ‘barbaric’. The generals of the European forces prefered the bayonet, the rifle, the machinegun as a less ‘barbaric’ weapons. German forces would often execute U.S soldiers caught with shotguns or shotgun ammunition, as the weapon was utterly devastating when used within an enemy trench.



The M1897 will be a weapon choice for one of the US marine squad roles, it will be the duty of the soldier to use their weapon to reduce entrenched defenders to nothing. The shotgun will be extremely effective in the confined spaces of the trenches, but will be almost useless at mid-long range. It will be contrasted with the German close range assault weapon, the flamethrower.

Development status
The last week has been very interesting as the new M2H office have been taking shape, which will increase team cohesion and overall awesomeness.

We have also been very happy with the overwhelmingly positive community feedback for our Verdun sector map ‘Fort Douaumont’. Douaumont is very close to being finished, as we add the final touches before internal testing commences.

We’ve also been very busy with the Horrors of War free DLC, while we aren’t yet ready to release any teasers of the gore system, our first steps seem to be very promising. We have created systems which will allow us to show the true effect of artillery and high caliber weaponry in a much more immersive way and the resulting effects are truly terrifying, as is the artwork.

The new animation system is encountering a little delay as we want to guarantee the best quality first person animations we can offer, the animations require a little more polishing but progress has been promising. In game the weapons should feel much better.

Game update status
After announcing the our upgrade to 5.2 last week we’ve been conducting internal testing which has resulted in the discovery of additional bugs with the new performance system, which has been designed to handle the addition of the smaller detail assets in the trenches much more effectively. We are working on fixes for this system, alongside other optimizations elsewhere, including the UI code. The UI code needs to be fixed as it does not work correctly with some resolutions. In addition to finding some bugs, we have had a general bug pop up with Unity regarding Mac input. We are waiting on these fixes before the next build can go live, so bear with us!

Screenshot of the Week
Gas attack at Loos, again supplied by community member echo1. We thoroughly enjoy browsing the screenshots you guys take, so please keep hitting the f12 key!


Again, stay tuned for next week’s update and thanks for tuning in! Next week we will introduce an all-time favorite and a most surprising firearm!

Welcome back to the third of Verdun’s weekly “Weapon Wednesday”, where we once again tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the game development!

This week we will be highlighting some awesome new weaponry for upcoming squads as well as sharing exciting news about our new Verdun map :Fort Douaumont. We will also be exploring overall game improvements.


The Douaumont barracks


Artillery luger
The Artillery luger was an adaptation of the popular and iconic Luger P08 for use by German artillery personnel for defence. With a longer barrel, wooden stock and 32 round magazine, the artillery luger would become an iconic image among the trenches of the great war - a favourite among trench raiding parties - when available.


The artillery Luger will see use in German Stosstruppen and Pioneer squads. With a large capacity magazine, balance will come in the form of a longer reload and a lower amount of ammunition being given.

M1903 Springfield
The famous M1903 Springfield rifle, renowned for its accuracy and reliability was loved by both the US Army and US Marine Corps. When the U.S joined the war in 1917, it was faced with a shortage of the m1903 and assigned factories producing the British pattern 1914 to produce an american version chambering .30-06 - the pattern pattern 1917. The P17 would see more use during the great war, however, the springfield was still very much so a part of the conflict. This infamous rifle would see action in many conflicts involving the U.S. during 20th century including WW2, Korea, and Vietnam.


In Verdun the M1903 will see action as the standard issue rifle for the (to-be-implemented) US Marine squad, as well as an alternative rifle for the US ‘Doughboys’. The rifle will handle in a similar manner to the Gewehr 1898, in terms of balance it may be slightly faster to operate, however balance will be decided nearer the time of implementation.

Berthier Mousqueton Mle 1892 M16
The Berthier M16 was a higher capacity and slightly updated version of the M1892 Berthier mousqueton. The Berthier M16 saw an additional 2 rounds added to the capacity of the Mle 1892 mousqueton - which, while only bringing the rifle up to par with other carbines for the time (e.g. Kar98az) made for a considerable difference.


The M1916 will see little in the way of difference between in performance compared to the M1892… however the additional 2 rounds should make the rifle even more lethal in the right hands.

Berthier Mousqueton Mle. 1892 (Updated version)
The Berthier M1892 was developed a short while after the Lebel 1886 as a firearm for light troops, cavalry and law enforcement. The Berthier design became popular after several colonial conflicts - in which the French needed shorter rifles. Generally in desperate need of a carbine rifle in the late 1800s, the Mle 1892 was something that was lightweight and easy to use. The M1892 was adopted and was one of the first French rifles to make use of a loading clip. Suffering from a capacity of 3 rounds, this was not too much of an issue given that the rifle was far quicker to load than the Lebel. The M1892 and M1902 Berthiers were used heavily during the Great War, as come 1914 there had been little recent production of the Lebel 1886.


Development status - Terrain & Performance
Work is progressing with the long-awaited performance build as we continue to convert the project over to the 5.2 version of the Unity 5. There has been a slight delay in this process as we had a few hiccups with the terrain shader. In solving this issue, we should be able to achieve a much nicer visuals with less impact on performance. The new shader will support self-shading on detailed objects in the terrain such as the rocks in picardie. A little teaser:


Work will continue on the update in the next few days, and soon we should be trialing the new update on the beta branch.

Weapons & Scopes
As mentioned last week, work has also been carried out in the overhaul the first person weapon animations and overall experience. In the previous ‘Weapon Wednesday’ we teased the new scopes, this week we go a step further and continue to improve the in-game sniper system. The first major change will be in rendering the lenses and crosshairs. Now fully utilising Physically Based Rendering techniques (popular in current generation game engines) we are able to much better result in rendering glass. In addition to this we have tried to subtly improve our take on looking through a telescopic sight. A quick tease of this can be seen here, note this is still a work in progress:



In addition to the new aiming system, we have also updated the sniper mechanic to support iron sighting as well.. This has been a long-requested feature from the community and should provide a little relief from the new - more difficult to use aiming system.



Mapping Douaumont
Today, with tremendous pride, we can also show the first shots of the upcoming Verdun based map: Fort Douaumont. We have been working on this for some time now. A very large amount of research, including field trips, has gone into the production of this Fort. All elements were modeled closely reconstructing the fort as it was during the French attempts to retake the fort during the bloodbath that was Verdun. Over at Polygon they have been keen in following the production of our challenging WW1 environments which have made for an interesting read, check out the article
here.


The iconic observation and 75mm turret on top of the fort. Note the desolate environment

Screenshot of the Week
Advancing towards the German line at the aisne (courtesy of community member echo1).


Again, stay tuned for next week’s update and thanks for tuning in! We hope to next week be introducing you to some not so friendly firearms!

Welcome back to the third of Verdun’s weekly “Weapon Wednesday”, where we once again tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the game development!

This week we will be highlighting some awesome new weaponry for upcoming squads as well as sharing exciting news about our new Verdun map :Fort Douaumont. We will also be exploring overall game improvements.


The Douaumont barracks


Artillery luger
The Artillery luger was an adaptation of the popular and iconic Luger P08 for use by German artillery personnel for defence. With a longer barrel, wooden stock and 32 round magazine, the artillery luger would become an iconic image among the trenches of the great war - a favourite among trench raiding parties - when available.


The artillery Luger will see use in German Stosstruppen and Pioneer squads. With a large capacity magazine, balance will come in the form of a longer reload and a lower amount of ammunition being given.

M1903 Springfield
The famous M1903 Springfield rifle, renowned for its accuracy and reliability was loved by both the US Army and US Marine Corps. When the U.S joined the war in 1917, it was faced with a shortage of the m1903 and assigned factories producing the British pattern 1914 to produce an american version chambering .30-06 - the pattern pattern 1917. The P17 would see more use during the great war, however, the springfield was still very much so a part of the conflict. This infamous rifle would see action in many conflicts involving the U.S. during 20th century including WW2, Korea, and Vietnam.


In Verdun the M1903 will see action as the standard issue rifle for the (to-be-implemented) US Marine squad, as well as an alternative rifle for the US ‘Doughboys’. The rifle will handle in a similar manner to the Gewehr 1898, in terms of balance it may be slightly faster to operate, however balance will be decided nearer the time of implementation.

Berthier Mousqueton Mle 1892 M16
The Berthier M16 was a higher capacity and slightly updated version of the M1892 Berthier mousqueton. The Berthier M16 saw an additional 2 rounds added to the capacity of the Mle 1892 mousqueton - which, while only bringing the rifle up to par with other carbines for the time (e.g. Kar98az) made for a considerable difference.


The M1916 will see little in the way of difference between in performance compared to the M1892… however the additional 2 rounds should make the rifle even more lethal in the right hands.

Berthier Mousqueton Mle. 1892 (Updated version)
The Berthier M1892 was developed a short while after the Lebel 1886 as a firearm for light troops, cavalry and law enforcement. The Berthier design became popular after several colonial conflicts - in which the French needed shorter rifles. Generally in desperate need of a carbine rifle in the late 1800s, the Mle 1892 was something that was lightweight and easy to use. The M1892 was adopted and was one of the first French rifles to make use of a loading clip. Suffering from a capacity of 3 rounds, this was not too much of an issue given that the rifle was far quicker to load than the Lebel. The M1892 and M1902 Berthiers were used heavily during the Great War, as come 1914 there had been little recent production of the Lebel 1886.


Development status - Terrain & Performance
Work is progressing with the long-awaited performance build as we continue to convert the project over to the 5.2 version of the Unity 5. There has been a slight delay in this process as we had a few hiccups with the terrain shader. In solving this issue, we should be able to achieve a much nicer visuals with less impact on performance. The new shader will support self-shading on detailed objects in the terrain such as the rocks in picardie. A little teaser:


Work will continue on the update in the next few days, and soon we should be trialing the new update on the beta branch.

Weapons & Scopes
As mentioned last week, work has also been carried out in the overhaul the first person weapon animations and overall experience. In the previous ‘Weapon Wednesday’ we teased the new scopes, this week we go a step further and continue to improve the in-game sniper system. The first major change will be in rendering the lenses and crosshairs. Now fully utilising Physically Based Rendering techniques (popular in current generation game engines) we are able to much better result in rendering glass. In addition to this we have tried to subtly improve our take on looking through a telescopic sight. A quick tease of this can be seen here, note this is still a work in progress:



In addition to the new aiming system, we have also updated the sniper mechanic to support iron sighting as well.. This has been a long-requested feature from the community and should provide a little relief from the new - more difficult to use aiming system.



Mapping Douaumont
Today, with tremendous pride, we can also show the first shots of the upcoming Verdun based map: Fort Douaumont. We have been working on this for some time now. A very large amount of research, including field trips, has gone into the production of this Fort. All elements were modeled closely reconstructing the fort as it was during the French attempts to retake the fort during the bloodbath that was Verdun. Over at Polygon they have been keen in following the production of our challenging WW1 environments which have made for an interesting read, check out the article
here.


The iconic observation and 75mm turret on top of the fort. Note the desolate environment

Screenshot of the Week
Advancing towards the German line at the aisne (courtesy of community member echo1).


Again, stay tuned for next week’s update and thanks for tuning in! We hope to next week be introducing you to some not so friendly firearms!

Welcome back to the second of Verdun’s weekly “Weapon Wednesday”, where we tease upcoming content and update you on the overall state of the game development!

This week we showcase a variety of new weapons and some much sought after weapon attachments.

French Mle. 1892 Revolver
The official standard French sidearm during the Great War. It is commonly referred to as the “lebel” revolver when actually manufactured by St. Etienne. The double-action revolver was well designed for its time and served all the way up until the Second World War. While reliable, it was somewhat let down by it’s small caliber, especially when compared with other service revolvers from the time (i.e Webley MKVI)


In the game the weapon will be an optional alternative to the Ruby pistol. Since both guns fire a weak cartridge though their main strength lies in the handling speed (e.g. the m1892 features an ejector rod), this is the case with most french weapons in game.

French APX 1917 Scope / German Gortz 3x Custom
We have revisited the telescopic sights for all nations, this has been something on our to do list for a while. On the left, the French APX 1917 was produced by the puteaux workshop and were designed for the lebel and berthier rifles. It features a full vertical and horizontal linear crosshair. The scope saw action frequently on the western front, and was in use right the way into the Second World War. On the right, one of many German scopes uses on the war, produced by Gortz, and modified for the Gewehr 98. This scope features the iconic german vertical arrow and horizontal strip crosshair. Both the French and German scopes have a magnification of x3



British Aldis 1916 Scope / U.S Musket Sight M1913
The British Aldis scope, produced by the Aldis brothers of Birmingham England was a common choice for British sharp shooters during the war. Combined with a J Purdey & Son mounting, the scope was offset and allowed for use of iron sights (as did a great many of ww1 rifle scopes) The U.S M1913 Musket sight was a common rifle/machine gun scope used by the U.S. Army throughout the Great War. Differing ever so slightly to the m1908 Musket Sight, it was more compact than the Winchester A5 and B5 scopes that were used with the Springfield 1903. Iconic in design and purpose, this piece was used throughout the war by both U.S and Canadian service men. Both scopes will have crosshairs that accurately reflect the time period.


The new scopes have seen a significant graphical overhaul from the previous version ( the lone APX 1917). In addition to these scopes, we hope to open up the possibility for a new feature long requested by the community: Switching between scope and iron sights (hence the alteration of the German scope mounting). The implementation of this feature will depend heavily on the available time and resources however.

German Eierhandgranate M1917 / British No. 34 Egg Grenade
Two ‘Egg’ handgrenades both introduced in 1917. The first one being the German “Eierhandgranate M1917” of the second type, with a fragmenting ring around the the center to enhance its potential to inflict damage within the trenches. It is significantly smaller than the stick grenades and thus more could be carrier and could be thrown further and with decent accuracy. The introduction of the Eierhandgranate triggered the British to introduce the No. 34 Egg grenade later that year. The No. 34 used an internal percussion delay fuse, which meant that after removing the pin was removed the grenade had to be smashed against a hard surface in order to trigger the fuse.

Both these grenades are ideal tools for the assault squads in the game, as their size and weight allows for many of them to be carried in the trenches of the western front. The tradeoff is that the larger grenades (mainly the percussion stick grenades) offer a wider area of effect than these new explosives.

Development status
Work has continued on improving performance as planned, especially in the area of CPU code optimizations some ground has been won. In addition a new custom culling system is being added on top of the existing unity system in order to more aggressively attack the smaller objects in the scenes, thus create better performance. The anti-cheat system is also being reworked as some people received bans when they shouldn’t have. The new animation system that is currently being developed will contain accurate animations from switching stance such as standing up, crawling and going into sight mode.

Game update status
After last week’s hotfix we’re aiming to have the performance update out this week. It will also contain the engine update (to unity 5.2) which should include some native improvements and bug-fixes as well. The team is hard at work putting the last pieces of the new system in place.

Screenshot of the Week
Every week we take a nice community screenshot and give it some attention. We have some community members taking excellent screenshots. This example has been taken by community member Echo1, who has made a lot of excellent screenshot. It depicts a Canadian assault in Artois. (Vimy)


Your screenshot up here? That is possible, submit your screenshots to the HUB and we will pick one. Tip: use F8 to hide the HUD, put graphics on ultra and use a big field of view


That will be all for this week. Do stay tuned for next week’s update - when we will be showcasing an old friend, and introducing some new.

Welcome back to the second of Verdun’s weekly “Weapon Wednesday”, where we tease upcoming content and update you on the overall state of the game development!

This week we showcase a variety of new weapons and some much sought after weapon attachments.

French Mle. 1892 Revolver
The official standard French sidearm during the Great War. It is commonly referred to as the “lebel” revolver when actually manufactured by St. Etienne. The double-action revolver was well designed for its time and served all the way up until the Second World War. While reliable, it was somewhat let down by it’s small caliber, especially when compared with other service revolvers from the time (i.e Webley MKVI)


In the game the weapon will be an optional alternative to the Ruby pistol. Since both guns fire a weak cartridge though their main strength lies in the handling speed (e.g. the m1892 features an ejector rod), this is the case with most french weapons in game.

French APX 1917 Scope / German Gortz 3x Custom
We have revisited the telescopic sights for all nations, this has been something on our to do list for a while. On the left, the French APX 1917 was produced by the puteaux workshop and were designed for the lebel and berthier rifles. It features a full vertical and horizontal linear crosshair. The scope saw action frequently on the western front, and was in use right the way into the Second World War. On the right, one of many German scopes uses on the war, produced by Gortz, and modified for the Gewehr 98. This scope features the iconic german vertical arrow and horizontal strip crosshair. Both the French and German scopes have a magnification of x3



British Aldis 1916 Scope / U.S Musket Sight M1913
The British Aldis scope, produced by the Aldis brothers of Birmingham England was a common choice for British sharp shooters during the war. Combined with a J Purdey & Son mounting, the scope was offset and allowed for use of iron sights (as did a great many of ww1 rifle scopes) The U.S M1913 Musket sight was a common rifle/machine gun scope used by the U.S. Army throughout the Great War. Differing ever so slightly to the m1908 Musket Sight, it was more compact than the Winchester A5 and B5 scopes that were used with the Springfield 1903. Iconic in design and purpose, this piece was used throughout the war by both U.S and Canadian service men. Both scopes will have crosshairs that accurately reflect the time period.


The new scopes have seen a significant graphical overhaul from the previous version ( the lone APX 1917). In addition to these scopes, we hope to open up the possibility for a new feature long requested by the community: Switching between scope and iron sights (hence the alteration of the German scope mounting). The implementation of this feature will depend heavily on the available time and resources however.

German Eierhandgranate M1917 / British No. 34 Egg Grenade
Two ‘Egg’ handgrenades both introduced in 1917. The first one being the German “Eierhandgranate M1917” of the second type, with a fragmenting ring around the the center to enhance its potential to inflict damage within the trenches. It is significantly smaller than the stick grenades and thus more could be carrier and could be thrown further and with decent accuracy. The introduction of the Eierhandgranate triggered the British to introduce the No. 34 Egg grenade later that year. The No. 34 used an internal percussion delay fuse, which meant that after removing the pin was removed the grenade had to be smashed against a hard surface in order to trigger the fuse.

Both these grenades are ideal tools for the assault squads in the game, as their size and weight allows for many of them to be carried in the trenches of the western front. The tradeoff is that the larger grenades (mainly the percussion stick grenades) offer a wider area of effect than these new explosives.

Development status
Work has continued on improving performance as planned, especially in the area of CPU code optimizations some ground has been won. In addition a new custom culling system is being added on top of the existing unity system in order to more aggressively attack the smaller objects in the scenes, thus create better performance. The anti-cheat system is also being reworked as some people received bans when they shouldn’t have. The new animation system that is currently being developed will contain accurate animations from switching stance such as standing up, crawling and going into sight mode.

Game update status
After last week’s hotfix we’re aiming to have the performance update out this week. It will also contain the engine update (to unity 5.2) which should include some native improvements and bug-fixes as well. The team is hard at work putting the last pieces of the new system in place.

Screenshot of the Week
Every week we take a nice community screenshot and give it some attention. We have some community members taking excellent screenshots. This example has been taken by community member Echo1, who has made a lot of excellent screenshot. It depicts a Canadian assault in Artois. (Vimy)


Your screenshot up here? That is possible, submit your screenshots to the HUB and we will pick one. Tip: use F8 to hide the HUD, put graphics on ultra and use a big field of view


That will be all for this week. Do stay tuned for next week’s update - when we will be showcasing an old friend, and introducing some new.

Today marks the beginning of our weekly Verdun update series “Weapon Wednesday”. In each episode we will tease upcoming content, talk about the status of development and provide a little history behind the content.

Ross Rifle
Almost every day since the addition of the canadian assault squad in October of last year, there has been a request through steam (or facebook) for the Ross rifle; driving some community members to near-insanity. Well those days are over. Today we introduce this extremely controversial rifle: The Ross model of 1910 Mark III.



The Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) was equipped with the Ross as they embarked for the western front in 1915. This was despite the British push for standardisation of the SMLE rifle across the empire. Exposing the Ross to the trenches of the western front (especially in the muddy Ypres salient) made apparent that this rifle, which was otherwise an excellent and accurate rifle, was very much so unsuitable for trench warfare. By the time the Anglo-French offensive at the Somme started all of the Ross rifles were replaced by the SMLE. After its replacement the Ross rifle was designated for training purposes, but sometimes saw use as a snipers rifle.

In the game this rifle will reflect a similar role, as the Canadians have a weapon specialist which will be able the use this weapon. In addition it will be one of the more interesting weapons in the rifle deathmatch and attrition game modes as it is a straight-pull bolt-action rifle (meaning that you only need to pull the charging handle backwards instead of rotating it up first).

A familiar face
Alongside the production of new weapons, we are also giving some of the existing weapons a facelift. One of the recently altered weapons is the German MG08/15. It received a total Physical Based Rendering (PBR) overhaul, smoother edges, and in general much more detail. Most importantly we added the correct ammo belt which will be fully animated in the final product.



Development status
On all fronts the game is advancing. At this very moment several programmers are looking into the overall performance, which is already yielding some nice results. We are also looking at a potential engine update which could result in 30% less load on the CPU. In addition to the new weapons being produced we are dealing with a total overhaul in first person weapon animations. These will look a lot more fluid we hope to introduce these within the next couple of weeks. Work on Level Design is also being conducted, and hopefully we will be teasing some of this soon aswell.

Game update status
The week past has seen 2 patches go live. The first of these being the long awaited summer update to the game introducing among many other things the new gamemode attrition. Secondly, yesterday we pushed another hotfix to handle some of the pressing issues resulting from the update. Mainly regarding spawning in attrition and the first of a series of patches to help with MG deployment fixes. The full changelog can be found here.

That will be all for this week. Oh, before we forget, do stay tuned for next week’s update - we have some explosive little surprises in store.

Today marks the beginning of our weekly Verdun update series “Weapon Wednesday”. In each episode we will tease upcoming content, talk about the status of development and provide a little history behind the content.

Ross Rifle
Almost every day since the addition of the canadian assault squad in October of last year, there has been a request through steam (or facebook) for the Ross rifle; driving some community members to near-insanity. Well those days are over. Today we introduce this extremely controversial rifle: The Ross model of 1910 Mark III.



The Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) was equipped with the Ross as they embarked for the western front in 1915. This was despite the British push for standardisation of the SMLE rifle across the empire. Exposing the Ross to the trenches of the western front (especially in the muddy Ypres salient) made apparent that this rifle, which was otherwise an excellent and accurate rifle, was very much so unsuitable for trench warfare. By the time the Anglo-French offensive at the Somme started all of the Ross rifles were replaced by the SMLE. After its replacement the Ross rifle was designated for training purposes, but sometimes saw use as a snipers rifle.

In the game this rifle will reflect a similar role, as the Canadians have a weapon specialist which will be able the use this weapon. In addition it will be one of the more interesting weapons in the rifle deathmatch and attrition game modes as it is a straight-pull bolt-action rifle (meaning that you only need to pull the charging handle backwards instead of rotating it up first).

A familiar face
Alongside the production of new weapons, we are also giving some of the existing weapons a facelift. One of the recently altered weapons is the German MG08/15. It received a total Physical Based Rendering (PBR) overhaul, smoother edges, and in general much more detail. Most importantly we added the correct ammo belt which will be fully animated in the final product.



Development status
On all fronts the game is advancing. At this very moment several programmers are looking into the overall performance, which is already yielding some nice results. We are also looking at a potential engine update which could result in 30% less load on the CPU. In addition to the new weapons being produced we are dealing with a total overhaul in first person weapon animations. These will look a lot more fluid we hope to introduce these within the next couple of weeks. Work on Level Design is also being conducted, and hopefully we will be teasing some of this soon aswell.

Game update status
The week past has seen 2 patches go live. The first of these being the long awaited summer update to the game introducing among many other things the new gamemode attrition. Secondly, yesterday we pushed another hotfix to handle some of the pressing issues resulting from the update. Mainly regarding spawning in attrition and the first of a series of patches to help with MG deployment fixes. The full changelog can be found here.

That will be all for this week. Oh, before we forget, do stay tuned for next week’s update - we have some explosive little surprises in store.

There is an exciting new update for Verdun with massive graphical map updates and a new game mode called Attrition!

This update will give you a small taste of what is coming.. as we didn’t want you to wait much longer for something new to explore. We are in the meantime working hard on the four big updates as promised and for this we even expanded our ‘Verdun development team’ with more game specialists.


Excitement awaits you in the new gamemode!

Attrition
Attrition is a tactic used in battle to wear the enemy down through continuous losses in personnel and material. This tactic, often used in World War 1, is translated into the game as follows;

The Entente and the Central Power each start with a number of reinforcement tickets. These represent the amount of manpower that each side has at its disposal. Every time a player is killed and respawns, a ticket is deducted from the side he belongs to. The goal of the game is to diminish the opposing side’s tickets before losing all the tickets on your side, because you cannot respawn anymore if there are no more tickets. These battles are quick, fun, bloody… And guess what? You can play with all the different WW1 weaponry available in Verdun!

Massive map graphical update
In addition to the new game mode, our artists have been working on upgrading the levels in Verdun with new visuals. The goal was to enhance the immersion into the world by adding a lot more scenery. In great detail scenes from the trenches have been recreated. Great care has been given to portraying the everyday elements such as rations and sleeping quarters. Next to that you will be able to find stories and scenarios when wandering around the battlefield, traces of battles fought on the same grounds. All of this has been created with the stunning physics based rendering, truly enhancing the quality of the different materials shown, be it leather items or reflecting metals. Enhancing the details in the maps was a big step forward in our project as they only barely resemble the maps from the earlier stages.


More detailed trenches are now found everywhere and include scenes


Day-to-day elements of trench life

Game improvements
Apart from a new game mode and the graphical map updates we of course also did some bug fixing and made some improvements after community feedback. Our anti-cheat system is updated, the sniper scope is smoother and no longer shows artifacts, Killstreak now also counts when the players is still alive at the endmatch, etc. For more information check out the
changelog .

All in all we hope you like this update, and keep an eye open as you might find some teasers already in-game for the big updates..

There is an exciting new update for Verdun with massive graphical map updates and a new game mode called Attrition!

This update will give you a small taste of what is coming.. as we didn’t want you to wait much longer for something new to explore. We are in the meantime working hard on the four big updates as promised and for this we even expanded our ‘Verdun development team’ with more game specialists.


Excitement awaits you in the new gamemode!

Attrition
Attrition is a tactic used in battle to wear the enemy down through continuous losses in personnel and material. This tactic, often used in World War 1, is translated into the game as follows;

The Entente and the Central Power each start with a number of reinforcement tickets. These represent the amount of manpower that each side has at its disposal. Every time a player is killed and respawns, a ticket is deducted from the side he belongs to. The goal of the game is to diminish the opposing side’s tickets before losing all the tickets on your side, because you cannot respawn anymore if there are no more tickets. These battles are quick, fun, bloody… And guess what? You can play with all the different WW1 weaponry available in Verdun!

Massive map graphical update
In addition to the new game mode, our artists have been working on upgrading the levels in Verdun with new visuals. The goal was to enhance the immersion into the world by adding a lot more scenery. In great detail scenes from the trenches have been recreated. Great care has been given to portraying the everyday elements such as rations and sleeping quarters. Next to that you will be able to find stories and scenarios when wandering around the battlefield, traces of battles fought on the same grounds. All of this has been created with the stunning physics based rendering, truly enhancing the quality of the different materials shown, be it leather items or reflecting metals. Enhancing the details in the maps was a big step forward in our project as they only barely resemble the maps from the earlier stages.


More detailed trenches are now found everywhere and include scenes


Day-to-day elements of trench life

Game improvements
Apart from a new game mode and the graphical map updates we of course also did some bug fixing and made some improvements after community feedback. Our anti-cheat system is updated, the sniper scope is smoother and no longer shows artifacts, Killstreak now also counts when the players is still alive at the endmatch, etc. For more information check out the
changelog .

All in all we hope you like this update, and keep an eye open as you might find some teasers already in-game for the big updates..