Hello all,

In honor of the 80th Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion, Brass Brigade will go on sale at an all-time high discount of 80% off.

The sale will start 6/6 at 1PM EST and continue for 24 hours.

Fun as video games are, let us not forget the history that these games and other media are based on. Take a moment to remember those who gave so much in the name of freedom 80 years ago.

Some great gameplay of the Omaha Beach battle in Brass Brigade, courtesy of DaleyProductions!



Thank you,
Henry

Hello,

Thanks for all the love, support, and kind words after the most recent "Jeeps" update. Many thanks to those who submitted bug reports. This update should help resolve some of the more troublesome issues. Fixes include...

- Fixed scoreboard not showing the player's name in the list of soldiers
- Adjusted spawns of jeeps in some maps so there's more space between them and other nearby vehicles/tanks.
- Fixed jeeps being able to drive through invisible walls on maps. They should now collide with invisible walls correctly.
- Fixed friendly fire settings with jeeps. Jeeps would previously take damage from friendly fire when the friendly fire setting was "Off". This resulted in jeeps exploding but the occupants were still alive.
- Potential fix for rare bug where player would die but not be able to respawn. I haven't been able to reproduce this myself but I've seen a few players experience it, so I'm trying to protect against this. If someone knows exactly how to reproduce this, please let me know on the Brass Brigade Discord's #bug-reports channel! Appreciated :D

Until next time,
Henry

Hello all,

New to the battlefield in this update are some of the most iconic vehicles of the Second World War. The Willys MB/GPW (or what we now refer to as a "jeep") and the Kubelwagen are joining the ever growing fleet of vehicles available to navigate the battlefield with. These transport vehicles are the first examples of vehicles in Brass Brigade that allow for multiple troops to travel together in a vehicle. They're fast, nimble, and lightly armored, making them well suited for darting between capture points. They don't stand up to gunfire very well and offer very little armor, so if you come across a large group of enemies, you best steer clear before it's too late!

The Jeep is perhaps the single most lasting and enduring road vehicle to have been born out of World War II. With nearly 650,000 produced by the war's end, the Jeep proved to be a reliable and rugged means of transportation for getting Allied troops both into and out of enemy lines.



In this initial update, you'll come across 3 variants of the Jeep; one adorned in the traditional green with the Allied Star on the hood, a slightly fictionalized British variant, and a desert variant (Rat Patrol anyone?).

The Kubelwagen served as the GPs opposite number. The Kubelwagen served a similar role for Axis troops throughout the Second World war and is arguably just as recognizable a vehicle with great historical significance. While the Axis powers couldn't quite match the United States' "Arsenal of Democracy" and their output of nearly 650,000 jeeps, over 50,000 Kubelwagens were produced with virtually all of them being assigned for use in the war. Despite the significantly lower production numbers, it is still an instantly recognizable vehicle on any battlefield thanks to its sharp angles and ribbed sides.



Like the jeep, the Kubelwagen comes in the standard military grey & desert variants. A dark green version is also available for the Japanese forces as a stand-in.

Bots will seek out all vehicles/mounted weapons now much more frequently than they did before. Generally, bots that are closer to these vehicles will try to run to them and hop in them if a seat is still available. Bots will fill up vehicles back to front to ensure they are full before speeding off into battle.



When entering a vehicle, you'll always default to the driver seat. You can swap to any other seat in the car by using F1-F4. You can also swap between first and third person modes while driving as well! When shooting from a vehicle with allies, friendly fire is always disabled between you and the allies in the vehicle.

• Added 7 new Jeep/Kubelwagen variants
  
• Reworked how bots approach & enter vehicles/mounted guns.
  
• Switching between 1st & 3rd person now happens instantly, instead of waiting for the camera to lerp to each position
  
• Added jeep, Kubelwagen, artillery, and mounted machine gun to the tutorial training level.
  
• Various other tweaks and adjustments due to a near complete re-write of vehicle interaction logic & AI surrounding vehicle usage.

This update required a massive amount of reworking under the hood. These jeeps mark the first time bots and the player can share a single vehicle, shoot from a moving vehicle, etc...a lot of reworking needed to be done to support this. I was hoping to have this update ready long ago, but the technical complexity and other personal matters delayed it...but it's here now, so I hope you enjoy! There are still more behaviors I want to add to these jeeps, but they will come later as I wanted to have them ready for the Steam Spring Sale.

Thankfully, I think I've created a solid base to add a few more vehicles from in coming updates. My plan for now is to continue adding a few more transport vehicle types to the game and further enrich the vehicle feature-set, do some additional bug-fixing (I'm sure there are plenty hiding around in there...), etc.

If you have suggestions for future vehicles (or other features/maps/etc), drop me a line on the Brass Brigade Discord!

Until next time,
Henry

Attention soldiers,

This update brings a whole new dimension to the shooting mechanics in Brass Brigade - recoil.

For the entire lifespan of Brass Brigade, weapons have merely fired with a "cone" of accuracy & no actual recoil. Your crosshair always remained stationary when firing. The more accurate a weapon, the tighter the cone of fire would be. The cone was affected by your stance, getting more accurate the lower down you got. This was a pretty simple and effective way of implementing weapon accuracy. This is not an uncommon method of portraying recoil in third person shooter games at all either. In fact, games like Battlefield Heroes (which Brass Brigade has taken inspiration from) and Star Wars Battlefront I & II (the 2004 & 2005 titles, respectively) used a very similar methods of simulating weapon accuracy. It was in this style that Brass Brigade was conceived and followed suit.

However, as Brass Brigade has matured into a larger, more historically-grounded WWII experience (especially when compared to something like Battlefield Heroes), I found myself wanting to simulate weapon recoil a bit more viscerally. Sniping enemies from hundreds of yards away with a Thompson SMG on automatic shouldn't really be possible (or at least, not quite so easy). With this in mind, vertical & horizontal recoil has now been added into Brass Brigade. And don't worry - like most things in-game, it's optional and can be disabled if you wish to preserve the original shooting mechanics (under Settings > Gameplay).


Recoil can be disabled under Settings > Gameplay if you prefer the original shooting mechanics. It's all about your preference!

Weapons now kick upward and side to side as you fire them. The amount of kick is again affected by the player's current stance. Standing is least accurate, crouching is a bit more accurate, and lying prone is most accurate. If the player is actively aiming, the kick is lessened a bit more too. The recoil - while certainly noticeable - is not meant to completely disrupt the moment-to-moment gameplay, so in general, it's not designed to make shooting extremely difficult. The flow and pace of gameplay is still preserved, but it does help to emphasize each weapon's role in a battle. Rifles have a fair amount of kick, forcing you to reset your aim in between shots which makes lining up subsequent shots a bit more challenging, and landing them all the more satisfying. By comparison, smaller automatic weapons kick less, but their rapid fire will have you pointing way above target without burst fire at long distances. However, when you're up close, you can still mag-dump targets with relative ease, preserving their role as the king of CQB.

For now, weapon recoil is generally divided into categories for balancing purpose, so most weapons in a specific category share similar recoil behaviors. I will continue to adjust and tweak specific weapon recoil values to help make each gun more distinguished and true to its real life counter-part, but I think this first iteration adds a lot of color to the moment-to-moment gunfights.

Another small tweak that helps sell the impact and violence that surrounds you on the battlefield is a screen-blurring effect that will be triggered by nearby explosions. If an explosion lands close enough to you, your screen may shake & temporarily become blurred. Best to find cover if that happens before it's too late!



The screen blurs and shakes when near an explosion! Take cover, or else you might not survive until the next update!

Fixed a bug that appeared in the previous update which caused tanks to not see their team-mates and run them over. Tanks should be more aware of allies in their forward path and attempt to stop.

Keep your head down until the next update rolls around,
Henry

Hello everyone,

This is not a normal Brass Brigade update announcement, but its an announcement I feel needs to be made as an indie game developer who uses Unity.

Yesterday, Unity announced a change to their pricing model that would essentially (for Unity Personal users, like myself) charge developers $0.20 per customer install of their Unity game. This fee would only go into effect if certain revenue and installation count thresholds were met. For Unity Personal users, if your game earns $200,000 in yearly revenue and 200,000 installations over its lifetime, you would be subject to pay this extra installation fee. You can read more about the specifics of their pricing model at this link; its far too nuanced for me to get into any deeper here.

While Brass Brigade falls far below these figures and I would not be subject to these newly proposed fees, this change from Unity sets an unacceptable precedent for the future of independent game development with their engine. There are many reasons Unity developers are concerned, and some of them may even extend to you, the customer/player.

Initial concerns of Unity's new system include...

• The amount charged and metrics calculation for number of installs is done entirely at Unity's discretion; there is no transparency for how they arrive at the amount they wish to charge a developer.
  
• There is no clear explanation for how the Unity Runtime "phones home" to tell Unity when it has been newly installed. You as a consumer and downloader of a Unity application have a right to know what data is being sent from your PC and to whom it is being sent.
  
• The instant you cross the threshold to qualify for the additional fees, you will be charged for all users & installations accrued up to that point. For example, if for 11 months you do not cross the thresholds of the fees, you owe Unity nothing. But if on the 12th month of the year you do, you are suddenly charged for the installations accrued in the first 11 months. By Unity's own math in the linked article, the minimum payment for a Unity Personal user crossing the $200,000 yearly revenue & 200,000 install threshold would amount to $22,500 for the first month.
  
• Malicious actors could potentially abuse this fee to harm developers financially by spam installing a Unity application repeatedly, wracking up installation costs against the developer.
  
• The developer is being held liable for the installations/uninstallation by his customers. That's like holding a car manufacturer liable for how people drive their cars.
  
• Pirated copies of Unity games could be counted and incur a fee against a developer who has not earned any revenue from that pirated copy.

...and the list goes on. These are just a few of the immediate red flags that this impending change may cause.

Brass Brigade Discord member Redemption created an excellent video that summarizes why you should care about this change. I recommend giving it a watch & sharing it with all your friends to put pressure onto Unity to revert their decision.


In short, any game that was made in Unity, however new or old it may be, is being threatened by Unity's new pricing model. Some of these games and their developers may not be able to continue supporting or selling their games due to this malicious decision from Unity. Please make your voice heard online by protesting this change from Unity - it serves to harm the interest of both passionate indie game developers and their players.

I love working on Brass Brigade. And while I am not personally affected by this change, I can understand how devastating it is for the developers who will be affected. Years of your life potentially wasted, irrecoverable time, effort, and money gone in the blink of an eye because of Unity's unfathomably out of touch decision making. It honestly makes me question if I should continue developing Brass Brigade and other projects in Unity (or at all)... Please know that the developers of all your favorite indie games right now feel exactly the same way. And for those of us who aren't affected - just because it wasn't us today, doesn't mean it couldn't be us tomorrow.

To Unity - you need to do better. This is not okay.

Thanks for your time & support,
Henry

Hello all,

More regular maintenance as part of codebase refactoring & clean up.

- Bot behavior for entering mountables/vehicles has been rewritten. Bots should hop onto tanks, mounted MGs, and artillery guns much more frequently.
- Candidate bots for occupying a vehicle/mountable adjusted to prioritize nearby bots; this should prevent bots from attempting to run across the whole map to occupy a vehicle. Nearby bots will be prioritized and helps keep these guns active and in the battle.

Until next time,
Henry

Hello all,

Change-list for regular quality of life maintenance update:

- Adjusted AI obstacles on Maginot map; should prevent Axis bots from getting trapped in their spawn near the mountain to the left of the main road
- Additional AI obstacles on Maginot map added; should prevent bots from getting spawned in an area they cannot escape from in the town
- Large internal refactor which broke apart map files and gameplay elements; this should have no visible impact on the game to the player. If you notice oddities like artillery guns/tanks/mounted MGs spawning in incorrect positions, please submit a note on the Discord's #bug channel.
- Adjusted camera collision layering; should collide less with other NPCs and reduce rapid zooming in/out when near to lots of NPCs.

More things in the works. Until next time...

Cheers,
Henry

Hello troopers,

It's been a while. I'll keep this short and sweet since enemy troops are incoming.

I was a bit burned out after over 3 years of extra content delivery for Brass Brigade. After some much needed rest, I am back to deliver some more content for Brass Brigade. I will be better pacing myself going forward - I hope to deliver both new content and to fix some underlying technical issues around Brass Brigade, both to make additions easier & to (possibly) make a better framework for future games based on my codebase. I look forward to creating more awesome Brass Brigade updates in the future.

With that said - on with the briefing...

From June 29th at 10am PT to July 13th, Brass Brigade will be 30% off for the duration of the Steam Summer Sale. Now is a great time to pick up the game if you haven't already!



Crikey - It's a bloody invasion!



It's early in the war and new strategies and technologies are beginning to emerge for both the Allied and Axis forces. The Greek island of Crete is about to become the site of the first ever large scale airborne operation.



German troops are launching an airborne assault on the island of Crete with the hopes of capturing the Maleme Airfield from the stationed British forces. The Germans are landing in the fields and farmland just outside the airfield. They will need to push through the sparsely covered fields, push through the town of Chania if they hope to surround and destroy the defending British troops.



But it won't be easy. The British troops are armed with a significant amount of armored tanks, mounted machine guns, and fortified defensive positions. The British have significantly more cover, firing from the balconies and rooftops in Chania as well as from their own airfield defenses network. If the Maleme Airfield falls, the Germans will be able to establish an endless supply stream into Crete, and the rest of the island will fall in a matter of days.



Grab your No. 4 rifle and clear the sweat from your eye - the Jerries are comin' from the bloody sky!

- New "Crete Invasion" Map
- New Fallschirmjager (Early War) Axis Team Variant. Mostly the same as the original Fallschirmjager Axis Team variant, except with more period correct weapons (Replaced StG44 -> MP40, and G43 -> K98k).

Enjoy the update & enjoy the Steam Summer Sale!

Cheers,
Henry

Hello troops,

A quick note - Brass Brigade officially turns 3 years old tomorrow, November 22nd. While the game may be 3 years old to you, it took me almost 2 additional years to produce before releasing it. The last half-decade of my life has been (in large part) defined by my work on Brass Brigade. A huge thank you to everyone who purchased & supported the game. It means the world to a small indie dev like me. I may have put development more-or-less to bed on Brass Brigade, but my head swirls with ideas of future games that I hope to pursue soon enough when the time is right. In the meantime, I couldn't let the 3 year anniversary pass without giving you guys at least a small gift, so, right...on to business.

To celebrate 3 years of Brass Brigade this Steam Autumn Sale, you can pick it up for 30% off!


It's been a while since the last Brass Brigade update. I felt it appropriate to make a couple of adjustments to the game based on some accumulated feedback as well as to drop a new tank into the game to flush out and balance the French faction some more.


Previously, the only tank the French had access to was the FT-17. While this small tank was certainly iconic in the Great War, it was obsolete by the time of the Second World War. Outgunned and under-armoured compared to their contemporary counterparts, the French developed several other tanks which found their way into battle.



Among these was the Somua S35, a medium sized cavalry tank comparable to the German Panzer III. Made between 1936 and 1940 (and used through 1945), this tank would prove maneuverable and tactically effective in the early stages of the war. Considering the French battles depicted in Brass Brigade take place in the earlier parts of the war, this made the Somua S35 a perfect addition to the French arsenal.



With a reasonably powered 47mm cannon and turret mounted machine gun, the S35 will prove to be a new deadly threat the Axis will need to watch out for. While it sports almost twice the hit points of the FT-17 and more powerful weaponry, its larger silhouette and slower speed makes strategic positioning more important.

• DP28 & PPSH 41 (Soviet weapons) have received slight damage increases to closer align them to German counter parts.
  
• German AI made slightly less aggressive to balance them against certain allied factions
  
• New Soviet Winter faction. This lets you play in winter themed maps with Soviet troops that look more historically appropriate for the environment they are in. Note* - no map uses them by default, you must select them manually from the Battles menu.
  
• Special troops can now be recruited (previously, ammo troops, medics, snipers, and anti-tank troops could not be commanded. This meant that the number of recruitable troops was low and led to players thinking the recruit function was broken).
  
• Flags on control points now switch to reflect the nationality of each faction being used (lots of people asked for this one - sorry it look so long to get implemented!)

• Ponyri: Raised artillery gun at center base camp to shoot over barbed wire
  
• Battleaxe: Adjusted terrain around rear Flak guns so they have clear lines of sight
  
• Kursk: Moved MG slightly away from artillery piece on ridge line
  
• Iwo Jima: Added blocking volume above bunker near Plane Crash to prevent AI from getting stuck on bunker roof

Thanks to all the feedback on the Discord that led to these changes. Hopefully they further improve your experience.

Until next time,
Henry

Hello troops,

This is a smaller update, but hopefully a welcome one none-the-less. This update focuses on improving the AI's responsiveness & aggressiveness across the game, as well as offering a broader range of difficulty depending on where the player sets the CPU Time sliders when starting a battle.

Change list:

Bug Fixes:

• Medic and ammo bots should not stand still as frequently as before when assessing who they should approach next to reinforce
  
• Fixed a bug where medic and ammo resupply bots would no longer attack objectives in rare circumstances
  
• Sniper bots no longer crouch walk the entire way to their sniper spots.

Adjustments:

• Ammo bots will wait until allies have half of their maximum ammo capacity before attempting to resupply.
  
• Bot peripheral vision can range from 30 degrees to 270 degrees depending on the VISION slider (up from 30 - 180 before). This means that bots are more perceptive to threats around them as the VISION is increased.
  
• Bot AI sampling rates adjusted more noticeably with the CPU TIME slider. Turning down the CPU TIME slider means bots will wait longer between AI sampling ticks, making them less responsive & less aggressive. Turning the CPU TIME slider up will make them more responsive.

I did my best to try and preserve the scaling of the AI - my internal testing shows nearly identical performance metrics and (to my eye) the AI plays much more responsively and violently. Let me know your feedback in the Discord and Steam Discussion threads!

Cheers,
Henry