It’s Christmas Truce!
World War 1 has a merciless dark side, yet also a surprisingly human side to it. In 1914 French, German and British troops held a remarkable truce during Christmas. During this truce, soldiers from the Entente and Central Power threw snowballs at each other, exchanged Christmas greetings and sang carols together. Soldiers who wrote Christmas cards from the trenches to their loved ones, had many stories of this extraordinary event, even mentioning that a number of football matches were held between the two sides. This stood in stark contrast with the massive death toll unheard of in the history of that time, marking WW1 as one of the bloodiest wars the world had ever seen.

This extraordinary event must not be forgotten, certainly not today. Live and let Live!

From December 22 – January 4 2016 the game Verdun will reproduce the WW1 Christmas Truce. This is done by releasing a new dedicated winter map where players can throw snowballs at each other, play a few football matches, sing along with Christmas carols and write Christmas cards to their loved ones. Sharing these cards might even win you an extra Steam key for your friend or enemy…

https://youtu.be/LyHI-XUtHYg

Verdun game will have a 40% discount during the whole Christmas Truce. Also, the Verdun team will be streaming this event together with Twitchers; BaronVonGamez, Squire and PhlyDaily on the 23rd of December at 4pm Eastern time (GMT-5) - https://www.Twitch.tv/VerdunGame. Enjoy the Holidays!

It’s Christmas Truce!
World War 1 has a merciless dark side, yet also a surprisingly human side to it. In 1914 French, German and British troops held a remarkable truce during Christmas. During this truce, soldiers from the Entente and Central Power threw snowballs at each other, exchanged Christmas greetings and sang carols together. Soldiers who wrote Christmas cards from the trenches to their loved ones, had many stories of this extraordinary event, even mentioning that a number of football matches were held between the two sides. This stood in stark contrast with the massive death toll unheard of in the history of that time, marking WW1 as one of the bloodiest wars the world had ever seen.

This extraordinary event must not be forgotten, certainly not today. Live and let Live!

From December 22 – January 4 2016 the game Verdun will reproduce the WW1 Christmas Truce. This is done by releasing a new dedicated winter map where players can throw snowballs at each other, play a few football matches, sing along with Christmas carols and write Christmas cards to their loved ones. Sharing these cards might even win you an extra Steam key for your friend or enemy…

https://youtu.be/LyHI-XUtHYg

Verdun game will have a 40% discount during the whole Christmas Truce. Also, the Verdun team will be streaming this event together with Twitchers; BaronVonGamez, Squire and PhlyDaily on the 23rd of December at 4pm Eastern time (GMT-5) - https://www.Twitch.tv/VerdunGame. Enjoy the Holidays!

Welcome back to another weekly weapon wednesday update! This week is rather special because we are happy to announce the return of a yearly verdun classic: the Christmas Truce. Besides that, we want to update you on the status of the development as is and the exciting forthcoming content and updates.

The truce
With our team of skillful artists working around the clock we wanted to make this years’ event even more special. We are not going to spoil everything, but at Verdun we want to do something unique every year during the christmas season so you know it will be you have never seen before. Here are some ingame screenshots of the upcoming christmas special content.


What purpose will these have?


Noël is almost upon us


What is he cheering at?

Stay tuned for further teasing and screenshots...

More happened behind the scenes and this week because our weapons team also created some amazing new content:

Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr
In 1918 the greatest disadvantage the germans faced was the sheer number of allied tanks. The allies had collectively produced around several thousand tanks come 1918, with Germany producing a mere 20 or so ( capturing a few also) While the role of the tank was still in its infancy - it was still an extremely valuable piece of equipment on the battlefield. The Germans had a number of tactics at hand to try tackle the onslaught of Allied armour, but it was realised (perhaps too late) that a weapon designed specifically to take out armour was needed. Mauser developed the enormous T-Gewehr in answer to this call. The rifle was in essence an enlarged version of the Gewehr 98, and used the 13mm TuF armour piercing round (Tank und Flieger) a round that would quite readily handle any light/medium armour from the period. The rifle proved effective, if not destroying the tank, just taking out an engine block or damaging the track was enough to render the vehicle useless … which then left easy pickings for German tank hunters.


Surprise!

The T-Gewehr in game will be used to help take out heavily entrenched positions, as the weapon will be able to penetrate wooden structures and metal snipers plates.

In addition, the animation branch made some progress as well such as the madsen light machine gun animations:


Lighter than it looks


Notice the unique lip system on the side of the magazine that is animated

Development status
We also want to inform you that the current status of the testing branch is almost reaching stability to bring it to everyone. Next to the efforts of the art team our coding department made great strides improving the game's performance across the board. We have increased the overall FPS in the last week by for instance reducing animation workload and cut down on physics dramatically. We are also in talks with unity to fix issues on a deeper level. We hope to bring you that update this week as well.

Vote for us as Indie of the year!
This week the final round of the indieDB game of the year awards are in progress. We need your help yet again to bring us to the top! If you log in at indiedb (possible with a steam account) then your vote counts even more!


The 2015 Indie of the year! It can be your game: Verdun

Screenshots of the Week

“Distant observation of an allied gas assault, western front 1918”


“Community gathering in truce, Douaumont map, 2015”


That will be all for this week. See you in the trenches!

Welcome back to another weekly weapon wednesday update! This week is rather special because we are happy to announce the return of a yearly verdun classic: the Christmas Truce. Besides that, we want to update you on the status of the development as is and the exciting forthcoming content and updates.

The truce
With our team of skillful artists working around the clock we wanted to make this years’ event even more special. We are not going to spoil everything, but at Verdun we want to do something unique every year during the christmas season so you know it will be you have never seen before. Here are some ingame screenshots of the upcoming christmas special content.


What purpose will these have?


Noël is almost upon us


What is he cheering at?

Stay tuned for further teasing and screenshots...

More happened behind the scenes and this week because our weapons team also created some amazing new content:

Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr
In 1918 the greatest disadvantage the germans faced was the sheer number of allied tanks. The allies had collectively produced around several thousand tanks come 1918, with Germany producing a mere 20 or so ( capturing a few also) While the role of the tank was still in its infancy - it was still an extremely valuable piece of equipment on the battlefield. The Germans had a number of tactics at hand to try tackle the onslaught of Allied armour, but it was realised (perhaps too late) that a weapon designed specifically to take out armour was needed. Mauser developed the enormous T-Gewehr in answer to this call. The rifle was in essence an enlarged version of the Gewehr 98, and used the 13mm TuF armour piercing round (Tank und Flieger) a round that would quite readily handle any light/medium armour from the period. The rifle proved effective, if not destroying the tank, just taking out an engine block or damaging the track was enough to render the vehicle useless … which then left easy pickings for German tank hunters.


Surprise!

The T-Gewehr in game will be used to help take out heavily entrenched positions, as the weapon will be able to penetrate wooden structures and metal snipers plates.

In addition, the animation branch made some progress as well such as the madsen light machine gun animations:


Lighter than it looks


Notice the unique lip system on the side of the magazine that is animated

Development status
We also want to inform you that the current status of the testing branch is almost reaching stability to bring it to everyone. Next to the efforts of the art team our coding department made great strides improving the game's performance across the board. We have increased the overall FPS in the last week by for instance reducing animation workload and cut down on physics dramatically. We are also in talks with unity to fix issues on a deeper level. We hope to bring you that update this week as well.

Vote for us as Indie of the year!
This week the final round of the indieDB game of the year awards are in progress. We need your help yet again to bring us to the top! If you log in at indiedb (possible with a steam account) then your vote counts even more!


The 2015 Indie of the year! It can be your game: Verdun

Screenshots of the Week

“Distant observation of an allied gas assault, western front 1918”


“Community gathering in truce, Douaumont map, 2015”


That will be all for this week. See you in the trenches!

Welcome back to another installment of Verdun’s weekly updates, we use these media updates to tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the games development. Today we have some new weapon images to present supplied by our talented team of artists, want to ask you to help vote to make verdun greater and invite you to join the the “public testing branch”.


Madsen Model 1902 Light Machine Gun
Developed by the Danish army in the early 1900s, adapted by Vilhelm Herman Oluf Madsen - whom gave his name to the weapon, the Madsen was an extremely successful early LMG. Expensive to produce,but known worldwide for it’s reliability, the weapon was purchased by several dozen nations prior to WW1. The German army entered ww1 with the madsen alongside the heavier MG08 ( the 15 variant was introduced a later in the war) the machinegun was very portable and proved extremely useful. The weapon was designed with central iron sights, unlike most lmg’s/mg’s from the time which have sights offset to the side, this is quite an uncommon feature.The Madsen would see use by multiple nations after the war, and saw action well into the second world war.


The Danish contribution to WWI

The Madsen will be used by German specialist squads, the lmg has a smaller magazine capacity than the other german lmgs (100 rounds drum) however the madsen will be the only German lmg capable of hip firing.

Further news from the weapon animation department; the implementation of the hotchkiss m1909 magazine mechanic. Animated to reflect the dynamic state of the stripper clip. Here seen in a demonstration on vosges. The new weapons will be deployed somewhere early next year.




Vote for us as Indie of the year!

The 2015 Indie of the year! It can be your game: Verdun

The past year saw a titanic effort by our tiny,but dedicated team to bring the game from the dated unity4 engine to unity5 with cutting edge PBR rendering. Improving the gameplay features and overall stability and relentlessly working on a rapidly evolving platform. Polishing the game, increasing the detail and immersion of the trenches and expanding the game's’ content beyond our wildest expectations. Our community can share credit in its creation through its dedication to support us. Vote for us here .

MMOgames.com also has a competition for best 2015 online game, vote for us here




Public Testing Branch
Today we open up our testing branch for everybody to join. In the last few weeks we already opened up the closed testing process to more and more awesome community members. Now, we want to give everybody the opportunity to join in and give feedback.

The version that is on the “Open testing” branch is very work in progress and will likely see new (small) updates come in on a daily basis; fixing bugs and improving the experience. This version runs on the same servers as the main branch; they are fully compatible; so you can still play together.

In some cases the new version will have a positive performance impact. The new and open testing should help us handle more accurate feedback as well as allow players access to updates sooner.

To report feedback, we have created a special board in the steam forum here .


Switching branches is fun, and easy




Screenshot of the Week
“Trench Fighting, Douaumont sector, 1916”



That will be all for this week. See you in the trenches!

Welcome back to another installment of Verdun’s weekly updates, we use these media updates to tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the games development. Today we have some new weapon images to present supplied by our talented team of artists, want to ask you to help vote to make verdun greater and invite you to join the the “public testing branch”.


Madsen Model 1902 Light Machine Gun
Developed by the Danish army in the early 1900s, adapted by Vilhelm Herman Oluf Madsen - whom gave his name to the weapon, the Madsen was an extremely successful early LMG. Expensive to produce,but known worldwide for it’s reliability, the weapon was purchased by several dozen nations prior to WW1. The German army entered ww1 with the madsen alongside the heavier MG08 ( the 15 variant was introduced a later in the war) the machinegun was very portable and proved extremely useful. The weapon was designed with central iron sights, unlike most lmg’s/mg’s from the time which have sights offset to the side, this is quite an uncommon feature.The Madsen would see use by multiple nations after the war, and saw action well into the second world war.


The Danish contribution to WWI

The Madsen will be used by German specialist squads, the lmg has a smaller magazine capacity than the other german lmgs (100 rounds drum) however the madsen will be the only German lmg capable of hip firing.

Further news from the weapon animation department; the implementation of the hotchkiss m1909 magazine mechanic. Animated to reflect the dynamic state of the stripper clip. Here seen in a demonstration on vosges. The new weapons will be deployed somewhere early next year.




Vote for us as Indie of the year!

The 2015 Indie of the year! It can be your game: Verdun

The past year saw a titanic effort by our tiny,but dedicated team to bring the game from the dated unity4 engine to unity5 with cutting edge PBR rendering. Improving the gameplay features and overall stability and relentlessly working on a rapidly evolving platform. Polishing the game, increasing the detail and immersion of the trenches and expanding the game's’ content beyond our wildest expectations. Our community can share credit in its creation through its dedication to support us. Vote for us here .

MMOgames.com also has a competition for best 2015 online game, vote for us here




Public Testing Branch
Today we open up our testing branch for everybody to join. In the last few weeks we already opened up the closed testing process to more and more awesome community members. Now, we want to give everybody the opportunity to join in and give feedback.

The version that is on the “Open testing” branch is very work in progress and will likely see new (small) updates come in on a daily basis; fixing bugs and improving the experience. This version runs on the same servers as the main branch; they are fully compatible; so you can still play together.

In some cases the new version will have a positive performance impact. The new and open testing should help us handle more accurate feedback as well as allow players access to updates sooner.

To report feedback, we have created a special board in the steam forum here .


Switching branches is fun, and easy




Screenshot of the Week
“Trench Fighting, Douaumont sector, 1916”



That will be all for this week. See you in the trenches!

Welcome back to another installment 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 games development. This will be a short update on the weapon front and an announcement on the upcoming open beta that verdun players can participate in! This beta is mainly focused on rolling out as much performance fixes out as possible before shipping them to the main game.

Open Beta soon
To open our development up to the community even more and gather more feedback, we will be setting up an open beta platform for Verdun players that everybody can participate in. As we are uploading update after update to fix all sorts of performance issues targeted for a whole range of hardware configurations we we’d especially like to invite those people who do face issues to join!
So far we have had internal beta tests, but from now on we will keep an open beta test to run alongside the closed beta. Playing in the beta allows you to play on the regular servers as well, so there will not be any loss of gameplay. Not only that but you will be able to get an early experience of for instance the gore system as we prepare it for live launch (will be on the branch later).

At this moment we are still running some last-minute stability checks, but keep an eye on this hub and an official announcement for the live launch.


Bergmann MG15/n.A
The Mg15 was initially designed by Theodor Bergmann ( the mind behind the MP18) and Louis Schmeisser in 1910. The MG15na was introduced in 1915, with several modifications on the original (na representing ‘new model’) it was an important weapon in the German arsenal. In being lighter than the MG08/15, and offering a similar rate of fire, the weapon also filled the gap between the category of rifle and hmg. The MG itself saw use in most theaters of the war, with a many being issued to the German ‘Asia Korps’. It saw a large order placed by the German army after the battles of 1916, as the German army needed something light that could combat the Lewis gun - the closest being German captured Madsen guns.

In game the MG15na will boast a very similar rate of fire and general usage to that of the MG08/18 variants. The MG15na offers alternate iron sights, which offer a little more vision than the MG08/15. The MG15na will be used by specialist german squads.




Gew. 98 Trench Mag
The Gewehr 98 was the most common and most used German rifle throughout the war. A variety of accessories were produced for the rifle, these attachments ranged from alternating bayonets to rifle grenade cups and magazines. The magazine that was produced - the ‘trench magazine’ allowed the user access to far more rounds that the standard 5 rounds that the Gew98 had. With 20 rounds now readily available, it was twice that of the Lee Enfield, 4 times that of most nations firearms from the time. Favourable by the German troops, it did offer some drawbacks, the magazine itself was quite large and cumbersome which made for difficulty when fire the rifle while prone. The magazine itself was not detachable, so loading the rifle involved loading 4 separate 5 round stripper clips, which could be time consuming - that being said, the sheer quantity of rounds available for an attack or defence was a notable advantage.



The magazine in game will be a sentry unit specific piece of equipment, in the the right hands will be a formidable weapon for a trench attacker. The main drawback of this adaptation will be the lengthy reload, which could catch even the most seasoned veteran off guard.

Screenshot of the Week
“Gas attack at Douaumont, 1916”



That will be all for this week. Open Beta announcement will follow soon!

Welcome back to another installment 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 games development. This will be a short update on the weapon front and an announcement on the upcoming open beta that verdun players can participate in! This beta is mainly focused on rolling out as much performance fixes out as possible before shipping them to the main game.

Open Beta soon
To open our development up to the community even more and gather more feedback, we will be setting up an open beta platform for Verdun players that everybody can participate in. As we are uploading update after update to fix all sorts of performance issues targeted for a whole range of hardware configurations we we’d especially like to invite those people who do face issues to join!
So far we have had internal beta tests, but from now on we will keep an open beta test to run alongside the closed beta. Playing in the beta allows you to play on the regular servers as well, so there will not be any loss of gameplay. Not only that but you will be able to get an early experience of for instance the gore system as we prepare it for live launch (will be on the branch later).

At this moment we are still running some last-minute stability checks, but keep an eye on this hub and an official announcement for the live launch.


Bergmann MG15/n.A
The Mg15 was initially designed by Theodor Bergmann ( the mind behind the MP18) and Louis Schmeisser in 1910. The MG15na was introduced in 1915, with several modifications on the original (na representing ‘new model’) it was an important weapon in the German arsenal. In being lighter than the MG08/15, and offering a similar rate of fire, the weapon also filled the gap between the category of rifle and hmg. The MG itself saw use in most theaters of the war, with a many being issued to the German ‘Asia Korps’. It saw a large order placed by the German army after the battles of 1916, as the German army needed something light that could combat the Lewis gun - the closest being German captured Madsen guns.

In game the MG15na will boast a very similar rate of fire and general usage to that of the MG08/18 variants. The MG15na offers alternate iron sights, which offer a little more vision than the MG08/15. The MG15na will be used by specialist german squads.




Gew. 98 Trench Mag
The Gewehr 98 was the most common and most used German rifle throughout the war. A variety of accessories were produced for the rifle, these attachments ranged from alternating bayonets to rifle grenade cups and magazines. The magazine that was produced - the ‘trench magazine’ allowed the user access to far more rounds that the standard 5 rounds that the Gew98 had. With 20 rounds now readily available, it was twice that of the Lee Enfield, 4 times that of most nations firearms from the time. Favourable by the German troops, it did offer some drawbacks, the magazine itself was quite large and cumbersome which made for difficulty when fire the rifle while prone. The magazine itself was not detachable, so loading the rifle involved loading 4 separate 5 round stripper clips, which could be time consuming - that being said, the sheer quantity of rounds available for an attack or defence was a notable advantage.



The magazine in game will be a sentry unit specific piece of equipment, in the the right hands will be a formidable weapon for a trench attacker. The main drawback of this adaptation will be the lengthy reload, which could catch even the most seasoned veteran off guard.

Screenshot of the Week
“Gas attack at Douaumont, 1916”



That will be all for this week. Open Beta announcement will follow soon!

Welcome back to another installment 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 games development. This week we keep it short as we are all hands on deck for the upcoming performances patches and the rendering pipeline overhaul.

Gewehr 88/05
The German army adopted the Gewehr 1888 to replace it’s out-dated Mauser 1871 rifle. This was common among many of the European powers, as the transition from smoked to smokeless powder was taking place ( The adoption of the Lebel 1886 kick started this trend) Used in many of the early colonial conflicts prior to the Great War, the Gewehr 88 was recommissioned by the German army in 1905 (and 1914) with a new model that used stripper clips instead of a 5 round enbloc. The Gewehr 88 has a near identical barrel to the Lebel 1886, however looks notably different due to the addition of a barrel sleeve (design to increased accuracy, but often led to problems with rust) It is one of a very few rifle designs used by the German army not to be designed by Mauser, infact the Mauser factory didn’t produce any throughout it’s production run.



Karabiner 88/05
Developed alongside the Gewehr 88, the Kar 88 was designed for use with cavalry units. With a shorter barrel, lighter weight and reshaped bolt handle, it fulfilled its role well - it did however retain the barrel sleeve. With several carbine variants being produced later on (for use with artillery units etc) it often saw its way to the frontlines of the Great War, appearing often with sentry and reserve units. With the Gewehr 88, it would see use well into the 20th Century.



The Gewehr 88/05 and Kar 88 rifles will be used by German sentry squads as well as Jaeger units. Offering similar accuracy and rate of fire to the Gew98, the rifle's main advantage will be the sights - which should allow for much easier targeting.

FN Browning M1900
The FN1900 was design by John Browning in 1896, presented for production in 1898, it was the first production handgun to use a slide and was one of the most important weapon designs of the late late 19th century. With mass-production starting in 1900, it quickly became a popular pistol for both military use and civilian use. With a relatively short production span of 11 years, some 700,000 were produced. Belgium used the FN1900 primarily - alongside the Ruby and other pistols including the Nagant revolver.



The FN1900 will boast reasonable accuracy, a fair reload speed and will be common among Belgian forces.

Development status
Development continues this week on the animations, nearly all have been completed now! Here’s another example of their work:

Work in Progress M1909 hotchkiss sprint animation

Game Update Status
As said it is all hands on deck with performance improvements. Several elements have been improved included the loading of characters. We are also trialing a new technique in the render pipeline which so far has yielded excellent results. To test this further I’d like to invite everybody (especially the more active community members) to join the beta testing team! As we update the beta to test performance as well as the graphics, you will be able to get early access experience with the gore system in the days to come. here

Screenshot of the Week
“Wet warfare on Ypres salient!, 1917”



And another one, because we can: “Assault in the Douaumont sector”




That will be all for this week. See you on the battlefield!

Welcome back to another installment 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 games development. This week we keep it short as we are all hands on deck for the upcoming performances patches and the rendering pipeline overhaul.

Gewehr 88/05
The German army adopted the Gewehr 1888 to replace it’s out-dated Mauser 1871 rifle. This was common among many of the European powers, as the transition from smoked to smokeless powder was taking place ( The adoption of the Lebel 1886 kick started this trend) Used in many of the early colonial conflicts prior to the Great War, the Gewehr 88 was recommissioned by the German army in 1905 (and 1914) with a new model that used stripper clips instead of a 5 round enbloc. The Gewehr 88 has a near identical barrel to the Lebel 1886, however looks notably different due to the addition of a barrel sleeve (design to increased accuracy, but often led to problems with rust) It is one of a very few rifle designs used by the German army not to be designed by Mauser, infact the Mauser factory didn’t produce any throughout it’s production run.



Karabiner 88/05
Developed alongside the Gewehr 88, the Kar 88 was designed for use with cavalry units. With a shorter barrel, lighter weight and reshaped bolt handle, it fulfilled its role well - it did however retain the barrel sleeve. With several carbine variants being produced later on (for use with artillery units etc) it often saw its way to the frontlines of the Great War, appearing often with sentry and reserve units. With the Gewehr 88, it would see use well into the 20th Century.



The Gewehr 88/05 and Kar 88 rifles will be used by German sentry squads as well as Jaeger units. Offering similar accuracy and rate of fire to the Gew98, the rifle's main advantage will be the sights - which should allow for much easier targeting.

FN Browning M1900
The FN1900 was design by John Browning in 1896, presented for production in 1898, it was the first production handgun to use a slide and was one of the most important weapon designs of the late late 19th century. With mass-production starting in 1900, it quickly became a popular pistol for both military use and civilian use. With a relatively short production span of 11 years, some 700,000 were produced. Belgium used the FN1900 primarily - alongside the Ruby and other pistols including the Nagant revolver.



The FN1900 will boast reasonable accuracy, a fair reload speed and will be common among Belgian forces.

Development status
Development continues this week on the animations, nearly all have been completed now! Here’s another example of their work:

Work in Progress M1909 hotchkiss sprint animation

Game Update Status
As said it is all hands on deck with performance improvements. Several elements have been improved included the loading of characters. We are also trialing a new technique in the render pipeline which so far has yielded excellent results. To test this further I’d like to invite everybody (especially the more active community members) to join the beta testing team! As we update the beta to test performance as well as the graphics, you will be able to get early access experience with the gore system in the days to come. here

Screenshot of the Week
“Wet warfare on Ypres salient!, 1917”



And another one, because we can: “Assault in the Douaumont sector”




That will be all for this week. See you on the battlefield!