Verdun is celebrating its three year anniversary today! The game has seen new squads, new maps, new game modes and much more over the years. We’d like to give a big thank you to everyone who has played and supported our little (or not so little anymore!) World War One FPS. People were skeptical about an indie company making a multiplayer shooter... we’re glad we went for it anyway! Whether you’ve been with us from the early days or picked up the game recently, thank you!

Pictures are worth a thousand words, so here’s one old screenshot Verdun as it used to be, with more below...


Quite a difference, no?

This three year anniversary only counts the years since we launched on Early Access in 2015, following a Greenlight campaign (remember Greenlight?), when Verdun actually has an even longer history. Take a look at this GIF from 2013, when Verdun was a fun side project for a few college students. Back then it was a WW1 deathmatch shooter which you could play in your browser!


This is why you should always aim ;)

We also gave a sizable interview back then which included quite a comparison between the alpha and the release version.

You can see we’ve been busy over the last few years, but what’s coming next? The recent Verdun Survey was setup with exactly that thought in mind.

We had an amazing 760 responses to our Verdun Survey, so a big thank you to everyone who took the time to fill it out! There’s a lot of data to work with and we want to make sure to make wise decisions. That said, we can already see some interesting details jump out at us.

• 78% of respondents enjoyed Verdun a lot, and 46% said they enjoyed the game more compared to when they first bought it. This is a nice morale booster for us on the dev team!
  
  
• Most of you thought there was a good variety in maps and squads… but many of you also said that you would still like more maps and squads.
  
  
• The Frontlines game mode was the most popular by far, with 650+ agreeing that they played it often.
  
  
• More than 350 of you were concerned about the number of players in the game, and lots of you were interested in the possibility of some ‘artificial’ opposition for Frontlines..
  
  
• The technical issues people were most concerned with were performance and player numbers. We’re continuing to work on these issues of course, but without reports on our bug support website describing bugs in more detail it can be hard for us to identify bugs by ourselves.

Do you recognize this map?

• 500+ liked educational content in our social posts, and little more than 50% were most interested in development & update news. This is great because we have lots more of both things to share!
  
  
• A huge 66% of you are interested in the community run historical battles, but haven’t had a chance to try one yet. 14% have played and enjoyed one, so congratulations to the Verdun X64 group, you’re doing great stuff!
  
  
• 48% of you feel that Verdun players are being properly considered in decisions about the WW1 Game Series, and 43% only said somewhat, so we can improve here - hopefully the survey was a good start.
  
  
• Majorities of 600+ said that it was good for the games to be part of a series and for different games to be able to have different mechanics to reflect how the war was fought across different fronts. This is useful information for us ;)

There have been a lot of questions about what’s in the future for Verdun, and the results from the survey have given us the information we need to draw up an outline for a new roadmap going forward.

Here are our immediate action points based on the analysis we’ve done so far:

• Continue to focus on bug fixes and improving performance. Making reports and voting on our bug support website is hugely helpful here - it’s hard to prioritize if we don’t know how widespread a bug is or what the exact issue is.
  
• New sounds. As well as making the overall soundscape better, we know there are certain specific sound effects that you would like to see replaced.
  
• UI improvements. Although we’ve had to delay the release of the new UI, we know that making sure it is polished is better than rushing it out.
  
• Looking into implementing bots for Frontlines. Although there’s some controversy over how exactly bots should be implemented into multiplayer matches, there’s a clear consensus that would like to see at least some bots added to Frontlines when populations are low. This would of course also allow private matches fully filled with bots.

What we’ve described above isn’t the definitive list of planned content, but we believe that these are the key points for now. We’ve been amazed and humbled by the number of people who have played and enjoyed Verdun since all the way back in 2015 - and we hope to meet you all on the fields of Verdun in another 3 years.

It’s time for the Verdun E4I World Championship Finals!
The action will be going down this Saturday & Sunday, 14+15 April between 2PM EST - 7PM EST.


The broadcast will be on the OPNoobs Twitch Stream at https://www.twitch.tv/opnoobsonline, and will include a giveaway raffle in the chat.

Go to http://www.verdun.live to register.

Contestants will play throughout Saturday and Sunday, progressing through double elimination brackets - teams are eliminated only after they lose two matches.

Prizes for the first three places:
1st Place: Outlast 2, Mafia III + Mafia III: Sign of the Times, Subterrain
2nd Place: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Laser League, Lara Croft GO
3rd Place: AER Memories Old, Overgrowth

The teams who qualified in the last six months are:

• GARBAGE KID DELETORS
  
• TRENCH ACROBATS
  
• ACROBATICLOWNS
  
• PRIME PERFORMANCE
  
• PEST CONTROL
  
• SCHWERER MIENENWERFER
  
• PIRATES
  
• AVERAGE JOES
  
• TOXIC CONTROL

We’ve had more than 500 responses to our Verdun survey (you can still fill it in if you haven’t already!) and it’s been very informative. Some answers are what we expected while others surprised us. We’re hoping to do a more detailed write up of the findings and our plans in the future, but for now there was one particular question we wanted to go into a little more detail on.

This was the question about whether you felt Verdun should be more realism focused or more arcade focused, on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being maximum simulation and 5 being maximum arcade. Unsurprisingly the majority opted for realism, with 74% of you going for 1-2, and another 20% for 3.


Trenches by night, taken by player Anubis6A.

While it’s good to confirm our expectations, we’re now looking for more details about what you mean when you say you want the game to be realistic, especially those of you who picked 2 or 3, which suggests that you don’t want the game to be accurate in every respect.

With that in mind, we have a super-short bonus survey! If you could rate how important you think realism is in a few different areas it would really help us make the right choices. Fill out the survey. Last question, we promise. Except for… more on this later!

We recently released updates with a number of fixes, tweaks, and other improvements. Of particular note:

• The ‘clay soldiers’ are gone.
  
• The stats of all bayonets now match.
  
• In Tannenberg players can now choose which type of artillery they call in from phones - smoke, explosive and gas are available.

Full Verdun Changelog here.
Full Tannenberg Changelog here.

There are more historical events coming up!

First up is the Battle of Champagne 1915. It’s a public historical battle event - once again, that means using particular loadouts and obeying your commanders! You can read the event rules on the Verdun x64 group page, and sign up for the event.


A screenshot from the last historical battle.

The next event is the Battle of Hartmannswillerkopf, september 1915 on Vosges - a realistic battle on Sunday April 29. That one will be a closed match and invite only. If you want to take part, the following post has contact details for one of the community organizers running the events. You can contact them on Steam or Discord to ask about being added to the invite list.

See you for the next Frontline News! Until then, stay up to date by following us on Twitter or Facebook.

At the WWI game series HQ we have been quite busy with wrapping up Tannenberg for its launch whenever the new UI system is finished (It will be better, we promise).

Of course, we’ve not been sitting still on other fronts! While watching the latest games industry trends we’ve spotted a relatively unexplored niche in the market. There are a few games appearing in the survival genre, but we have a most unique twist: Just like the movie Highlander “there can only be one victor”. I’m sure you’ve never heard of such a game idea before, but we are sure it’s going to be popular. We even came up with a name for it:


We all know the bitter Northern Front is the ideal place for such a scenario.

Our concept would include a starting sequence in which players are parachuted out of a monoplane onto the vast Northern Front theater, where they will have to fight wolves, rats and other players for survival. All this will be set in a post-apocalyptic alt-right universe.


After our last cooperation with EADICE(™) in 2016 on the crossover, vehicles are no problem for us! Well… if you have the correct DLC that is.

Beside the innovative gameplay, we would also include community-requested features - one example being the ability to shoot,reload, or pretty much do anything while jumping as high as possible for maximum 1337-skill levels. All inspired by early 20th century Thunderbirds-style jetpack tech.


FAB looking Thunderbird l33t player, moments before recking your last loot crate!

Last but not least we have taken a look at the most successful features of similar games and came to the conclusion that additional bragging and gambling features are the way to forward, if we want that 4th house in Cabo for our shareholders to ensure a sense of pride and accomplishment for players as they collect different mustaches.


WIP of our booty crate system.

That pretty much wraps it up for this April first. An exciting step forwards for the franchise, if not the entire industry. Have a great Easter!

At the WWI game series HQ we have been quite busy with wrapping up Tannenberg for its launch whenever the new UI system is finished (It will be better, we promise).

Of course, we’ve not been sitting still on other fronts! While watching the latest games industry trends we’ve spotted a relatively unexplored niche in the market. There are a few games appearing in the survival genre, but we have a most unique twist: Just like the movie Highlander “there can only be one victor”. I’m sure you’ve never heard of such a game idea before, but we are sure it’s going to be popular. We even came up with a name for it:


We all know the bitter Northern Front is the ideal place for such a scenario.

Our concept would include a starting sequence in which players are parachuted out of a monoplane onto the vast Northern Front theater, where they will have to fight wolves, rats and other players for survival. All this will be set in a post-apocalyptic alt-right universe.


After our last cooperation with EADICE(™) in 2016 on the crossover, vehicles are no problem for us! Well… if you have the correct DLC that is.

Beside the innovative gameplay, we would also include community-requested features - one example being the ability to shoot,reload, or pretty much do anything while jumping as high as possible for maximum 1337-skill levels. All inspired by early 20th century Thunderbirds-style jetpack tech.


FAB looking Thunderbird l33t player, moments before recking your last loot crate!

Last but not least we have taken a look at the most successful features of similar games and came to the conclusion that additional bragging and gambling features are the way to forward, if we want that 4th house in Cabo for our shareholders to ensure a sense of pride and accomplishment for players as they collect different mustaches.


WIP of our booty crate system.

That pretty much wraps it up for this April first. An exciting step forwards for the franchise, if not the entire industry. Have a great Easter!

Welcome back to another Frontline News! There’s a historical battle planned this weekend by the community, and a survey for Verdun veterans and newbies alike! If you want to have your say about Verdun’s future direction (and the direction of the WW1 Game Series as a whole) then the survey is open right now.



There was a great response to our Tannenberg Survey, and more than a few people asking for an equivalent Verdun Survey… so we put one together!
You can fill out the Verdun Survey right now. We’re looking forward to getting more awesome feedback :)

Another community organized historical battle is on the way! You can sign up now for the upcoming historical battle, to be held next Sunday, April 8. Read about the details and sign up in this thread.

If you’re not familiar with these historical battles, the basic concept is that players sign up and agree to follow rules about using certain roles and weapons, and most importantly following orders from superiors. This allows more organized and focused ‘set-piece’ battles - one of our devs joined the last Verdun battle and made some GIFs of the experience. Here's one:



The x64 group don't only run historical battles - they also organize casual events and more. This post explains it all. Take a look if you're interested in joining an organized battle :)



It's not strictly Verdun news, but this latest gun teaser for Tannenberg was too cool not to share! The Roth-Steyr M1907 was the first semi-automatic pistol adopted by a branch of a major land army. It stands out with the long bolt and integral 10 round magazine loaded from the top with stripper clips.



Thanks to our player echo1 once more for their amazing combat photography (the first image in this post), and we'll see you again for the next Frontline News!

Welcome back to another Frontline News! There’s a historical battle planned this weekend by the community, and a survey for Verdun veterans and newbies alike! If you want to have your say about Verdun’s future direction (and the direction of the WW1 Game Series as a whole) then the survey is open right now.



There was a great response to our Tannenberg Survey, and more than a few people asking for an equivalent Verdun Survey… so we put one together!
You can fill out the Verdun Survey right now. We’re looking forward to getting more awesome feedback :)

Another community organized historical battle is on the way! You can sign up now for the upcoming historical battle, to be held next Sunday, April 8. Read about the details and sign up in this thread.

If you’re not familiar with these historical battles, the basic concept is that players sign up and agree to follow rules about using certain roles and weapons, and most importantly following orders from superiors. This allows more organized and focused ‘set-piece’ battles - one of our devs joined the last Verdun battle and made some GIFs of the experience. Here's one:



The x64 group don't only run historical battles - they also organize casual events and more. This post explains it all. Take a look if you're interested in joining an organized battle :)



It's not strictly Verdun news, but this latest gun teaser for Tannenberg was too cool not to share! The Roth-Steyr M1907 was the first semi-automatic pistol adopted by a branch of a major land army. It stands out with the long bolt and integral 10 round magazine loaded from the top with stripper clips.



Thanks to our player echo1 once more for their amazing combat photography (the first image in this post), and we'll see you again for the next Frontline News!

A move to a new version of Unity should bring performance improvements, and if you’d like to take part in a historically focused Battle of the Somme within Verdun, you’ll be able to this weekend!

First, a quick reminder that if you run into any bugs, please submit them here: https://verdun.userecho.com/
It helps us keep everything organized and lets us focus on the most serious bugs which are affecting the most people!

Unity Update
We recently released new updates for Verdun and Tannenberg - now that they share the same code base it allows us to do these kinds of simultaneous updates much more easily. Both games will benefit from our move to the latest version of Unity - in our tests we’ve seen low-end machines getting around a 10% performance boost, and some high-end machines get up to a 25% improvement.

Sprinting
You will also be able to stop to aim or crouch while sprinting, then return to sprinting without needing to repress the sprint key - we’re hoping this and similar changes in the future can make movement feel more natural and fluid. Let us know your thoughts if you’ve noticed this change!



Bots and more!
Bot aiming behaviour has been tweaked so they should be less ‘jittery’, and they won’t be aiming down the sights unless they can see an enemy. We’ve also fixed a couple of weapon animations and an issue with invisible flamethrower flames that some people were reporting, and we switched to Fullscreen Windowed rather than Fullscreen Exclusive, which fixes a freeze issue, improves alt-tabbing, and solves a Unity screen focus problem.
You can read the full changelog here.

A group of our players is setting up another pair of 64 player historical battle events, this time for the Battle of the Somme! You can read about the rules for the match here, and join the group if you’re interested! In short, players commit to using particular classes and weapons, and then following the orders of a commander and their NCOs. This allows actions like coordinated bayonet charges and a general sense of being part of a more organized battle.



Here’s a photo of the French team from a previous historical battle, and another one from the German perspective during the battle. A European match is scheduled for Friday 16, and a US match on Saturday 17.



The Overpowered Noobs E4I Verdun World Cup has its penultimate qualifier coming up tomorrow! For an overview of the teams competing, check out this preview piece by caster Soren Patton. The action will be broadcast live on Twitch - best of luck to all the participants!

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter for news and interesting history snippets until our next Frontline News post, or talk with us on Discord!

A move to a new version of Unity should bring performance improvements, and if you’d like to take part in a historically focused Battle of the Somme within Verdun, you’ll be able to this weekend!

First, a quick reminder that if you run into any bugs, please submit them here: https://verdun.userecho.com/
It helps us keep everything organized and lets us focus on the most serious bugs which are affecting the most people!

Unity Update
We recently released new updates for Verdun and Tannenberg - now that they share the same code base it allows us to do these kinds of simultaneous updates much more easily. Both games will benefit from our move to the latest version of Unity - in our tests we’ve seen low-end machines getting around a 10% performance boost, and some high-end machines get up to a 25% improvement.

Sprinting
You will also be able to stop to aim or crouch while sprinting, then return to sprinting without needing to repress the sprint key - we’re hoping this and similar changes in the future can make movement feel more natural and fluid. Let us know your thoughts if you’ve noticed this change!



Bots and more!
Bot aiming behaviour has been tweaked so they should be less ‘jittery’, and they won’t be aiming down the sights unless they can see an enemy. We’ve also fixed a couple of weapon animations and an issue with invisible flamethrower flames that some people were reporting, and we switched to Fullscreen Windowed rather than Fullscreen Exclusive, which fixes a freeze issue, improves alt-tabbing, and solves a Unity screen focus problem.
You can read the full changelog here.

A group of our players is setting up another pair of 64 player historical battle events, this time for the Battle of the Somme! You can read about the rules for the match here, and join the group if you’re interested! In short, players commit to using particular classes and weapons, and then following the orders of a commander and their NCOs. This allows actions like coordinated bayonet charges and a general sense of being part of a more organized battle.



Here’s a photo of the French team from a previous historical battle, and another one from the German perspective during the battle. A European match is scheduled for Friday 16, and a US match on Saturday 17.



The Overpowered Noobs E4I Verdun World Cup has its penultimate qualifier coming up tomorrow! For an overview of the teams competing, check out this preview piece by caster Soren Patton. The action will be broadcast live on Twitch - best of luck to all the participants!

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter for news and interesting history snippets until our next Frontline News post, or talk with us on Discord!

We’ve been working hard on performance since the last Frontline News, though of course not everyone on our team is a programmer, so we have some new sounds to show off alongside our other news…


^screenshot by player [INEGRONI]MASTERMASCO^

If you didn’t know, Verdun and Tannenberg are made in Unity. This means that when Unity releases updates, both good and bad things can happen with our code - luckily, this time it’s all good!

In short, the latest Unity update fixes some issues and makes some improvements which should have a big impact on performance. Combined with work we’ve been doing on how ragdolls are handled, we’re looking at perhaps a 20-25% improvement in performance - this will depend on the exact combination of hardware you’re using, of course.

There is still more work to be done to get everything ship-shape, but we’re hoping to be able to roll out this update soon!

On the topic of teasers, check out these five new weapon sounds, all recorded from real guns!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNODFxU7YHw&feature=youtu.be
These new sounds will also come along with a new sound system, which among other things should make it easier to get a sense of where sounds are coming from in the environment around you.



This Friday at 4:00 PM CET we are going to be trying out a new feature on Steam - live streaming from our Steam Store page! If you’re interested in watching us play and chat about Verdun, just visit the Verdun Store Page. Both through a web browser or inside the Steam app itself will work fine.
We hope to see you there!

Keep an eye on our Steam news (follow us if you like) or watch for our announcements on Facebook or Twitter to hear about our next Frontline News post.

We’ve been working hard on performance since the last Frontline News, though of course not everyone on our team is a programmer, so we have some new sounds to show off alongside our other news…


^screenshot by player [INEGRONI]MASTERMASCO^

If you didn’t know, Verdun and Tannenberg are made in Unity. This means that when Unity releases updates, both good and bad things can happen with our code - luckily, this time it’s all good!

In short, the latest Unity update fixes some issues and makes some improvements which should have a big impact on performance. Combined with work we’ve been doing on how ragdolls are handled, we’re looking at perhaps a 20-25% improvement in performance - this will depend on the exact combination of hardware you’re using, of course.

There is still more work to be done to get everything ship-shape, but we’re hoping to be able to roll out this update soon!

On the topic of teasers, check out these five new weapon sounds, all recorded from real guns!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNODFxU7YHw&feature=youtu.be
These new sounds will also come along with a new sound system, which among other things should make it easier to get a sense of where sounds are coming from in the environment around you.



This Friday at 4:00 PM CET we are going to be trying out a new feature on Steam - live streaming from our Steam Store page! If you’re interested in watching us play and chat about Verdun, just visit the Verdun Store Page. Both through a web browser or inside the Steam app itself will work fine.
We hope to see you there!

Keep an eye on our Steam news (follow us if you like) or watch for our announcements on Facebook or Twitter to hear about our next Frontline News post.