Sep 6, 2023

SYNCED - AKKKK

One of the first things you'll do in SYNCED is pick a Runner, a special breed of survivor capable of taming and controlling vicious wild nanos. Each Runner has journeyed to the Meridian for different reasons; some have come to seek the truth behind the Collapse, while others are motivated only by vengence. Some just see the promise of valuable Nerva too good to pass up!

Here's what you need to know about each Runner. Which one will become your favorite?

Deadcut: A card shark and a hustler, Deadcut made his living at card tables across the United States. The Collapse gave him an opportunity for a fresh start, sweeping away his debts and landing him on his feet. With his trusty companion Nano, Ace, Deadcut set out for the Meridian to find his fortune and himself.

Unique Skill: A Fire Grenade that explodes and burns enemies in its radius.

Glory: The days that followed the Collapse brought unspeakable hardship and grief, but they also stirred in Glory Zhao a noble vision. With her mother’s blessing she set out from her small home in rural China to find the source of this ceaseless suffering, to end it once and for all.

Unique Skill: A Smoke Bomb that can blind and even poison enemy Nanos and Runners.

Dr. Stone: Once a rural doctor in an underfunded district in the North of England, Dr. Montgomery Stone didn’t come to the Meridian for power, wealth, or for revenge. He’s looking for a cure. If he can find it, he can save the future, even if he couldn’t save the past.

Unique Skill: His Healers Aura can heal those around him and remove all afflictions.

Ragna: In her dreams, Carolina Ragna is back in Colombia hearing her daughter’s screams as those Shinar goons ripped her away. Ragna might have succumbed to the Nano sickness that plagues her if it were not her last irrepressible piece of humanity – a burning need for vengeance.

Unique Skill: Radiant Eye allows teammates to see enemy positions through walls.

Park: Back home in South Korea, Hajun Park was as famous for his business empire as he was for his big-game hunting. Despite losing everything in the Collapse, Park refused to flee to the Ark-1. Instead, he headed across the Pacific to Snake River Valley, intent on rebuilding his empire brick by brick.

Unique Skill: A Bouncing Ball projectile that chains attacks between nearby enemies.

Layla: A free spirit who was always the life of the party, Layla lived for excitement and a little bit of danger. When her wealthy family fled to the Ark-1 during the Collapse, Layla couldn't bare the thought of a life of captivity aboard the shuttle. She found a new adventure and all the danger she could handle in the Meridian.

Unqiue Skill: A Cloak capable of concealing her position for a short time.

Now that you've been introduced to our Runners, which one will you be taking into the Meridian? Expect some new faces as we progress through our seasonal updates and SYNCED continues to grow and evolve.

SYNCED launches for PC on September 8. Wishlist now!

Sep 6, 2023

Developer Briefing #195 - Heads, Heads, Heads

Hell Let Loose - Wombat Medic

Hey everyone,

We hope you enjoyed the last Developer Briefing! We wanted to round up some of the main topics from the AMA and our Dev Interview in one place, so if you haven’t caught up on Dev Brief #194 yet, we highly recommend taking a read here, plus, you’ll be able to check out progress on the British rework!

As promised, in this week’s dev brief we’ll be sharing more on the updates to the game’s favourite faces - which players who joined us for the Patch 14.3 PTE session will have been able to check out for themselves.

Patch 14.3

We are aiming for this next patch to release on the 14th of September, and are currently in the process of evaluating and scoping your feedback from the Patch 14.3 PTE session. Some reports of changes to the FOV on ultrawide, particularly when in tanks, are also being worked on, and the final changelog will be shared on release!

Character Head Improvements

All in-game heads have been upgraded in both their textures, and mesh, to fix technical issues as well as increase the realism and sharpness of the current head models. Some heads, such as the US default head, however, received more care and attention to increase the detail of the model and textures but also bring them up to a higher level of realism and standard than other in-game head models.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
During these upgrades, the eyes were a key focus point, with increased sharpness in the textures but also improved shadows in the eyes. This adds an extra level of detail and realism to all in-game head models. - Luke, Junior Character Artist

Soviet Forces Improved Character Heads

German Forces Improved Character Heads

US Forces Improved Character Heads

British Forces Improved Character Heads

Textures

All heads were given some slight adjustments to the overall textures, with sharpening, colour correction, and contrast passes, to help them blend better.

US Solider Texture Adjustments

False Eye Shadow

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
To add a level of realism and help the eyes appear to be sunken into the eye socket, I created false shadows at the top of the eyes for all the heads. This is a very basic change that is very effective. - Luke, Junior Character Artist

Eye Shadowing

Mesh

Acting as the foundation for the character models, the mesh has been updated for soldiers across all forces.

Head Seam Lines

Any visible seam lines have also been softened to avoid hard edges.

Head Seam Adjustments

Eye Mesh Adjustments

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
To start, I created some measuring tools in order to correctly measure the eyes to the correct scale for the eye and eyeball, and then worked on scaling the eyes. The shape of the eyelids on some heads also received some adjustments to either create better symmetry, or create a more anatomically correct shape and proportion. - Luke, Junior Character Artist

The eye direction on most character heads has also been adjusted so that it faces directly forward, a process that required manual tweaking for each head.

Eye Mesh Adjustments

Not So Hairy Heads

While looking at the existing hair in Hell Let Loose, we made the decision to look at increasing the visual fidelity.

While we’d love to look at offering a variety of hair style alternatives in the future, including the possibility of the quintessential moustache, particularly for the British forces, some of the older character models had slightly lower resolution textures, and a more flatly painted look to the hair.

In Patch 14.3, you’ll find the previous textures have now been changed to a close shaven texture:

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
To remove the hair and create the shaven head texture, I used the clone stamp and textures from the other in-game heads and pulled the Normal, Colour, Roughness and AO to create a shaven texture that matches the other in-game heads. - Luke, Junior Character Artist

Shaven Texture

Adjusting ‘Default Guy’ Albert

As many people had pointed out in this Reddit post, the US forces default character head, while offering some unique charm, was in fact in need of a bit of a TLC.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
I adjusted the mesh to be more anatomically correct. Changes were made to the head shape, as well as positions to the major landmarks of the face such as the ears, mouth and eyes. - Luke, Junior Character Artist

US Forces Albert - Mesh Adjustments

With new textures and mesh adjustments, Albert has now re-grown his eyebrow after a terse shave in the trenches left a bald patch - or at least, that’s what we can assume.

Brought inline with the other models by fixing the head shape, eye position, symmetry, shadowing and direction, as well as tweaks to the ear position, mouth, and more, Albert still retains his “What did I sign up for?” appeal, but in a more balanced manner.

Although we’ll be sure to miss those puppy dog eyes, his new look will help him welcome new and existing players to Hell.

British Medium Tank Poll Results

3,000 of you took the time to vote on the poll for which British medium tank we should introduce for North Africa as part of the British forces rework, with the Crusader Mk.III taking the win with 1.9k votes!

Stay tuned for a future dev brief where we’ll share more on progress.

Common Questions

For answers to questions on game meta, bugs, and more, please read Developer Briefing #194, check out the AMA on Reddit, or visit the Discord to read the full answers in the #ama-july-2023 channel, plus catch up on the Dev Interview!

Community News

Community Run Giveaway

The BEER Haus community are giving Hell Let Loose players the chance to win a Mini Keg gaming PC, built by Savage Industries, as a thank you for supporting and growing The BEER Haus Hell Let Loose server!

The Specs:

ASUS ROG Strix Z690-I Gaming WiFi 6e MOBO
Intel i9 13900K CPU
Zotac 3070 Ti
G-Skill Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB
WD_BLACK 2TB SN850X NVMe
EVGA SuperNOVA 850 GM, 80 PLUS Gold 850W
Hyte Revolt 3 Case
EK Nucleus AIO Dark All-in-One Liquid CPU Cooler

Huge thanks to Saucymuffin, TheFreshBakedGoods, RazBora, Terrydactyl, makL, molotovgrl, & squiddsTV for putting this together! We'll also be throwing in some Hell Let Loose DLC, so the lucky winner can boot up then suit up!

Open to US residents.

Giveaway Closes: 30th of September
Enter now: https://gleam.io/zhnct/beer-haus-mini-keg-giveaway

War Correspondent, Content Creator, and Community Videos

Make sure to post your videos in the #hll-videos channel in the Official Hell Let Loose Discord for a chance to be shown in future Developer Briefings!

20 Intermediate Tips For Hell Let Loose

Whether you've been playing for a while or are new to the battlefield, GoudaGamer shares some great tips on how you can improve your game sense in this video: https://youtu.be/9OLgWl43ASo?feature=shared

The Five Stages of Hell Let Loose

McBluffin Gaming breaks down the five stages every Hell Let Loose player goes through when picking up the game for the first time.

This felt a bit too personal, we won’t lie: https://youtu.be/N1N2YAksql0

THE Best Sniper Experience in Gaming

Our favourite recon duo are back in action on El Alamein!
Watch SoulSniper’s recent video here: https://youtu.be/Fw1z_zGPW1c?feature=shared

Join the Conversation

Submit clips and artwork by joining the Discord for a chance to be shown in a future dev brief!

Discord: https://discord.gg/hellletloose

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HellLetLoose/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/hell_let_loose

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/HellLetLoose

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/HellLetLoose/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellletlooseofficial/

Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/HellLetLoose

Sep 6, 2023

v1.2 Patch - Goblins no longer get mugged at school & more

The Wratch's Den - Rémy 🍬

Hi everyone!

Thanks for the love on The Wratch's Den! This has been the better performing game out of all the Steam releases we've been putting out these last few weeks, thanks for that! (in case you missed it, we're in the middle of releasing all our back catalog here on Steam!)

If you're enjoying the game, please remember that a positive review goes a long way in making it visible to more potential players. It doesn't even have to be a long review, just a few words already helps!

Anyway, in the middle of the Steam releases and the Shotgun King console release, and also a brand new game release over on Itch io, we somehow managed to fix the few issues that were reported for The Wratch's Den! Hopefully this patch properly fixes them all!

Here's the full changelog:

Blood Moon tech now properly affects all new units after it's researched.
Goblins can now only carry up to 16 tiles.
Schooled goblins now keep the gold they were holding.
Schooled orcs and goblins now keep their smithy upgrades.
Fixed a bug where an orc would become a goblin on schooling.
Room options now always appear above other objects.
Game no longer crashes if trying to use an item on the workbench if the trap room is filled with items.
Dark ritual achievement fixed so as to properly trigger only when 5 minions have been sacrificed. (also fixed the achievement description)

We also updated the demo with these fixes.

We hope you're still enjoying the game! Have a great week and long live The Wratch!
-PUNKCAKE Délicieux 🥞

Sep 6, 2023

Enhanced Auto-Mode Teaser: version 1.4!

Daisho: Survival of a Samurai - Proserpina

Another Sneak Peak into Update 1.4.0 which we will start releasing very soon!

Auto-mode function will be improved a lot: it will be able to attack and loot enemies! For the details read the rest of the post.

◉ For mobile UI, the button was moved to a (hopefully) more visible place

◉ The activation radius (how far the character will seek for an interactable object in auto mode) was doubled

◉ The auto mode can fight now! there's a bunch of caveats though
○ it is more of a "defensive" thing, so it won't actively seek out far away enemies to attack
○ it will attack any enemies that are in range where they are highlighted with a red circle
○ deers and boars are considered enemies, so it will attack them too
○ it WON'T attack archers who are shooting the character from outside of a "highlighted with a red circle" range -- that's to be improved in the future
○ since the target seeking radius of interactable objects is much further than enemy highlighting radius, it might decide to run to a tree 20 meters away, and just run past any enemies it encounters along the way -- that's to be improved in the future

◉ BOTH in auto mode and in manual mode, if you try to pick up an object that wouldn't fit in your inventory, but would fit in the resource storage (the one that's accessible from everywhere, not the "crafting resources storage), you will automatically pick it up into the storage

◉ The auto mode WILL NOT loot treasure chests for now, but WILL loot enemy corpses. there are again some caveats:
○ if ALL contains of the corpse will fit in your inventory + storage, it will be looted automatically (bypassing the looting popup)
○ if SOME but not ALL contains of the corpse can be looted, the auto mode will ignore it -- that's to be improved in the future

◉ Another quirk is regarding trees, rocks, bird nests etc. right now the character does not know if the contents of them will fit in the inventory + backpack for sure until it tries to pick it up or hit with the axe/pickaxe. so you will notice that even with the full inventory, the character will still come to every single tree one by one and try to hit it -- the durability shouldn't be spent in that case, but it might look confusing. it's a bit of an optimization thing in the not-really-related part of the game, so it might not necessarily change in the future.