Hi Squaddies,

After a very busy six weeks post EA launch the development team has spent the past month digging into more of our core game systems in an effort to get them closer to our final vision. We will show you some of the progress in this update and also push some of the finished content out with our Alpha v5 update which is going through a hardening phase currently before moving into release candidate testing.





Our Lead Environment artist and foliage wizard GhostDance has been carefully plugging away at our next generation of foliage. Our next iteration will start to integrate vertex pivot bending allowing interaction of players and foliage. As well we will be adding more natural looking procedural wind system. Both of which we have examples of below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTWSEo4PL54


Since the last update a lot of effort has been poured into the map, user interface and general quality of life by JrWebster and Motherdear. The ongoing improvements of our user interface systems has allowed the gameplay programmers to focus more on improving the look and feel of some of the core spawn and map features, as well as making the system leaner and easier to implement future features.

The main focus has been to move the map towards a C++ implementation and to fix any bugs that were plaguing 4.0, such as map and spawn menu switching back and forth, not being able to switch directly to the map from the spawn menu, roles not always being displayed as used etc.. Among these changes we now have a cleaner and more informative kit system, both for our menu and our ammo crates, as well as brand new map icons to improve map readability.



The spawn menu has been improved with new icons, better displaying which weapon the player will get with the kit, making each spawn menu unique for the faction, as well as better drawing the eyes to specialty kits. This also brings some improvements to squad management since the squad leader no longer is in doubt of what weapons are available in his squads arsenal.



The ammo crate kit icons now clearly display what role they are and what weapon will be your most important, the icons are now more unified with the spawn menu and less language dependent, both in art style and functionality, allowing the users to have the standard kit tooltips and readability of the spawn menu.



The players map icon now slowly pulses to allow you to easily find your own position, other players directions and important features, like medic and SLs are now easier to find on the map, and the mouse wheel and button zoom now functions much better than in earlier iterations.

Improvements have been made made for the way that we display the player inventory, there has been some frustration among players, and devs, that the inventory system did not give good enough feedback to user actions, which we will address in two phases.

Phase 1 will be a feature upgrade for the user interface of the inventory, we are adding expanding groups, which will give the player a better overview of equipment in a group, and we are adding fading to items that are not currently selected, making it much easier for the player to find the active weapon.


UI Artwork is still a WIP.

Phase 2 will be adding the ability to change away from weapons while they are still just being equipped, which will allow the player to traverse the inventory with much more confidence without being punished for a small miss-click.

Another quality of life improvement that has been long awaited and that we want to mention is name tag drawing reliability. We are now tracing from your camera location to the head, chest and feet of the other soldier, instead of the default Unreal Engine 4 method of tracing from waist to waist. This tracing method makes sure that you always get a name-tag when you can see your team members head, chest or feet, which solves a lot of issues for new and old players alike. We have also made some minor improvements to the feel of scoped weapons, namely giving them a post process effect around the reticle when zoomed.



Lastly we have re-implemented the way that we handle jumping and stamina to allow for smoother traversal of walls and less frustration and stamina cost, while still stopping bunny-hopping and other game breakers. The system will now allow you to jump at full height with no stamina penalty, but with a loss of forward momentum and jump height for each consecutive jump. This allows you to be able to traverse walls with no worry of suddenly running out of stamina and reduces the frustration of the stamina cost.





With the refactoring of our Animation System going underway there is a need to update almost all our animations to a newer and better standard. We recently brought aboard a new addition to the team, Kab, to help out in creating new animations for weapons and equipment new and old. Heres a few friendly Gifs to sate your appetite!

AK74M Rifle

MP443 Pistol

RPG7

M4A1 Rifle

M249 SAW


The G3A3 is a German 7.62x51mm NATO battle rifle developed in the 1950s, produced by license around the world. Still a very reliable platform, the rifle has seen many wars and conflicts around the world and is still in use by second-world militaries and insurgent groups to this day.




Adding tunnel systems has always been a big wish list item for us and the latest Fools Road release gave us a quick crash course on how our game mechanics and code would react to them. Guided greatly by the things we have learned in the last month our environment artist Drav has begun formally working on a modular underground system that would allow our mappers to create more elaborate functional tunnel networks and create a whole extra dimension for Squad environments.



---

Continued in Part 2!

Hi Squaddies,

After a very busy six weeks post EA launch the development team has spent the past month digging into more of our core game systems in an effort to get them closer to our final vision. We will show you some of the progress in this update and also push some of the finished content out with our Alpha v5 update which is going through a hardening phase currently before moving into release candidate testing.





Our Lead Environment artist and foliage wizard GhostDance has been carefully plugging away at our next generation of foliage. Our next iteration will start to integrate vertex pivot bending allowing interaction of players and foliage. As well we will be adding more natural looking procedural wind system. Both of which we have examples of below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTWSEo4PL54


Since the last update a lot of effort has been poured into the map, user interface and general quality of life by JrWebster and Motherdear. The ongoing improvements of our user interface systems has allowed the gameplay programmers to focus more on improving the look and feel of some of the core spawn and map features, as well as making the system leaner and easier to implement future features.

The main focus has been to move the map towards a C++ implementation and to fix any bugs that were plaguing 4.0, such as map and spawn menu switching back and forth, not being able to switch directly to the map from the spawn menu, roles not always being displayed as used etc.. Among these changes we now have a cleaner and more informative kit system, both for our menu and our ammo crates, as well as brand new map icons to improve map readability.



The spawn menu has been improved with new icons, better displaying which weapon the player will get with the kit, making each spawn menu unique for the faction, as well as better drawing the eyes to specialty kits. This also brings some improvements to squad management since the squad leader no longer is in doubt of what weapons are available in his squads arsenal.



The ammo crate kit icons now clearly display what role they are and what weapon will be your most important, the icons are now more unified with the spawn menu and less language dependent, both in art style and functionality, allowing the users to have the standard kit tooltips and readability of the spawn menu.



The players map icon now slowly pulses to allow you to easily find your own position, other players directions and important features, like medic and SLs are now easier to find on the map, and the mouse wheel and button zoom now functions much better than in earlier iterations.

Improvements have been made made for the way that we display the player inventory, there has been some frustration among players, and devs, that the inventory system did not give good enough feedback to user actions, which we will address in two phases.

Phase 1 will be a feature upgrade for the user interface of the inventory, we are adding expanding groups, which will give the player a better overview of equipment in a group, and we are adding fading to items that are not currently selected, making it much easier for the player to find the active weapon.


UI Artwork is still a WIP.

Phase 2 will be adding the ability to change away from weapons while they are still just being equipped, which will allow the player to traverse the inventory with much more confidence without being punished for a small miss-click.

Another quality of life improvement that has been long awaited and that we want to mention is name tag drawing reliability. We are now tracing from your camera location to the head, chest and feet of the other soldier, instead of the default Unreal Engine 4 method of tracing from waist to waist. This tracing method makes sure that you always get a name-tag when you can see your team members head, chest or feet, which solves a lot of issues for new and old players alike. We have also made some minor improvements to the feel of scoped weapons, namely giving them a post process effect around the reticle when zoomed.



Lastly we have re-implemented the way that we handle jumping and stamina to allow for smoother traversal of walls and less frustration and stamina cost, while still stopping bunny-hopping and other game breakers. The system will now allow you to jump at full height with no stamina penalty, but with a loss of forward momentum and jump height for each consecutive jump. This allows you to be able to traverse walls with no worry of suddenly running out of stamina and reduces the frustration of the stamina cost.





With the refactoring of our Animation System going underway there is a need to update almost all our animations to a newer and better standard. We recently brought aboard a new addition to the team, Kab, to help out in creating new animations for weapons and equipment new and old. Heres a few friendly Gifs to sate your appetite!

AK74M Rifle

MP443 Pistol

RPG7

M4A1 Rifle

M249 SAW


The G3A3 is a German 7.62x51mm NATO battle rifle developed in the 1950s, produced by license around the world. Still a very reliable platform, the rifle has seen many wars and conflicts around the world and is still in use by second-world militaries and insurgent groups to this day.




Adding tunnel systems has always been a big wish list item for us and the latest Fools Road release gave us a quick crash course on how our game mechanics and code would react to them. Guided greatly by the things we have learned in the last month our environment artist Drav has begun formally working on a modular underground system that would allow our mappers to create more elaborate functional tunnel networks and create a whole extra dimension for Squad environments.



---

Continued in Part 2!

 Hi Squaddies,
 
We’re proud to present the newest version of the Squad Alpha: Version 4.0.

Contained are a number of major improvements to gameplay but also new content additions in the form of additional equipment for the Russian and Militia factions, As well as expanded playable areas for maps currently in rotation and further performance and balance tweaks. Enjoy the changelog below!
 
Major Changes
 
1P78 Kashtan Rifle Optic
 
The Russian faction now have scopes for their weapons! As one of the most requested feature, we are pleased to grant the Russian faction a rifle optic for their primary AK74M and support RPK74M rifles as well as sneaking some goodies for the Militia.
 
RGD-5 Grenade
 
The RGD-5 is a post-WW2 Soviet-era grenade, inexpensive to manufacture and commonly found in many modern conflict areas. Will be featured on the Militia and Russian factions.
 
Map Updates
 
Fools Road received a new industrial area in the South West of the map, an updated Estate with a very cool tunnel section connecting the buildings together, as well as many new details and features spread out around the map.
 
Chora has also received many updates, expanding the playable area and more detail work.
 
Flag Capture Mechanics Updates
 
AAS has been updated with some new gamemode rules to encourage greater emphasis on the flag objectives.  Flags now have an increasing ticket bleed based on the number of flags owned by the opposing team, reducing the chance that the team with more flags loses the match.  Additionally, capturing a flag now grants the capturing team some tickets, as well as increasing the ticket loss for the team that loses a flag. Finally, we have added a protection sphere around each teams main base, which prevents bullets and players from the opposing team entering in it's area thus adding a layer of protection from main base camping.
 
Post Processing Effects
 
Many post processing effects and the ability to change their settings have been added.  Ambient Occlusion helps to define soft shadowing of objects.  Auto Exposure and Eye Adaptation causes the exposure of the screen image to simulate the effect of human eyes moving between brightly lit and dim environments.  Bloom is the bleed-over of light caused by looking at bright objects in lowly lit environments. Motion Blur adds a blur effect to objects depending on how quickly they are moving on the screen (works well with the new Russian scopes).  Lens Flare simulates scattering of light when viewing bright objects through lenses.
 
Server Browser and Joining Server improvements
 
The server browser has been improved, adding sorting by each column as well as better usability in general.  Additionally, a number of bugs have been fixed, improving the server join experience and a quicker response when you fail to join a server.
 
Changelog
 
Visit http://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/11691-alpha-4-update/ for a complete change list

 Hi Squaddies,
 
We’re proud to present the newest version of the Squad Alpha: Version 4.0.

Contained are a number of major improvements to gameplay but also new content additions in the form of additional equipment for the Russian and Militia factions, As well as expanded playable areas for maps currently in rotation and further performance and balance tweaks. Enjoy the changelog below!
 
Major Changes
 
1P78 Kashtan Rifle Optic
 
The Russian faction now have scopes for their weapons! As one of the most requested feature, we are pleased to grant the Russian faction a rifle optic for their primary AK74M and support RPK74M rifles as well as sneaking some goodies for the Militia.
 
RGD-5 Grenade
 
The RGD-5 is a post-WW2 Soviet-era grenade, inexpensive to manufacture and commonly found in many modern conflict areas. Will be featured on the Militia and Russian factions.
 
Map Updates
 
Fools Road received a new industrial area in the South West of the map, an updated Estate with a very cool tunnel section connecting the buildings together, as well as many new details and features spread out around the map.
 
Chora has also received many updates, expanding the playable area and more detail work.
 
Flag Capture Mechanics Updates
 
AAS has been updated with some new gamemode rules to encourage greater emphasis on the flag objectives.  Flags now have an increasing ticket bleed based on the number of flags owned by the opposing team, reducing the chance that the team with more flags loses the match.  Additionally, capturing a flag now grants the capturing team some tickets, as well as increasing the ticket loss for the team that loses a flag. Finally, we have added a protection sphere around each teams main base, which prevents bullets and players from the opposing team entering in it's area thus adding a layer of protection from main base camping.
 
Post Processing Effects
 
Many post processing effects and the ability to change their settings have been added.  Ambient Occlusion helps to define soft shadowing of objects.  Auto Exposure and Eye Adaptation causes the exposure of the screen image to simulate the effect of human eyes moving between brightly lit and dim environments.  Bloom is the bleed-over of light caused by looking at bright objects in lowly lit environments. Motion Blur adds a blur effect to objects depending on how quickly they are moving on the screen (works well with the new Russian scopes).  Lens Flare simulates scattering of light when viewing bright objects through lenses.
 
Server Browser and Joining Server improvements
 
The server browser has been improved, adding sorting by each column as well as better usability in general.  Additionally, a number of bugs have been fixed, improving the server join experience and a quicker response when you fail to join a server.
 
Changelog
 
Visit http://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/11691-alpha-4-update/ for a complete change list

It's the first Monthly Recap of the year! We apologise for not putting one out at the end of last month, but considering it was the Christmas break and we're also coming hot off the heels of our epic Early Access release on Steam, we just didn't have enough goodies stocked up for you all! Anyway, lets get to business.





Our Lead Effects Artist, Bruno, explains the changes behind a number of effects in version 4, in particular the way smoke from smoke grenades behaves and a new approach to depicting muzzle energy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAvqjt85Pqs

We've been running tests on Truesky for Squad and we're pleased to say that the results have been stunning. Well let these test screenshots speak for themselves.







We have a number of interesting and unique weapons that are nearing the end of the art pipeline, (their actual implementation into the game is still TBD)

A 23mm rifled shotgun originating from the Soviet era, the KS-23 fires shells that are considerably larger than most typical western combat shotguns.



A classic World War 2 era Russian sub-machine gun that has survived into the modern era, the PPSH-41 is capable of delivering pistol-caliber ammunition at incredibly high rates of fire. We are expecting to include two different kinds of magazines when this weapon ships, a 71-round Drum, or a 35-round box magazine.



Featured previously in a monthly recap, this nasty bit of kit is now fully textured and ready to be implemented into the game.



Under the advice of our new Army advisors, work has started on the new US Army soldier models, progress has been steady since the Christmas break but we expect it to pick up very quickly again.



Our talented environment artists have also expanded the set pieces and static environments for our mappers to utilise in their maps, which range from new houses and two storey blocks for the European theatre, all the way to a full sized train depot.











We have started roughing out our next map, Gorodok. This map will be set in eastern Europe on a clear sunny day and will focus on open gameplay in anticipation of vehicles. Gorodok is still in its very early stages so stay tuned for further developments.






The built-up area has been at least doubled in size, and more work has been done in detailing and the creation of unique crop and business areas going to the fringes of the town.





We hope you all enjoyed our little presentation for January. Version 4 for January is coming through the pipeline as we speak and will be released very shortly! So stay tuned to the website, forums and our Steam Page.

It's the first Monthly Recap of the year! We apologise for not putting one out at the end of last month, but considering it was the Christmas break and we're also coming hot off the heels of our epic Early Access release on Steam, we just didn't have enough goodies stocked up for you all! Anyway, lets get to business.





Our Lead Effects Artist, Bruno, explains the changes behind a number of effects in version 4, in particular the way smoke from smoke grenades behaves and a new approach to depicting muzzle energy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAvqjt85Pqs

We've been running tests on Truesky for Squad and we're pleased to say that the results have been stunning. Well let these test screenshots speak for themselves.







We have a number of interesting and unique weapons that are nearing the end of the art pipeline, (their actual implementation into the game is still TBD)

A 23mm rifled shotgun originating from the Soviet era, the KS-23 fires shells that are considerably larger than most typical western combat shotguns.



A classic World War 2 era Russian sub-machine gun that has survived into the modern era, the PPSH-41 is capable of delivering pistol-caliber ammunition at incredibly high rates of fire. We are expecting to include two different kinds of magazines when this weapon ships, a 71-round Drum, or a 35-round box magazine.



Featured previously in a monthly recap, this nasty bit of kit is now fully textured and ready to be implemented into the game.



Under the advice of our new Army advisors, work has started on the new US Army soldier models, progress has been steady since the Christmas break but we expect it to pick up very quickly again.



Our talented environment artists have also expanded the set pieces and static environments for our mappers to utilise in their maps, which range from new houses and two storey blocks for the European theatre, all the way to a full sized train depot.











We have started roughing out our next map, Gorodok. This map will be set in eastern Europe on a clear sunny day and will focus on open gameplay in anticipation of vehicles. Gorodok is still in its very early stages so stay tuned for further developments.






The built-up area has been at least doubled in size, and more work has been done in detailing and the creation of unique crop and business areas going to the fringes of the town.





We hope you all enjoyed our little presentation for January. Version 4 for January is coming through the pipeline as we speak and will be released very shortly! So stay tuned to the website, forums and our Steam Page.

Hi Squadies & Squadettes,
 
Well that was embarrassing... Thanks for finding those bugs so quickly!
 
Alpha 3.11 Changelog
 

• Fixed the militia's new pants giving an invulnerability shield to the wearer. 
• Fixed server browser showing 0 players
• Added p2p relay to help with server connection timeouts
• Confirmed all maps in rotation are working and spawnable

If you notice a map where you cannot spawn, please notify the server owner so they can confirm the map rotation names are correct.
 
Please stay tuned to our webpage, forums and Steam community page for the latest.
 
Offworld Out... Seriously... this time we are out.. (mic drop)

Hi Squadies & Squadettes,
 
Well that was embarrassing... Thanks for finding those bugs so quickly!
 
Alpha 3.11 Changelog
 

• Fixed the militia's new pants giving an invulnerability shield to the wearer. 
• Fixed server browser showing 0 players
• Added p2p relay to help with server connection timeouts
• Confirmed all maps in rotation are working and spawnable

If you notice a map where you cannot spawn, please notify the server owner so they can confirm the map rotation names are correct.
 
Please stay tuned to our webpage, forums and Steam community page for the latest.
 
Offworld Out... Seriously... this time we are out.. (mic drop)

Hi Squadies & Squadettes,
 
We have been very busy since 3.9 to squash these 3.9 bugs that stuck around. We feel we fixed one of the trickier server crashes and alot of the disconnects.
 
Alpha 3.10 Changelog
 

• Fixed an issue where framerates were being capped incorrectly on some high end systems
• Fixed an issue where the some Militia members went to war without pants
• Fixed a server crash when using objects like ammo crates or FOBs
• Fixed a case when connecting to servers where you would recieve 'Connection to the host has been lost'.  This doesn't fix it 100% of the time, but it is a massive improvement.
• Fixed a visual issue where the player count was incorrect over the Steam API

 
Please stay tuned to our webpage, forums and Steam community page for the latest.
 
Offworld Out.

Hi Squadies & Squadettes,
 
We have been very busy since 3.9 to squash these 3.9 bugs that stuck around. We feel we fixed one of the trickier server crashes and alot of the disconnects.
 
Alpha 3.10 Changelog
 

• Fixed an issue where framerates were being capped incorrectly on some high end systems
• Fixed an issue where the some Militia members went to war without pants
• Fixed a server crash when using objects like ammo crates or FOBs
• Fixed a case when connecting to servers where you would recieve 'Connection to the host has been lost'.  This doesn't fix it 100% of the time, but it is a massive improvement.
• Fixed a visual issue where the player count was incorrect over the Steam API

 
Please stay tuned to our webpage, forums and Steam community page for the latest.
 
Offworld Out.