Players of Verdun!

Today we are pleased to officially launch a new map "Fort Douaumont". For many months our level designers have worked on this map. In addition we are rolling out one of the many forthcoming performance updates: V236.



Join the Assault Today

The location
The French Second Army made a first attempt to recapture the fort in late May 1916. They occupied the western end of the fort for 36 hours but were dislodged after suffering heavy losses, mostly from German artillery and trench mortars that had been brought at proximity. The Germans stubbornly held onto the fort, as it provided shelter for troops and served as first aid station and logistics centre. Afterwards, French artillery continued to shell the fort, turning the area into a pockmarked moonscape, traces of which are still visible today.

Loading imagary



One of the many awesomely crafted trenches leading up to the fort. The Trenches in douaumont are the best we have made so far, great care has been given to making them look as destroyed as possible, as the trenches in front of the fort (under German occupation) were shelled relentlessly during the French Assault.



Next to launching the long-awaited map we have made some steps in rolling out performance updates required to deal with the Unity Engine update as well as the detail increase of the levels since september. V236 will be the first in the series.

• Included fort Douaumont
  
• Loadingscreen text updated
  
• New Character LOD system
  
• "Ambient Quality" on low will remove all detail objects from the scene, requires restart or map change to bring back after setting to high.
  
• Low terrain quality now ultra low terrain texture
  
• Fixed stuttering loading characters
  
• Fixed players jumping up while colling with eachother
  
• Fixed Bayonet damage
  
• Fixed being unable to deploy or go prone on some surfaces
  
• Fixed mouse flickering
  
• Fixed console setnextmap

As we prioritize optimization above all other features, at this stage the gore system (which is pretty much complete) will not go live just yet. We are first going to focus on furthering the performance optimizations. Teasers very soon!

To insure a more rapid approach we'd like to invite all people who care for the game and community to apply for the beta testing team here and join our ranks to gain first access to experimental new builds.

Hope to see you on the battlefield, god speed!

Players of Verdun!

Today we are pleased to officially launch a new map "Fort Douaumont". For many months our level designers have worked on this map. In addition we are rolling out one of the many forthcoming performance updates: V236.



Join the Assault Today

The location
The French Second Army made a first attempt to recapture the fort in late May 1916. They occupied the western end of the fort for 36 hours but were dislodged after suffering heavy losses, mostly from German artillery and trench mortars that had been brought at proximity. The Germans stubbornly held onto the fort, as it provided shelter for troops and served as first aid station and logistics centre. Afterwards, French artillery continued to shell the fort, turning the area into a pockmarked moonscape, traces of which are still visible today.

Loading imagary



One of the many awesomely crafted trenches leading up to the fort. The Trenches in douaumont are the best we have made so far, great care has been given to making them look as destroyed as possible, as the trenches in front of the fort (under German occupation) were shelled relentlessly during the French Assault.



Next to launching the long-awaited map we have made some steps in rolling out performance updates required to deal with the Unity Engine update as well as the detail increase of the levels since september. V236 will be the first in the series.

• Included fort Douaumont
  
• Loadingscreen text updated
  
• New Character LOD system
  
• "Ambient Quality" on low will remove all detail objects from the scene, requires restart or map change to bring back after setting to high.
  
• Low terrain quality now ultra low terrain texture
  
• Fixed stuttering loading characters
  
• Fixed players jumping up while colling with eachother
  
• Fixed Bayonet damage
  
• Fixed being unable to deploy or go prone on some surfaces
  
• Fixed mouse flickering
  
• Fixed console setnextmap

As we prioritize optimization above all other features, at this stage the gore system (which is pretty much complete) will not go live just yet. We are first going to focus on furthering the performance optimizations. Teasers very soon!

To insure a more rapid approach we'd like to invite all people who care for the game and community to apply for the beta testing team here and join our ranks to gain first access to experimental new builds.

Hope to see you on the battlefield, god speed!

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.
First of all a short announcement: Version 233 is now available for download.


Fusil Automatique Modèle 1917

In 1916 the French army recognised the need to start replacing its outdated (and arguably not so successful) Lebel 1886 rifle. They chose to go with a semi-automatic design, having tried and tested semi-automatic rifles ( for example the Meunier, albeit with some resistance) before the war broke out. The rifle was produced in fairly large numbers, with the production estimate being around 85k by the wars end. It had a 5 round enbloc magazine, and was gas operated, the mechanism is believed to have heavily influenced the design of the famous M1 Garand.



The RSC 17 will offer the french forces some extra firepower vs the overwhelmingly common bolt action rifles, and will be an option for tier 3 Machine Gunners (in place of the chauchat)

Fusil Automatique Modèle 1918

A shorter more compact version of the RSC 17, the RSC 18 started production during the very last weeks of the war. The rifle was absolutely renowned for it’s accuracy and loved by it’s users. Only a small number were made ( around 4000) with most of those being produced after the war.



The rifle will see exclusivity in the Attrition game-mode. It is unsure if it saw action but we figured as it was a quick piece to create, this little beauty was too good not to include.


Development status
On the development front, again we’ve made some great progress in all areas. As seen read above; weapons are still being made and animated (several were completed this week). We are more or less at the end of our list with new weapon being added to the game and animated ( of course, we haven’t shown all these yet! - this is by no means the last Weapon Wednesday!)


Early Work In Progress of the in-game RSC Mle. 1917 animation

The Gore system is also more or less ready to go live, several animations have been completed and polished in the last week and the dismemberment and blood systems have been finalized. In addition we will have recorded additional voice acting for the horrific scenes that will unfold in the game.

On the performance front we just received reinforcements! Industry veteran and isotix lead programmer Nico will be joining us. Having worked with unity extensively in the past few years we can double our efforts in areas like bug squashing and improving performance in the weeks to come.


Game update status
We are on track with deploying the next build to the main branch. We have received positive feedback on the beta branch, solved most of the bugs and will be rolling out a new game version right now. Tomorrow a new version with gore will be available on the beta branch for our closed beta testers. If all goes well, this should set us in motion to get Douaumont and the gore live and released as soon as possible, but for now do please bear with us!


Screenshot of the Week
Observing nomansland in Flanders, 1917.



That will be all for this week. Tune in next week for more where we’ll be unveiling some much sought after firepower.

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.
First of all a short announcement: Version 233 is now available for download.


Fusil Automatique Modèle 1917

In 1916 the French army recognised the need to start replacing its outdated (and arguably not so successful) Lebel 1886 rifle. They chose to go with a semi-automatic design, having tried and tested semi-automatic rifles ( for example the Meunier, albeit with some resistance) before the war broke out. The rifle was produced in fairly large numbers, with the production estimate being around 85k by the wars end. It had a 5 round enbloc magazine, and was gas operated, the mechanism is believed to have heavily influenced the design of the famous M1 Garand.



The RSC 17 will offer the french forces some extra firepower vs the overwhelmingly common bolt action rifles, and will be an option for tier 3 Machine Gunners (in place of the chauchat)

Fusil Automatique Modèle 1918

A shorter more compact version of the RSC 17, the RSC 18 started production during the very last weeks of the war. The rifle was absolutely renowned for it’s accuracy and loved by it’s users. Only a small number were made ( around 4000) with most of those being produced after the war.



The rifle will see exclusivity in the Attrition game-mode. It is unsure if it saw action but we figured as it was a quick piece to create, this little beauty was too good not to include.


Development status
On the development front, again we’ve made some great progress in all areas. As seen read above; weapons are still being made and animated (several were completed this week). We are more or less at the end of our list with new weapon being added to the game and animated ( of course, we haven’t shown all these yet! - this is by no means the last Weapon Wednesday!)


Early Work In Progress of the in-game RSC Mle. 1917 animation

The Gore system is also more or less ready to go live, several animations have been completed and polished in the last week and the dismemberment and blood systems have been finalized. In addition we will have recorded additional voice acting for the horrific scenes that will unfold in the game.

On the performance front we just received reinforcements! Industry veteran and isotix lead programmer Nico will be joining us. Having worked with unity extensively in the past few years we can double our efforts in areas like bug squashing and improving performance in the weeks to come.


Game update status
We are on track with deploying the next build to the main branch. We have received positive feedback on the beta branch, solved most of the bugs and will be rolling out a new game version right now. Tomorrow a new version with gore will be available on the beta branch for our closed beta testers. If all goes well, this should set us in motion to get Douaumont and the gore live and released as soon as possible, but for now do please bear with us!


Screenshot of the Week
Observing nomansland in Flanders, 1917.



That will be all for this week. Tune in next week for more where we’ll be unveiling some much sought after firepower.

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. Today is particularly special as it marks the 97th anniversary of the signing of armistice, effectively the end of the Great War.



It is important for each and every person to understand the sacrifice our servicemen and women have made for us. We live in the world of today largely because of the actions of those who came before us. It is vital we never forget the sacrifices made by these people, regardless of nationality, race, religion, or creed, in all conflicts. They gave their future, so we could have ours.

We will Remember them.


M1909 Hotchkiss “Benét–Mercié”

The Hotchkiss M1909 was one of the machineguns adopted by the U.S in the rearmament of it’s military in 1890-1910. Developed by the French Hotchkiss manufacturer (founded by U.S weapon designer Benjamin Hotchkiss) the Hotchkiss was sold under contract to many nations including the U.K (cavalry/tank use), France, U.S.A, and to a lesser extent, Belgium, Spain, Brazil and Australia. With a 30 round 30-round strip-magazine, the weapon was quite susceptible to mud and dirt and wasn’t ideal for trench warfare. While only around 700 were produced, the U.S had a comparatively small army in 1909, the same year the 30-06 hand crank gatling gun was taken out of service.



The Hotchkiss in game will be used by one of the American squads and potentially also the British Tommies, this is still being decided. Boasting a high rate of fire, but a tricky reload and small magazine, the MG should feel more than at home in the trenches.

Game update status
Excellent reports come in from the 5.3 update tests of last monday. Both Douaumont and other maps seem to run smoothly. We’d like to encourage all active ( and well-behaved!) community members to join our beta testing team. here

We are aiming to go public with this as soon as we sort out the last few issues that were caused by the engine update.

Development status
Aside from promising work with Douaumont in the testing branch, we keep advancing on other fronts as well. The animation crew has been allocated to deal with both the massive amount of new weapons (progressing nicely!) but also with enhancing the immersion of the game - in the addition of death animations. We are planning to launch the gore system alongside fort Douaumont within the fortnight.




Here is a small teaser of one of the ‘slower’ death animations. We are adding many more features this very moment, including dismemberment, screaming and flailing, neck shots and more.




With regards to weapons, we have completed several animations this week. Two recently announced weapons: The Mle. 1892 revolver (which model was teased earlier). What was particularly tricky to create was the fact that, unlike most other revolvers from the time, player has to switch hands in order to reload:



Also spectacular and most fun to use ingame is the M1897 trench gun. This classic firearm can be found in many games and when we implemented it in Verdun it feels like a familiar powerful weapon. The Soon to be formed U.S marine squad will have a blast!




Screenshot of the Week
Gas assault on a sunday day, western front, 1915.



That will be all for this week. Tune in next week for more!

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. Today is particularly special as it marks the 97th anniversary of the signing of armistice, effectively the end of the Great War.



It is important for each and every person to understand the sacrifice our servicemen and women have made for us. We live in the world of today largely because of the actions of those who came before us. It is vital we never forget the sacrifices made by these people, regardless of nationality, race, religion, or creed, in all conflicts. They gave their future, so we could have ours.

We will Remember them.


M1909 Hotchkiss “Benét–Mercié”

The Hotchkiss M1909 was one of the machineguns adopted by the U.S in the rearmament of it’s military in 1890-1910. Developed by the French Hotchkiss manufacturer (founded by U.S weapon designer Benjamin Hotchkiss) the Hotchkiss was sold under contract to many nations including the U.K (cavalry/tank use), France, U.S.A, and to a lesser extent, Belgium, Spain, Brazil and Australia. With a 30 round 30-round strip-magazine, the weapon was quite susceptible to mud and dirt and wasn’t ideal for trench warfare. While only around 700 were produced, the U.S had a comparatively small army in 1909, the same year the 30-06 hand crank gatling gun was taken out of service.



The Hotchkiss in game will be used by one of the American squads and potentially also the British Tommies, this is still being decided. Boasting a high rate of fire, but a tricky reload and small magazine, the MG should feel more than at home in the trenches.

Game update status
Excellent reports come in from the 5.3 update tests of last monday. Both Douaumont and other maps seem to run smoothly. We’d like to encourage all active ( and well-behaved!) community members to join our beta testing team. here

We are aiming to go public with this as soon as we sort out the last few issues that were caused by the engine update.

Development status
Aside from promising work with Douaumont in the testing branch, we keep advancing on other fronts as well. The animation crew has been allocated to deal with both the massive amount of new weapons (progressing nicely!) but also with enhancing the immersion of the game - in the addition of death animations. We are planning to launch the gore system alongside fort Douaumont within the fortnight.




Here is a small teaser of one of the ‘slower’ death animations. We are adding many more features this very moment, including dismemberment, screaming and flailing, neck shots and more.




With regards to weapons, we have completed several animations this week. Two recently announced weapons: The Mle. 1892 revolver (which model was teased earlier). What was particularly tricky to create was the fact that, unlike most other revolvers from the time, player has to switch hands in order to reload:



Also spectacular and most fun to use ingame is the M1897 trench gun. This classic firearm can be found in many games and when we implemented it in Verdun it feels like a familiar powerful weapon. The Soon to be formed U.S marine squad will have a blast!




Screenshot of the Week
Gas assault on a sunday day, western front, 1915.



That will be all for this week. Tune in next week for more!

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.

Stielhandgranate M1917 + Geballte Ladung M1917 6x / 9x
Earlier during the war both French and Germans experimented with explosives tied to wooden sticks. The Germans actually took this concept and created the infamous “stielhandgranate” (stalk hand grenade) line of grenades. While the M1915 which is currently in-game has the simple string taped to the stick, the M1917 model (5.5 sec fuse) used a cap at the bottom of the stick to prevent both humidity from affecting the string and offering better safety (far more difficult to accidentally detonate). The cap had prongs lining the bottom of it to allow for better grip in the muddy trenches.

We have also decided to include 2 “geballte” ladung (concentrated charges), effectively an improvised explosive made by the Germans out of several of the m1917 stick grenades. It was used nearer the end of the war to counter allied tanks. The main disadvantage with these bundled grenades was they could only really be thrown short distances (due to obvious weight issues) and this makes for a far riskier task for the grenadier getting within range of target.



Ingame the updated stielhandgranate and “geballte ladung”s will be in the hands of the German Pionier units. With extra explosive power to deal with enemy strong points. More information about the new units will follow in later installments.

Game update status status
Again our efforts to deal with performance spike issues continues. We have found some issues with the way character art is being loaded from the disk resulting in massive stuttering. To deal with this we are building a new system to render the characters, however there are some engine limitations with this so we are forced to find a work around. As you may have guessed, that does means a slight delay in the performance updates. We expect a performance patch to be able to go live before the weekend if everything works out with the new engine update and loading system. In addition we hope to have dealt with the hike in performance and some bugs related to invincibility as well. The update should also tackle the issue where people are experiencing crashing when loading levels.

For those who didn’t notice, during the halloween sale, rats overran the main menu! This was only visible during the 30th and 31st of October 2015.:



You might consider it a little teaser for the gore update which will in time allow us to create much grittier maps

Game Development Status
Tests last week with the upcoming Fort Douaumont map proved that A) The map is awesome and B) has several issues that need to be resolved. Most importantly we had errors with the way the fort was being rendered, we’ve been exploring fixes for this. Secondly we had to change the way the capturable sectors were ordered. The scenario for Fort Douaumont is the French Assault on the fort on the 22nd of May, 1916. In this assault the French succeeded in capturing some locations on the site. They were violently repelled. In light with this, and gameplay mechanics (fighting down the long hallway proofed a challenge). We decided to change the sectors as to better reflect the fighting and concentrate the battles more around the western side of the fort.


An impression of the massive scale of Douaumont (In-game)

On the weapon front things are advancing well asol, we hope to have finished animating most existing firearms by the this week and then new set in the coming week, ready for trials. One of the latest additions is the hard hitting Reichsrevolver, which due to it’s difficult reload and single action mechanism will certainly be a weapon for the veterans!


Work in progress M1883 reichsrevolver reloading loop

Screenshot of the Week
A British soldier falls victim to poison gas at the Battle of Loos, Artois


That will be all for this week. Tune in next week for more!

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.

Stielhandgranate M1917 + Geballte Ladung M1917 6x / 9x
Earlier during the war both French and Germans experimented with explosives tied to wooden sticks. The Germans actually took this concept and created the infamous “stielhandgranate” (stalk hand grenade) line of grenades. While the M1915 which is currently in-game has the simple string taped to the stick, the M1917 model (5.5 sec fuse) used a cap at the bottom of the stick to prevent both humidity from affecting the string and offering better safety (far more difficult to accidentally detonate). The cap had prongs lining the bottom of it to allow for better grip in the muddy trenches.

We have also decided to include 2 “geballte” ladung (concentrated charges), effectively an improvised explosive made by the Germans out of several of the m1917 stick grenades. It was used nearer the end of the war to counter allied tanks. The main disadvantage with these bundled grenades was they could only really be thrown short distances (due to obvious weight issues) and this makes for a far riskier task for the grenadier getting within range of target.



Ingame the updated stielhandgranate and “geballte ladung”s will be in the hands of the German Pionier units. With extra explosive power to deal with enemy strong points. More information about the new units will follow in later installments.

Game update status status
Again our efforts to deal with performance spike issues continues. We have found some issues with the way character art is being loaded from the disk resulting in massive stuttering. To deal with this we are building a new system to render the characters, however there are some engine limitations with this so we are forced to find a work around. As you may have guessed, that does means a slight delay in the performance updates. We expect a performance patch to be able to go live before the weekend if everything works out with the new engine update and loading system. In addition we hope to have dealt with the hike in performance and some bugs related to invincibility as well. The update should also tackle the issue where people are experiencing crashing when loading levels.

For those who didn’t notice, during the halloween sale, rats overran the main menu! This was only visible during the 30th and 31st of October 2015.:



You might consider it a little teaser for the gore update which will in time allow us to create much grittier maps

Game Development Status
Tests last week with the upcoming Fort Douaumont map proved that A) The map is awesome and B) has several issues that need to be resolved. Most importantly we had errors with the way the fort was being rendered, we’ve been exploring fixes for this. Secondly we had to change the way the capturable sectors were ordered. The scenario for Fort Douaumont is the French Assault on the fort on the 22nd of May, 1916. In this assault the French succeeded in capturing some locations on the site. They were violently repelled. In light with this, and gameplay mechanics (fighting down the long hallway proofed a challenge). We decided to change the sectors as to better reflect the fighting and concentrate the battles more around the western side of the fort.


An impression of the massive scale of Douaumont (In-game)

On the weapon front things are advancing well asol, we hope to have finished animating most existing firearms by the this week and then new set in the coming week, ready for trials. One of the latest additions is the hard hitting Reichsrevolver, which due to it’s difficult reload and single action mechanism will certainly be a weapon for the veterans!


Work in progress M1883 reichsrevolver reloading loop

Screenshot of the Week
A British soldier falls victim to poison gas at the Battle of Loos, Artois


That will be all for this week. Tune in next week for more!

Welcome back to another (belated) Verdun Community Update. This week no weapons (there are plenty to come though!), but the announcement that we will be starting closed beta access to the upcoming map "Douaumont".

To celebrate this, here are two promotional teaser screenshots of a french assault on Fort Douaumont:





Soon you will be able to mount your own assaults on the fort with your squad! Keep an eye out on our facebook page, as in the next few days we will be teasing the map some more!



Game update status: V227 - V230
This week saw major team efforts to crush the bugs introduced with the V227 update. The most critical ones have been fixed in the intermediate V229 and V230 patches. Our work to improve the performance for all players continues. We take the issues some of you have very seriously and it is our main objective to have most of the hick ups sorted out in the next two weeks.



Game Development Status
Obviously the main task of improving performance on all fronts is at the very center of our development cycle. This means that the introduction of gore will also have be paired with a major overhaul of the character LOD system and the way characters are rendered. This should improve performance especially in full matches.

Next to that efforts have gone into developing the new first person animation system and starting the major task of adding all the new animations. In case for instance of the lee-metford:



Many more teasers of the new animations will be coming soon. The development of the new weapons is going pretty smooth.




Screenshot of the Week
Intense grenade warfare in the Argonne sector, supplied by veteran community member "MasterMasco":



That’s all for this update. For all the people in the closed beta group: We will be rolling the update out tomorrow. The rest will have to wait for a little longer. Next week: more weapons. Before that: we have a Halloween surprise in store ;)