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


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


The Danish contribution to WWI

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

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




Vote for us as Indie of the year!

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

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

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




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

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

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

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


Switching branches is fun, and easy




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



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

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


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


The Danish contribution to WWI

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

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




Vote for us as Indie of the year!

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

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

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




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

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

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

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


Switching branches is fun, and easy




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



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

Welcome back to another installment of Verdun’s “Weapon Wednesday”, we use these media updates to tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the games development. This will be a short update on the weapon front and an announcement on the upcoming open beta that verdun players can participate in! This beta is mainly focused on rolling out as much performance fixes out as possible before shipping them to the main game.

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

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


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

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




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



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

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



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

Welcome back to another installment of Verdun’s “Weapon Wednesday”, we use these media updates to tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the games development. This will be a short update on the weapon front and an announcement on the upcoming open beta that verdun players can participate in! This beta is mainly focused on rolling out as much performance fixes out as possible before shipping them to the main game.

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

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


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

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




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



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

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



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

Welcome back to another installment of Verdun’s “Weapon Wednesday”, we use these media updates to tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the games development. This week we keep it short as we are all hands on deck for the upcoming performances patches and the rendering pipeline overhaul.

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



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



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

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



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

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

Work in Progress M1909 hotchkiss sprint animation

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

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



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




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

Welcome back to another installment of Verdun’s “Weapon Wednesday”, we use these media updates to tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the games development. This week we keep it short as we are all hands on deck for the upcoming performances patches and the rendering pipeline overhaul.

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



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



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

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



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

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

Work in Progress M1909 hotchkiss sprint animation

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

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



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




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

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.