Welcome to our thirty-one developers update for Call to Arms! We will use these updates to keep you posted on the progress of the development and features.
We are currently preparing a massive update for Call to Arms and we are super excited to hand it out to you guys soon.
New Armor System
We added a new armor system so that we can finally balance vehicle and tank combat properly. Vehicles will have an armor value for each component, next to the armor thickness. While a 7.62mm projectile can penetrate a technical, it may not instantly knock it out, or randomly knock it out after some magic threshold has been reached. Instead each hit will cause some damage to the armor value depending on a basic projectile damage value and penetration power. If you penetrate a vehicles’ armor the strength of the penetration matters too, for instance if an armor plate has a thickness of 10mm and your weapon penetrates it will 11mm, it will cause much less damage than a weapon that penetrates with 50mm. This allows us to make it easier for autocannons to penetrate vehicles, but don’t knock them out instantly, or use some magic random factors that would decide whether the vehicle breaks or not. It also helps us to simulate vehicles with a lot of mass vs. vehicles with little mass but with similar armor stats. Overall this system gets rid of all the randomness that happens to vehicle combat, while preserving the realistic armor penetration system that takes armor angle and weapon type into consideration.
Furthermore, we can scale it better between the regular gameplay and hardcore. Before only the human damage would change, but now both can be adjusted for much smoother transitions.
Direct Control Power Bar
We noticed that a lot of users tend to use the third/first person controls way too much in online games, which can be fun, but puts the focus away from the RTS perspective of the game and makes the gameplay quite messy, as often, using direct control wouldn’t necessary lead to a success but makes it cumbersome for the other player to counter it. Hence, we decided to limit the usage of direct control in the RTS gamemodes. You will now have a Power Bar that fills up very slowly by time, or much faster by kills. This bar allows you to use direct control for a limited amount of time, when you really need it and when it really helps you to change the course of the battle. It also protects you from direct control spam by the other team. This feature can be disabled in server settings, but we generally recommend using it for a better experience.
Fortifications
Engineers come now with the ability to build fortifications, such as sandbags, tank traps and so on. Later, we will allow them to create real emplacements, like heavy mortars, but these will cost you MP like any other unit in the game. Our goal is to make the engineer class more interesting and more worthwhile, while adding more options and strategies to our players.
New netcode
We finally finished the new netcode for Call to Arms. Multiplayer is now supported in 64-bit, which means you can enjoy much better graphics, longer and bigger battles without crashes and support for huge mods. On top of it, the input lag is reduced quite noticeably, which will enhance the overall online experience for everyone, especially in direct control.
New landscape rendering method
We did several things to enhance the visual experience for future, as well as existing maps. We added a new altitude haze to simulate fog in lower regions of a map. Furthermore, we added the ability to disable the border fog, as well as support for 3d background landscapes for long distance views. Our latest improvement is an enhanced lightning of the landscape, which helps a lot to render natural cliffs and hills. This feature adds a lot of details to existing maps and make them look more natural. It also helps you to distinguish between slopes. On top of that, we improved our workstyle for future maps. They will have much more natural landscapes, that are more fun to play and simply look better.
More good news: the new factions are progressing very well and will be most likely available in beta for Season Pass owners within 2 months!
Follow our developer website to stay updated on future sales, new games and upcoming updates! We are also posting small updates and insights on game development on our newly set up Twitter account.
The Steam Summer Sale is coming to an end in just a few days, so don't miss out on the opportunity to save big on our titles! ːcta_emo1ː
Enjoy the all new and free Summer Sale map pack for Call to Arms! Four new maps are waiting for you in the latest update, as well as plenty of fixes and improvements.
Follow our developer website to stay updated on future sales, new games and upcoming updates! We are also posting small updates and insights on game development on our newly set up Twitter account.
Welcome to our first developers update for Call to Arms after release! We will use these updates to keep you posted on the progress of the development and features.
New factions
We are currently working on the beta release of the new factions. They will be available for Ultimate Edition later this summer and after they are completed, they will be available for the other full version packages too.
Fortifications
Finally the fortification feature will make it into the game. Engineers will be able to build emplacements and fortifications, as well as stationary support weapons. Regular soldiers may be able to create light fortifications too. Each soldier who has the fortification features, also owns a resource pool that limits the amount of fortifications that can be build. To deploy weaponry, you will need to have enough MP available.
New armor system
Furthermore, we are working on a new tank armor system, that gets rid of the random damage and allows us to easier balance the tank combat. Our main goal is to make tank combat more interesting and skill based, as well as balance infantry vs. armored vehicles gameplay for more entertaining battles.
New environment landscape
We are also prototyping a new environment landscape, that will help us to create proper far distance views. It's quite a drastic change, so we will upgrade one map after another with the new system, but it's clearly worth it!
New netcode
Our new netcode will support 64-bit in multiplayer and reduce the lag you are experiencing, especially in first and third person controls. This means, it will not only enhance stability but also improve the online experience. We hope to have it available in a few months. Dedicated severs may possibly follow, as well.
Thanks for your attention, stay tuned for more updates soon! :cta_emo1:
A new update for Call to Arms is available! It includes two new multiplayer maps, plenty of fixes, multiplayer stability improvements, better balance and AI enhancements.
You can use the Steam comment section to add feedback to each gamemode. We are currently working on a new survival vs. AI mode based on the Heroes gamemode. Got some wishes for new gamemodes?
Many new players have joined the ranks and the online community is already 10 times larger than before! :cta_emo10:
We think it's time to give you a small status update on what's to come next and what plans we have for the near future.
Voice acting
You may have noticed, that the singleplayer campaign comes without VO at the moment. We weren't able to do the last tweaking on them in-time, but we will deliver them to you next week.
New gamemode
We are working on a new coop gamemode for your to enjoy with your friends. It puts the emphasis on the first person controls and your skills to work as a team. Your task will be to tactically eliminate waves of enemies with all the tools and weaponry you can find on the battlefield. Only the fittest will survive!
Animations
We will deliver you new hand animations for the first person mode quite soon!
Improvements
Of course, we are also working on a set of improvements, including better AI, bugfixes and performance enhancements.
Multiplayer Stability
Due to the 64-bit transition a fully synced client to client network no longer works properly. We added a lot of fixes to enhance the stability, but it's not good enough at this point. We started to work on a new netcode a while ago and we can hopefully provide you a timely update. In any case, this is a top priority for us and we are also looking into temporarily solutions to improve the situation in the meantime. Depending on your CPU generation, you may be affected more or less by this.
Wohoo! We made it! Call to Arms is finally live on Steam :cta_emo7:
We hope you will enjoy all the new content that is available to you.
With a team of less than 25 people, we are very grateful for the support and help we received from our community and we want to give you a big thank you for making Call to Arms possible! This is really a great accomplishment we want to build on in the future.
If you encounter any issues, or have feedback for us, please let us know. We will be continuously improving the game, even after the release.
A successful launch will enable us to make this game better and better, so please share the news with everyone. Thank you!
The game means a lot to us. It has been an integral part of our lives for the last couple of years and we invested more into it, than we probably should have, but we didn’t just want to deliver yet another game, but a game full of passion and exciting potential. Even if the game is not perfect and has room to improvement, we think that we can be proud of what has been accomplished so far and we hope you will enjoy it, as much as we enjoyed working on it!
We apologize for creating a lot of confusion with the monetization of the game. At any point, treating our loyal customer base fairly has been our top priority. However, we obviously have failed in communicating this well enough. During the time we have been working on Call to Arms, we have seen studios rise and fall, we have seen Early Access games pop up and never deliver what has been promised. We decided that it is extremely important to learn from these mistakes and don’t fail on delivering our promises as well. We also wanted to lay out a roadmap for people to see and understand what will come for Call to Arms after release, so that they can make an educated purchase decision and choose whether to support us further or not. Of course, we understand that it is upsetting, if we talk about DLC content without even finishing the game first, but we believe, that it is even worse to keep players in the dark.
The free version is a great way for people to have a look into the game, before purchasing it. Something that has been rather common in times of demos and open betas. It helped greatly to keep the game alive, which has been extremely difficult with so much competition around. When we first started selling games on Steam, there were at about 250 games per year. That’s what Steam has almost per week now and it’s still rising. Understandably, it has been increasingly difficult for players to make educated purchase decisions and that’s why we had to adjust to this new situation. Of course, we must find a good balance between the free version and value for money of the full version, but we certainly are getting there.
In this regard, please understand that the game is very important to us. People’s jobs and futures depend on it. Therefore, if you can, please take the time to read exactly what we wrote and don’t assume the worst. If you still can’t figure out what was happening, we are happy to help anytime. It is part of our business mentality to always hand out more content, than we promise, as we strongly believe, overpromising and underdelivering is a very poor business practice that we don’t want to be associated with. It’s a needle to our heart, if people claim that we have cheated or lied, as honesty and fairness is a core reason to run this company independently. Our principles are not for sale, even if that means, we must close our doors. Therefore, we hope, we can rebuild trust and prove to you, that you have chosen to support the right indie developer.
The game has been in Early Access for 2 ½ years. That’s a lot longer than we planned to keep it there. However, we haven’t been turning our thumbs in the meantime and to prove that, we have collected the most important changes for you and did some comparison shots with the first public version of Call to Arms!
Core engine upgrades
When we first started off with the game, the custom engine we use has been upgraded from DirectX9 to DirectX11, which was a huge improvement in enhancing the graphics and performance. Many probably didn’t know that the engine was singlethreaded, that means, it only used one core of your CPU, instead of all. We fixed this and added multithreading support. Lately, we upgraded the game from 32bit to 64bit. Something that is fundamentally important for us and modders, as it ends the out of memory issues (granted you have enough memory). This way we can support way more factions and units at the same time. Unfortunately, 64-bit has caused some side-effects with the current netcode, which we are still trying to fix entirely. These changes have been very difficult, as the engine and game are not separated from each other, this means, that we may improve and fix something and break many parts of the game at the same time. Hence, it takes plenty of time to do it right. The most important changes have been listed below.
• Unicode localization support (more than 1 language at the same time)
• New font rendering system
• Faster archive loading speed
• Improved debugging tools to lower crash frequencies
• Options presets for easy graphics set-up
• Steam controller support
• Windows API instead of DirectInput
• XML support for interface
• New main menu
• New in-game HUD
• Replays
• Texmod multiplayer support for infantry and vehicles
• Snow pather simulation
• Scaleable LODing, zNear, FoV
• New sound engine with near/far sound support
• Enhanced environment sound support
• Inside vehicle sound filters
• Improved netcode
• Improved overall game launch performance
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Graphic Engine upgrades
We believe that the comparison shots say more than any words, but it doesn’t harm to list the specific improvements we have done to the graphic engine to enhance the overall visuals of the game. It has been a lot more work, than it may look like at first, because unlike engines like UE4 and Unity, our custom engine didn’t provide any support for these visual effects. We had to code them from scratch and upgrade the engine accordingly.
• Depth of field
• Soft particles
• HDR glow
• Close camera rendering support (z-near)
• Specular effect balancing
• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
• Glossiness map support
• Colored specular map support
• Enhanced skyboxes for full HD environments
• Ocean rendering system
• New water technology with depth support
• Sun and moon simulation
• Light scattering effect
• Dirtlense effect
• Alpha to coverage
• New wind shader to simulate different weather conditions
• 1st person HD scope support
• Blur masks
• 3d shells and magazine drops
• Translucency shader
• Friend/Foe outline markers
• New outline silhouettes
• Support for BC5 texture compression for normal maps
• Human heads variation support
• Film grain support (used in specific modes)
• Vision mode support
• Color correction
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Gameplay updates
Most important are the gameplay changes of course. The game has changed a lot from the early days and we are happy that we followed our vision on how to further develop the old-school direct control mechanics. While we appreciate the original gameplay, we think it’s great to have a new game where you can choose to play differently. Aside from first and third person controls, we have done many other improvements of course.
• Introduced 1st and 3rd person controls for vehicles and soldiers
• Automatic ammo supply
• Fortification system
• Chat wheel support
• Multiplayer bots
• Guided missiles
• Night/Thermal vision
• Smoke screens
• Flashbangs
• New realistic tracer system
• Morale factor for infantry
• Medic ability
• Alliance system to allow multiple factions per team
• Mechanics ability, only skilled soldiers can repair vehicles
• Host join limitation options (experience/performance)
• Random spawnpoints
• Difficulty balance for vehicle armor
• 3rd person squad control mechanics
• Hardcore mode for more realistic engagements
• RTS mode for strategy only players
• Introduced helicopter controls
• Claymores react on bullet hit
• Alliance based tracer colors
• Different damage for different body parts
• Weapon damage based on muzzle speed and caliber
• Blur for non-focus areas of scopes
• Shooting while walking for AI infantry
• Close tank hatch and hide commander for tanks
• New infantry reloading system with magazine drops
• Multiple damage states support for buildings
• Enhanced bullet simulation
• New suspension simulation physics
• Bot support for “unusual” gamemodes
• Multiplayer training for beginners
• Normal and fast drive modes for vehicles in 1st and 3rd person
Misc and modding support
Undeniably, offering modding support is beneficial for both users and developers alike. We are very happy how talented our modding community is and what great ideas they are able to implement in our game. Hopefully, we can intensify our releationship with modders in the future! Check out their creations on the Workshop page.
• Possibility to adjust coop player counts
• Level down/up polygon tool in editor
• Auto-minimap generator
• Added in-game Workshop download and mod apply
• Increased max camera distances
• Environment sounds, wind, rain, thunder etc.
• Re-designed weapon sounds
• Re-designed sounds such as explosions, hits, walk sounds etc.
• weapon library
• Squad logos for player units
• Completely reworked human skins, vehicle skins, weapon skins
• Reworked vegetation
What was once a little game that used 4+ GB of storage, turned into a 30 GB RTS/FPS hybrid behemoth. The game started with 2 factions without vehicles to play on a couple of maps and gamemodes. In the meantime, the content has increased significantly and will only continue to increase after release. While stretched over the period of development, it doesn’t seem like that much, but if you put it into contrast, the differences are quite significant.
Gamemodes
Since the launch of the first version, we have added a multitude of new gamemodes for online and skirmish battles. Below we present the basic rules for each.
Domination - Capture strategic zones. The team with the most flags receives points, the more flags you have, compared to your opposing team, the more points you get. A gamemode for competitive players.
Last Man Standing - Defend your Forward Observation Base and capture ammo depots that will give you extra manpower to call in new units. Annihilate your enemy by capturing their FOB.
Combined Arms - Helicotpers, tanks, armored vehicles and infantry, all combined in large maps for intense battles. Same rules as Domination.
King of the Hill - Up to 4 teams. The team who controls the strategic zone receives payback on lost manpower. Capture the zone to win against all other teams.
Evacuation - Defend your evac zone against hostile AI players. This gamemode is designed for coop gameplay. To get additional resources, capture ammo depots.
Armored Combat - All about tanks and tanks and tanks!
Heroes - One soldier per player, make the most out of it!
Cooperative - Play the Singleplayer campaigns together with friends.
Factions
Upon launch, 4 factions will be available if you own the full version of the game. Contrary to previous games, we tried to accomplish factions that vary a lot more in their strategies and unique weaponry.
United States - Technologically advanced and well trained, the US Army is prepared for every battle. But the quality comes at the cost of quantity.
GRM - The GRM collected their equipment by scavenging government supplies and receiving foreign support.
UAF - The UAF are Arab government forces and the counterpart to the GRM. During the second singleplayer campaign, you will rise up against the UAF and join the GRM to topple the government.
Rebels – The Eastern European Rebels are a very interesting faction, as they combine modern Russian and Western equipment with Cold War era weaponry.
This was just a small fraction of what is new in Call to Arms, but it should provide a good overview. Thank you for reading and for your support. Let’s rock this game!
For a complete list of changes, please check out the full change-log.
We released two new factions in beta for Call to Arms. The factions are available to Ultimate Edition owners, until they are completed. After completion, they will be available for free, if you own the Deluxe Edition, or Basic Edition. The Basic Edition requires unlocking of units, via our progression system. For Deluxe and Ultimate, you will also receive a new campaign to play soon.
If you want to try the new factions out now, you can do so by upgrading to the Ultimate Edtion. Please be aware, that the new factions are not complete and will undergo some changes in the next couple of weeks.