We are excited to announce that Battalion is now expanding its theatres to the mediterranean with the introduction of the new Italian competitive map ‘Savoia’.

Savoia has an interesting development story that has grown from the passion of the competitive COD community.

Mark ‘Phantasy’ Pinney started work for us as a QA Tester in our studio in May 2017. It didn’t take us very long to realize he had a little experience in Unreal Engine and a real talent for level design. Step by step we started giving Phan bigger and bigger tasks as he evolved from a professional gamer into a professional game developer.



We first asked Phan to make a “Shipment style TDM level”. He gave us Coastal….
If you look at the center of Coastal you can actually see how it was supposed to play like a small 1v1 level.

One day Phan showed us a ‘blocked out’ (basic design) level he made for his University Project, he originally showed us as a joke… But when we imported it into Battalion and ran around in it, Phan’s experience in COD had let him to accurately design the feel and scope of a Call of Duty style map.

We decided to investigate further as our level design team started working with Phan to flesh out the map further. Then, in February 2018 we started adding art to a thoroughly designed level. You can see that transition from the passionately designed map into full blown video game environment in the gif below.





Savoia has wide streets and architectured crossing points for some great sniper battles. In an effort to reduce the ‘corner jumper’ meta, we’ve added more windows, more open points and less tight chokes.

We’ve also opted to push for more verticality this time. Previously some of our maps are guilty of being too one dimensional. We’re pulling away from many CSGO design principles that work for CS and making our own design rules based off of feedback from the community across all of our maps.

Very soon we’ll be releasing a detailed update on the changes coming in Major Update #2 (MU2) based on the feedback we’ve been receiving over the last 3 months. This will also be our last new competitive map for some time as our art team turns their focus onto Major Update #3 (MU3) and Arcade 2.0 as well as content for full release such as the Russians!




Throughout the development of Battalion our goal has been to bring back the feeling of old school style games through the movement and feel of weapons in Battalion 1944. To progress these older titles we needed a new game mode fit for a 2019 gaming audience that was accessible whilst inclusive of spectators as well as casters.

We wanted to try and encourage team work by forcing teams to ‘share currency’ in Wartide 1 and 2. Unfortunately, I think we all agree that there are too many players that are simply not interested in playing as a team. Furthermore it is totally acceptable for people to want to play a game on their own with their own strategies. However, we still want an aspect of sharing and teamwork in Battalion, therefore we are introducing our ‘Dual Currency’ system.

You will now be able to have your own personal in game wallet along with a separate team pool. Individual token pickups are rewarded straight to your personal wallet whilst team efforts such as planting or defusing the bomb and loss bonuses are awarded to the team pool.

You can donate an unlimited amount of your tokens to other individual players or to the teams pool, however the maximum you can withdraw from the team pool is ‘3 tokens’ per round.

We hope you agree that this is a step in the right direction for Wartide 2, we will be testing this revamped competitive mode with Early Access players prior to MU2’s update.


In the live version of Wartide, players currently are able to pick up and use enemy weapons within the round they acquired them but their weapons get wiped as the round resets. This means allied players don’t get the benefit/reward of keeping the weapons that they have picked up into further rounds, for example, allied players have no permanent way of taking a 1 shot Kar98 rifle from the other team and keeping it until the next round should they survive.

With Wartide 2.0 - this is all about to change!

Players will now be able to ‘save weapons’ between rounds. This means a surviving player can pickup and take secondary weapons into the next round, therefore lost rounds still have value as you can scavenge an enemy weapon and keep it for the next round to get a crucial opening pick.

This will drastically change the dynamic of buying and saving weapons in the new version of Wartide and has been something players have been asking to have in competitive play for a long time now. We can’t wait to see how this singular change effects all levels of play.


For players less interested in the competitive side of the game there is good news on the horizon. We’ve started to focus our efforts more and more on what we’re calling “Arcade 2.0” a total rework and rebuild of the Arcade experience that will be going live with Major Update 3 (MU3).

From incentivising play time and objectives, to building maps that are designed solely for the Arcade experience. Arcade 2.0 will be another great turning point for Battalion 1944 and really provide it’s players with a well rounded choice of ways to play.

Thanks for tuning in and make sure you stay tuned we have lots of big announcements coming soon as there is loads going on over here at Bulkhead HQ. Look out for our series of Major Update 2 announcements coming including the full change log for you guys. Lots of good changes scheduled for June!

Thanks again guys,
The Bulkhead Team

If you follow our updates you might have seen that last week we announced that the M3 Grease Gun will be added to the Allied weapon line up. Well, now we are announcing the Axis equivalent that’s coming in our next Major Update #2 scheduled for June 2018!



The MP 28 is a 9mm submachine gun that will fit nicely into the new “eco” class we are adding to Wartide 2.0

The Axis eco weapon will be the MP 28, this means it will be useful in situations where your team wants to ‘force buy’. It’s a cheap, low damage submachine gun that doesn’t cost many tokens to purchase but will hopefully give you a spray of 9mm bullets that you could need to get out of a sticky situation or ambush an opponent!

When we looked for a weapon to fit the Axis “Eco” role this jumped out at us. It’s an older weapon that isn’t really seen as a classic “WW2 gun” but it is definitely something we can fit into the meta as an inexpensive eco weapon. We think it looks cool, our artists had a good time designing it and we hope you have fun using it for some face to face engagements in Battalion.


The MP 28 will be a low damage Submachine gun and it’s class will come equipped with 1 smoke grenade to help you & your team advance on objectives.

The additions of these two new weapons will add another layer to our Wartide 2.0 competitive game mode and build upon our first iteration of the game mode. You can read more about the Wartide 2.0 update here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/489940/announcements/detail/2632793340751347452


Disclaimer: We are currently in the process of testing and balancing these Eco weapons so their role and price could change at some point so make sure you stay up to date with this by following our future patch notes and updates our social media accounts.

Thanks a lot guys, we are eager to see your reactions to these weapons, how they play and how they fit into the meta so let us know what you think and stay tuned for our next update coming soon!

Some of you may have already seen from Twitter or Reddit that we will be adding the M3 “Grease Gun” to Battalion’s Armory in our Major Update 2 scheduled for June. We are aiming for this weapon to act as an “Eco Weapon” and is one of two new “Eco” weapons we’ll be adding as we will also introduce one for the Axis faction that we be announced soon.



Being designated as an “Eco Weapon” indicates that the Grease Gun will be a cheap automatic submachine gun and cost minimal tokens within our new competitive Wartide 2.0 game mode . This means it may not be the most powerful weapon in your arsenal but if used correctly in certain situations it can be useful to your game plan or if your back is against the wall!

When we decided to add the eco class, the M3 Grease Gun seemed a good fit for the US. In WW2 it was designed to be a ‘low production cost weapon’. It’s a small submachine gun that looks like it could belong in a tank instead of a Infantryman’s hands. We hope it's fun to run and gun with in close quarters and a kill with it can be hard earned but well deserved.



The Grease Gun is a low damage Submachine Gun and it’s class will come equipped with 1 smoke grenade to help provide cover for yourself and your teammates.

The additions of these two new weapons will add another layer to our Wartide 2.0 competitive game mode and build upon our first iteration of it (Wartide 1). You can read more about the Wartide 2.0 update here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/489940/announcements/detail/2632793340751347452



Disclaimer; We are currently in the process of testing and balancing these weapons so their role and price could change at some point so make sure you stay up to date with this by following our future patch notes and updates on our social media accounts.

Thanks a lot guys and stay tuned for our next update where we will be announcing the Axis eco weapon, can anyone guess what it will be?

What do you think the German light submachine gun will be?

Wartide 2.0 is coming! You as a community have spoken and we’ve listened to all your feedback about the original Wartide gamemode. We’ve taken that feedback onboard and have acted on it by creating an entirely revamped version of the gamemode we’re calling internally ‘Wartide 2.0’.

This re-engineered competitive mode will replace the current competitive gamemode - “Wartide” and will be released within our Major Update #2 coming in June, so get ready!

The largest concerns with the original Wartide were:

• No win / loss bonuses meant steamrolling became very likely.
  
• Having the losing team being forced repeatedly to play default class round after round when losing, wasn’t a fun experience and players would often leave rather than persist.
  
• The original Wartide system lacked depth to its weapons economy therefore all weapons were forced to be balanced and as viable as each other in terms of perceived value.

Wartide 2.0 intends to address these issues by adding an actual economy system which is shared entirely between your team.



The brand new Wartide 2.0 Tokens, which drop when a player gets fragged. (Only one token is ever dropped, even if the weapon’s value is higher than one token!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg6nW15cJys

Teams will start with a set amount of tokens that will deplete as the players on a team pick weapons from the shared buy menu, these weapons all have varying costs based on their effectiveness.

For example - the extremely powerful one shot snipers cost more than cheaper weapons such as the shotgun and the two brand new eco weapons we’re adding to the game! In this new system the much loved default carbine classes will be free so have fun with those.

Players gain more tokens throughout the match. Important actions within a Wartide 2.0 game will result in rewarding players and, in turn, their team with additional tokens.

This includes actions such as:

• Planting / defusing the bomb
  
• Consecutive round wins / losses
  
• Picking up tokens from dead players

We’ve had a couple of early external tests with top level teams from within the competitive scene to test the new format (without user interface). We’re currently working with a different UI designer to revamp the Wartide 2.0 user interface to communicate this new gameplay as simply as possible for new players and spectators.



This is a work in progress and is subject to change. Some UI weapon models are placeholders and will be updated before release

We intend to carry out more external tests with top tier players as we move toward polishing Wartide 2.0 before public release in June.

We feel these changes counter some of the issues that were raised about our original Wartide gamemode and we are really interested to see what you all think and as always we are keen for constructive feedback.

Playlists – Estimated Major Update #2 (June)

We fully understand that with lower concurrent player numbers, new and less informed players are finding it difficult to find other players to play with unless its during peak times. One of the ways we are going to help alleviate this issue is by removing both ‘unranked’ and ‘ranked’ playlist and merging them into one and the same under the menu option ‘Wartide’. This means players will all be searching under one playlist - instead of being split between 2, helping players who want to find matches in the new Wartide 2.0 gamemode.



The new Wartide will function the same as the previous unranked playlist.

This is a temporary measure until we’re ready to relaunch a brand new ranked playlist through our huge competitive matchmaking upgrade later in the year (which we will release more info on at a later date. This decision was also made as we feel the ranked experience of Battalion 1944 wasn’t to the standard we ourselves would’ve liked it to be in, let alone our players.

More on this below.


The current ranked matchmaking user experience is not good enough - to the point where we’re hearing players would rather play unranked than ranked.

Instead of bashing away at improving a system that isn’t working - we have been talking to a very popular third party service provider who loves Battalion 1944 to implement their widely loved and accepted matchmaking system directly into the game… whilst we’re hoping players aren't too upset by the closure of our own competitive mode - we’re hoping you’ll be able to face it for now as we have a great 3rd party replacement in the works that will be integrated into the game itself.

This will come with a reliable ELO system that tracks your progress, general stat tracking, match history and all the other good stuff that player expect from a top tier competitive experience.

This is only the beginning for this feature, as we’ve always wanted a way for 5 man teams to stack up against each other within the game. More info on this will be announced closer to the release time whilst we work out the finer details of the system in the meantime.


In keeping with our renewed plan from last week’s ‘moving forwards’ news update (which you can read by clicking here , we’ll be releasing another development update next week with more behind the scenes looks at the development progress of Battalion 1944’s new upcoming features.

Thanks for the continued support,
See you next week!

Tuna and The Bulkhead Team

Hey guys,

We felt it was time to get you guys more involved and release a news update to really let you guys know what’s happening internally at Bulkhead Interactive, and lay bare our plans for the future with the game. After reading this update, you will hopefully see the light of the tunnel in the same way we do - as we aren't going anywhere and neither is Battalion 1944.

Please understand: Anyone who has ‘quit’ playing Battalion 1944, we fully understand the reasons why you feel that way. The most complained about issues include:

1] Bugs/Crashes & Performance
2] Core Gameplay Issues and Not Enough Reasons To Play.
3] Lack of Concurrent Players (A side effect of the above issues)

This good news is that everything in the above list is entirely fixable over this next few months. This update is written as if you guys are partners, not just our players.


We want to address the reason behind the commital to major updates and less smaller updates/patches.

First of all it's important to understand our infrastructure as an indie company. We’re a small studio with lots of talent that’s being stretched over multiple disciplines. Producing a ‘live operations’ game that’s constantly being updated in a multiplayer space where players are now expecting the level of support of a game such as Fortnite (Epic Games themselves) is a difficult task with a small team size. This means the time of every individual working on the game is at max capacity - unless we chose to go further and sacrifice more of our personal lives to try and cover all bases.

Our core team members did that voluntarily, including weekends and overtime all the way up to and after our Early Access launch because we believe in Battalion 1944. We were also (and still are) doing all of this on sub-optimal build/deployment systems which has brought our update/patch schedule to a complete halt whilst we work on huge new content/features ready for major update 2.

It's no secret we needed to launch the game when we did. We put everything we could, financially and mentally into that launch. Thankfully, we were right to believe in the game and our community. The launch was extremely financially successful when taking into account our studio size, regardless of the mixed reception Battalion 1944 received. We’re now able to start reinvesting those profits back into the game directly, which includes addressing the problems with our infrastructure that has become exposed these past few weeks.

This includes; Hiring new talent, giving our dev team more time to work on polish and testing as well as investing in Bulkhead’s build system tech to test and deploy safe builds much faster. This all sounds great (and it is!) but the downside is that players won’t see the benefit of this reinvestment immediately, as all of this takes time to implement into the studios workflow.

This means Bulkhead Interactive will be able to update & support our games much better in the long term and that the current downtime between updates (which we understand is highly frustrating but cannot be solved overnight) won’t be an issue for us in the future. After Major Update 2, things can start to improve.

Thanks for being understanding and patient with this.


Here’s a quick overview of our main focuses going forwards, which we’ll be showing much more of over the coming weeks. This is our ‘top priorities’ list, so don’t worry if a smaller issue isn’t listed here.

Bug Fixes & Existing Issues

• Wartide 2.0
  
• Arcade 2.0
  
• ‘Faceit Arena’
  
• New competitive maps
  
• New arcade maps
  
• Updating existing maps
  
• Free for all deathmatch (FFA)
  
• New player models
  
• Core gameplay adjustments
  
• Huge new content additions for full release
  
• Improve the new player experience
  
• Make the user experience more rewarding & fun for all players
  
• Add incentives for casual players to return everyday
  
• Add more incentives for competitive players to compete at the highest level
  
• New competitive matchmaking system, light years better than before.
  
• Mapping tools
  
• Match replay system
  
• Improving our studio infrastructure for faster testing & releasing of new builds
  
• Performance optimisations

We’re changing the way we do communication going forwards. We’ve always wanted to be more hands on with the community and the opposite of a AAA studio that ignores its community. Instead of random Reddit comments and private DMs to smaller groups of people - we’re going to communicate in a much more official manor with regularly scheduled news posts yet still retain the accessibility to our Dev team we’ve been aiming to build through our Twitter accounts.

We’re a small team which, unfortunately, means we can’t keep up with the patch/update speed and frequency that players expect, as explained in the ‘Update/Patch Schedule Reasoning’ section of this update.

Over the following weeks we’re going to start by releasing almost weekly development updates to show you guys exactly what we’re working on. These will include preview screenshots and written explanations of why we’re doing everything we’re doing so hopefully you will all feel more involved in our Early Access process.


Despite the chants of 'Dead Game' - Battalion isn't going anywhere. Our team are working full throttle and we will see Battalion 1944 through to release. This isn't blinded stubbornness on our part. We truly believe not only is it right for us to finish what we started but that we can get through this early period in Battalion’s life and use our next Major Update to place the game on an upward trajectory.

Players who joined us in development on Day 1 of Early Access don't realise that our expectations have always been on the lower end of the scale in terms of concurrent players - this game was a love letter to a very small community that has mostly moved on from gaming. The fast paced 'arena shooter' genre isn’t the giant gaming behemoth it used to be and we knew that going into development from the beginning.

This game blew up beyond our expectations at Early Access launch because the people who loved the old school style of FPS games that they grew up with (and actually took skill to play) had a new home to come to. The fact that this genre isn’t as big as it used to be does not mean that Battalion 1944 wasn’t and can't be a viable game for us to run our studio on full time. We believe we’ve been shown you guys that enough demand is there for this style of game and that when we are ready to boost player numbers on a future polished version of the current core game we will be able to have a second coming for Battalion.

This is the reason we're going to continue confidently working on the game, polishing every aspect of the experience taking it all the way to release. It might seem quiet from us for now until then but rest assured that we are working furiously to achieve this goal. This includes new huge new content and features. We have plans to boost the player base at multiple points throughout the game’s future and intend to provide the hardcore experience we set out to make over 2 years ago.

Battalion 1944 will not go down in history as a failure. In a way, it has already been a success from an internal financial standpoint (which unfortunately you must consider even when creating cool things such as video games). Our goal was to sell enough units to be able to continue development for 12 more months. We exceeded that target. Yes, the game has fundamental bugs and issues - but everything about that is fixable over this next year. We intend to leave a legacy that Battalion 1944, our love letter to the games that have been left behind by popular culture in favor of modern design, can provide a home for the players left behind - however big or small that community may be.

In a years time, once that is achieved, I don’t believe Battalion 1944 will be looked upon as a failure (by anyone who actually thinks deeply about these things at least) - as hitting the critical mass of concurrent players that Fortnite and PUBG are hitting was never the realistic goal we had set out to reach. If anything, we’re on the road to succeeding in continuing development for the game we wanted to play whilst laying the studio’s foundations for continued support and future projects in years to come.

Our goal has always been to maintain a player base with enough casual players dropping in and out whilst sustaining a competitive environment outside of the game itself through community hosted tournaments. This was and still is our goal. It’s fully achievable too.


The fact that you're here right now reading this lengthy update during this rocky Early Access period, still playing the game and adding positive and constructive discussion on our Reddit/Discord community is a testament to the better half of Battalion 1944’s community as a whole. We have a lot of new features and content in the works and we can’t wait to share development with you over the next few months as we lead up to our next major update.

We want to thank all of you for your time spent playing and testing Battalion 1944. Please know that we are doing everything we can over this next year to make the game closer to what we would all love it to become.

- We are 100% committed to Battalion 1944. We are going nowhere and neither is this game. We’re reinvesting everything we’ve made back into the project. Bulkhead will grow and improve as a studio as we work on some awesome new content and address Battalion’s core problems. Thank you for being a part of our journey.

At 16:00 BST today ThePlays will be hosting the Blitzkrieg Open Championship GRAND FINAL on-stage at the Insomnia Gaming Festival. This comes after a gruelling group and knockout stage where we saw Penta Esports and Panthers Gaming fall to european teams Avenue Esports and the UK team Endpoint who will be duking it out in the grand final for their share of the £10,000 prize pool and golden weapon skins.

You’ll be able to watch the grand finals live on Twitch at http://twitch.tv/theplaysgg

Avenue Esports and Endpoint will go head-to-head in a best-of-five match.

This is one you do not want to miss!

If you missed the action yesterday you can rewatch the VODs right here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/245003150?t=02m01s




It's important to note that soon we’ll be releasing a Steam update that will layout our future plans with Battalion 1944. We’re fully aware that tournaments are not relevant to the majority of our Steam users and that polishing the game/adding new content is our number one priority - but we still thought it’d be great to share this update to show how great Battalion 1944’s current core community can be and the potential of this game’s future. We’re not going anywhere and this is only the beginning.

Our developers don’t just stick our heads in the sand. We’re listening and reading all of your feedback and comments and have spent the past month laying out and actioning a plan that will take Battalion 1944 through to full release and beyond with full support from our development team. We will share this plan publicly soon.

Right now we’re using this much small community ran tournament at the Insomnia Games Festival as a showcase of how great things can be for the community in the future. Please be mindful of this before commenting. We can only go up from here!

Thanks for your patience.

Bulkhead Interactive

At 16:00 BST today ThePlays will be hosting the Blitzkrieg Open Championship GRAND FINAL on-stage at the Insomnia Gaming Festival. This comes after a gruelling group and knockout stage where we saw Penta Esports and Panthers Gaming fall to european teams Avenue Esports and the UK team Endpoint who will be duking it out in the grand final for their share of the £10,000 prize pool and golden weapon skins.

You’ll be able to watch the grand finals live on Twitch at http://twitch.tv/theplaysgg

Avenue Esports and Endpoint will go head-to-head in a best-of-five match.

This is one you do not want to miss!

If you missed the action yesterday you can rewatch the VODs right here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/245003150?t=02m01s




It's important to note that soon we’ll be releasing a Steam update that will layout our future plans with Battalion 1944. We’re fully aware that tournaments are not relevant to the majority of our Steam users and that polishing the game/adding new content is our number one priority - but we still thought it’d be great to share this update to show how great Battalion 1944’s current core community can be and the potential of this game’s future. We’re not going anywhere and this is only the beginning.

Our developers don’t just stick our heads in the sand. We’re listening and reading all of your feedback and comments and have spent the past month laying out and actioning a plan that will take Battalion 1944 through to full release and beyond with full support from our development team. We will share this plan publicly soon.

Right now we’re using this much small community ran tournament at the Insomnia Games Festival as a showcase of how great things can be for the community in the future. Please be mindful of this before commenting. We can only go up from here!

Thanks for your patience.

Bulkhead Interactive

Hey everyone!

This morning we released a small patch for Battalion 1944 that will mostly focus on map changes, tweaks and fixes.

We want to thank everyone for their patience, support and compliments for our March 8th Major Update we released earlier on this month. This contained a tonne of fixes and improvements and was a lot of work. We got a lot of messages and we saw so many discussions about how this update fixed a lot of issues that people were experiencing so it’s great to see our efforts working and being appreciated.

We hope that it’s a little more obvious that we listen to the issues our community have and we work very hard to make sure they get fixed as soon as possible.

• Bomb fuse timer is now 50 seconds in Unranked/Competitive modes.
  
• Operator removed Frag Grenade and given Smoke Grenade instead.

Battery

• Added simple radar inspired minimap

Derailed:

• Added new tunnel to courtyard area from allied spawn to allow allies to avoid nade spam on middle and gain more map control at the start of the round.
  
• Added decals to recognise the community effort made to improve the map.

Liberation

• Lighting tweaks - clouds are now more visible.
  
• Closed the window in the open barn facing b site by barrels.

Manorhouse v2:

• Added a pallet to show where you can jump onto the A barn small roof.
  
• Removed a number of overpowered headglitch angles on B site by removing the platform stair banisters.
  
• Fixed collision around the crates on B site.
  
• Fixed the spot you could see under the wall from mid into A site.
  
• Fixed the pixel walk on the barn by A site.
  
• Fixed collision on apples crates to prevent proning inside the crates.
  
• Tightened up the collision around the crashed plane by the manor house.

Outpost

• Improved collision to stop players leaning through the concrete bunker walls for info.
  
• Re-added the collision to the crates in axis spawn which was accidently removed.

Invasion

• Added collision to the cloth cover on B site to stop players hiding inside it.

• Smokes now show on the large overview minimap.
  
• Fix for killfeed colours sometimes showing incorrectly whilst in spectator.
  
• Fix for crouching / proning being instant when spectating.
  
• Spectators now see which team won the round instead of just seeing "Round End".

• Fix for killfeed colours sometimes showing incorrectly whilst dead.
  
• Fix for grenade markers using your dead body location and not the location of the player you are currently spectating.
  
• Fixed spectators being applicable to votes.
  
• Fixed a few low-occurrence client crashes

• Network Icons added to the top right of the HUD

• Removed launcher.
  
• Temporarily moved region select into the “Main Menu’s” top bar.
  Note: If you want to change your region after selecting one you must restart the client
  
• Changed the grey player colour on the minimap to yellow.

We've changed the way that admins update their server files.
Please read the new info provided on wiki.battaliongame.com


Our next major update will be a big one containing lots of great changes and additions. Until then we are sinking into developing more content and diving into developing fixes for continual issues.

Coupled with our next major update, there are some pretty cool announcements regarding Battalion and it’s future coming soon so make sure you stay tuned for those!

Hey everyone!

This morning we released a small patch for Battalion 1944 that will mostly focus on map changes, tweaks and fixes.

We want to thank everyone for their patience, support and compliments for our March 8th Major Update we released earlier on this month. This contained a tonne of fixes and improvements and was a lot of work. We got a lot of messages and we saw so many discussions about how this update fixed a lot of issues that people were experiencing so it’s great to see our efforts working and being appreciated.

We hope that it’s a little more obvious that we listen to the issues our community have and we work very hard to make sure they get fixed as soon as possible.

• Bomb fuse timer is now 50 seconds in Unranked/Competitive modes.
  
• Operator removed Frag Grenade and given Smoke Grenade instead.

Battery

• Added simple radar inspired minimap

Derailed:

• Added new tunnel to courtyard area from allied spawn to allow allies to avoid nade spam on middle and gain more map control at the start of the round.
  
• Added decals to recognise the community effort made to improve the map.

Liberation

• Lighting tweaks - clouds are now more visible.
  
• Closed the window in the open barn facing b site by barrels.

Manorhouse v2:

• Added a pallet to show where you can jump onto the A barn small roof.
  
• Removed a number of overpowered headglitch angles on B site by removing the platform stair banisters.
  
• Fixed collision around the crates on B site.
  
• Fixed the spot you could see under the wall from mid into A site.
  
• Fixed the pixel walk on the barn by A site.
  
• Fixed collision on apples crates to prevent proning inside the crates.
  
• Tightened up the collision around the crashed plane by the manor house.

Outpost

• Improved collision to stop players leaning through the concrete bunker walls for info.
  
• Re-added the collision to the crates in axis spawn which was accidently removed.

Invasion

• Added collision to the cloth cover on B site to stop players hiding inside it.

• Smokes now show on the large overview minimap.
  
• Fix for killfeed colours sometimes showing incorrectly whilst in spectator.
  
• Fix for crouching / proning being instant when spectating.
  
• Spectators now see which team won the round instead of just seeing "Round End".

• Fix for killfeed colours sometimes showing incorrectly whilst dead.
  
• Fix for grenade markers using your dead body location and not the location of the player you are currently spectating.
  
• Fixed spectators being applicable to votes.
  
• Fixed a few low-occurrence client crashes

• Network Icons added to the top right of the HUD

• Removed launcher.
  
• Temporarily moved region select into the “Main Menu’s” top bar.
  Note: If you want to change your region after selecting one you must restart the client
  
• Changed the grey player colour on the minimap to yellow.

We've changed the way that admins update their server files.
Please read the new info provided on wiki.battaliongame.com


Our next major update will be a big one containing lots of great changes and additions. Until then we are sinking into developing more content and diving into developing fixes for continual issues.

Coupled with our next major update, there are some pretty cool announcements regarding Battalion and it’s future coming soon so make sure you stay tuned for those!

We’re pleased to say that Early Access has been a great decision for Battalion 1944! This major update contains huge changes to Battalion entirely based off of player feedback. The type of feedback you can only get by taking advantage of Early Access. We’d like to thank each and every one of you for spending time giving us the critical feedback AND testing that Battalion very clearly needed.

“There is only so much you can test with 20 people in an office! Any developer will tell you that time is the most valuable thing in game development. I’d like to thank you personally for giving us your time and making Battalion a more stable, balanced, and more fun game to play.”
- Joe Brammer / Studio Lead

For helping us test, improve, and fix Battalion 1944 through its first month of Early Access, we’d like to reward all of the players who purchased the game in its first month, 5 War Chests, that will be available in your inventory from March 8th.

We have been constantly working on fixing and improving core Battalion features. We have been releasing almost weekly updates to continually improve upon our product to make it the best experience possible for you guys. Today we are able to give you guys our first huge content update - with more news updates coming in the near future.

This update contains new maps, reworks of existing maps, weapon balancing, A LOT of crash fixes, performance improvements, major network fixes, sound improvements, match making changes, XP increases and gamemode changes and teasers!


We’ve heard your feedback on the Wartide gamemode - we fully understand the mode’s potential and what must be done to reinvent the gamemode, as we’ve hinted at before. We will be returning this summer with Wartide 2 which uses ‘a form of currency’. In the meantime we’ve temporarily changed how Wartide works whilst we remaster the mode.
Our goals and reasoning for the temporary change is to try and balance the weapons perfectly by giving players the ability to pick almost whatever they want

The largest issue with the gamemode was that making a comeback was extremely difficult, even with the power of the default class in the right hands.

As a temporary measure, we’re making all weapon classes (bar the most powerful SMG & Sniper classes) unlimited. This is to keep the losing side in the game & allow more player choice. As a side benefit - unlimiting weapon classes also helps us study every classes perceived value to players - which will help us decide on classes worth within the future revamped Wartide gamemode.

The grenade pool has also been removed in favour of grenades being tied to classes.

Temporary Weapon Class & Nade Breakdown:

• Rifleman - 1 Smoke, 0 Grenade, Unlimited.
  
• Pathfinder - 0 Smoke, 0 Grenade, 3 cards per team.
  
• Heavy - 0 Smokes, 1 Grenade, Unlimited.
  
• Marksman - 0 Smokes, 0 Grenade, 3 cards per team.
  
• Operator - 1 smoke, 0 Grenade, Unlimited
  
• Utility (Default) - 1 Smoke, 1 Grenade, Unlimited

Please remember that these changes are only temporary whilst we completely overhaul the actual wartide gamemode over the next coming months.

(Used for both Competitive & Arcade)

This new map is, you guessed it, located on a Normandy beach and it will consist of the Allies attacking the Axis through their defensive bunkers and buildings to achieve victory! This map contains a balance of long routes which will be great for sniper duels intertwined with smaller spaces that promote close quarters combat. You’ll have to manage your utility usage as a team as well as manage your full arsenal to exploit the advantages and weaknesses of both bomb sites.

As with all maps during Early Access - this is Invasion’s first iteration ready for testing. We’re not afraid to change maps based on your feedback at all and we have been looking at all posts and opinions regarding changes.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWx5yb1lKqU&feature=youtu.be

This leads us onto the next huge content changes within this update:


Liberation:

• New & improved lighting.
  
• Opened the broken barn & windows inside of Bombsite B.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOWSK9F42p4

Manorhouse v2:

• New & improved lighting.
  
• New “A long” area to allow for more tactical nades.
  
• Opened barn door by A site which looks into A long.
  
• Shortened axis main road into an L shape that leads to mid.
  
• Closed route by crashed plane.
  
• Reworked main entrance to A from mid.
  
• Closed mid connector barn.
  
• Re-opened mid trench by adding a new ‘drop’ into the trench.
  
• Widened mid trench & added cover.
  
• Added new skill jump out of mid trench into mid.
  
• Reworked B long.
  
• Closed the broken wall angle from trench/wooden to B long.
  
• Opened & reworked the apple gardens area behind B house.
  
• Moved fountain into apple gardens.
  
• Reworked B bombsite layout to be less claustrophobic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqPqVungkdE&feature=youtu.be

Battery

Battery has received a lot of TLC this update as the most unloved map from both a player and developer standpoint. This map was never aimed to be a competitive map - hence the lack of love given to it compared to some of our other maps. But this is something we’ve begun to act on internally, starting with improving casual maps. More to come on our casual progress in future updates.

Battery’s upgrades have improved player movement and added other possibilities within the map. This has been achieved by removing a lot of the annoying "Invisible Walls" that players would often feel when playing on it. With these new changes hopefully the sections of the map that are still untraversable will be better telegraphed to the player. This should feel much more liberating and give players much more freedom to be creative during firefights.

General gameplay improvements have also been made to the map adding a sense of verticality in places, with more objects and interesting areas to play around. We've also opened up new routes and made new and improved sites for TDM/CTF/DOM and of course Wartide if that’s what you want to play!



Updated Mini Maps:

Remember the CS:GO simple radar inspired minimaps from Battalion’s Alpha?

We have made those even better. These mini maps take a long time to develop - and as our map layouts have become a little more concrete, we’ve been confident to be able to remaster the mini-maps for you guys. These will make key areas highly visible and remove the clutter from the maps to allow you to figure out player positions and map layouts easier.




Thompson & MP40 Changes:

• Maximum bullets to kill at furthest range reduced from 11 to 10.
  
• 2 shot kill range is now significantly shorter.

XP/Reward Amount Changes

We’ve changed the way XP is rewarded so that you’ll be rewarded more for playing the game adding the ability to level up faster and gain free War Chests more regularly. Players will now reach level 10 (competitive minimum rank) much quicker! In some cases players will now earn 4 times the original amount of XP.

The new XP reward amounts are as follows:

Competitive -
GameWinScore = 1500xp
GameDrawScore = 900xp
GameLossScore = 500xp

Unranked -
GameWinScore = 1200xp
GameDrawScore = 700xp
GameLossScore = 450xp

Arcade -
- Domination
GameWinScore = 600xp
GameDrawScore = 350xp
GameLossScore = 200xp

- CTF
GameWinScore = 600xp
GameDrawScore = 350xp
GameLossScore = 200xp

- TDM
GameWinScore = 600xp
GameDrawScore = 350xp
GameLossScore = 200xp

Servers/Netcode

Check out Battle(non)Sense’s video on Battalion 1944’s Netcode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFzbJzl3zT8
Whilst his review of our netcode is positive - we’ve taken steps towards improving on his feedback and this is the first step towards improving Battalion 1944’s netcode even further.

• Improved interpolation netcode to reduce the effect of peekers advantage of high ping players.
  
• Network alteration to movement replication.
  
• Added hidden functionality for client UI network icons (icons coming soon).
  
• Added SEA servers.
  
• Merged NA servers into one location (Chicago - Temporary during Early Access).
  
• Removed South American servers due to low player counts.
  
• Removed hidden ELO score from unranked/arcade games.
  
• Competitive Matchmaking will find other players faster in populated regions.

We’re fully aware that matchmaking is not in an ideal state right now - we have plans to improve all players’ experience both during Early Access and for full release. We have some huge information to share in our next big news update about a partnership deal that will be great for Battalion 1944’s future. Thanks for sticking with us as we move through this temporary period. Many of you may have seen us alluding to working with ‘Faceit’. We’d like to inform you that it is much more than that!

Spectator

• Smoke grenades now have the same particle effect trail as grenades in spectator.
  
• Spectators will now always hear round win music at the end of a round.
  
• Spectator player colours on the minimap now follow xray / status bar colours (blue/red).
  
• Spectators should now see +5 +10 kill rewards when spectating players.
  
• When using autocam - we’ve inflated a player action score if they are the last person left on their team. It's most likely that this person is the most exciting player to watch for clutches with the odds stacked against them.
  
• Small fix for spectators in dedicated comp games seeing everyone on the minimap as their unique colours instead of nation colours.
  
• Weapon animations are more synced with spectator. Specifically weapon reloads & grenades.
  
• Fix for spectator auto camera causing FOV iron sight issues.
  
• Auto camera now plays death cam on dying spectated players instead of instantly switching to the killer.

Misc Additions

• Added AFK/Idle auto-kick.
  
• Added profanity filter.
  
• Added Manorhouse V1 loading screen.
  
• Added player setting to adjust minimap zoom level.
  
• Improved VOIP stability.
  
• Added brightness/gamma settings.

Fixes

• Fixed some code inconsistencies which would cause certain clients to crash.
  
• Fixed div0 error causing 3D weapons to not show on the inventory screen.
  
• If a warchest fails to open - error message has changed from "Please contact support." to "The War Chest has not been taken. Please try again." when failing to grant a skin.
  
• Fixed spectator memory leak causing client to crash (sorry Blitzkrieg!)
  
• Fixed the social voting menu always disappearing after death/between rounds.
  
• Fixed up certain redirectors and removed corrupted assets (in preparation for modding).
  
• Fixed a possible crash on bomb defusal.
  
• Fixed bomb defuse/plant getting locked out if a player moves outside of the bombsite bounds while attempting either action.
  
• Fixed the ability to view a players steam profile from the social menu.
  
• Fixed minimap markers being upside down when the setting ‘Fixed Map Rotation’ is enabled.
  
• Fixed second bomb spawning when planting or defusing in bomb mode.
  
• Fix for killfeed incorrectly making players other than yourself white.
  
• Potential fix to third person automatic weapons occasionally not making sound.
  
• VOIP - No longer receive UI notifications from players who are muted.
  
• Training is now disabled if you are in a party (this caused matchmaking issues).
  
• Only enabled texture streaming off by default if VRAM > 3GB.
  
• Fixed surrender votes occasionally failing after round 12.

Note: If you’re continuing to experience hard crashes please post a bug report in the Bug Reporting section of our official forums detailing exactly what happened alongside your PC specs and as much potentially useful information as possible. If you work with us and provide us with as much detail as you possibly can to help us figure out the root cause of the issues then we can better tackle and solve these problems in future updates.


You may have noticed we’ve dramatically slowed down on marketing and pushing the game to streamers, new sites and new players (quick example: opting out of Square Enix’s latest publisher weekend promotion). This is our decision. Your feedback has been amazing in helping us identify the core issues with the game - which was the exact reason for us entering Steam Early Access.

Keeping a core small & hardcore playerbase who keep dropping in/out during early access to help us test and give feedback on the game has always been the plan for early access, with much bigger explosion at full release. However, the launch hype train and a drastically larger early access launch than expected clouded most players view of our actual intentions of growing a small community from the ground up as we develop the game together.

We will have a much larger written update coming soon regarding this entire concurrent player base ‘issue’ that players outside of the core Battalion community have become increasingly obsessed over. This coming update will fully detail our plans for this year, how we intend to improve the short term experience for all players trying to find other players as well as long term plans to grow as we head towards a huge content and media explosion at full release next year.

This should help alleviate the concerns for our hardcore fans who are worried about the ‘dead game’ comments from uniformed players who can’t see more than 1 week into the future. We’ve landed some huge partnerships, big content plans and exciting developments ready for full release next year.


Offline LAN support has been delayed as we need more time to work on this feature. We’ve been committing our time to other places, as you can see! Sorry!


On March 7th Insomnia & The Plays will be announcing a hardware sponsor for The Blitzkrieg Open Championship specifically for EU teams travelling to the UK. This service will be free and specifically for teams travelling from outside the UK. Whilst it’s late, we saw an opportunity to help a partner and our players. The Blitzkrieg Open Championship is enabling the developers, tournament organizers, and future sponsors to see Battalion 1944 in a competitive offline environment. To avoid any major issues when a significant prize pool is on the line this summer, it is an important milestone for us. We ask for your support.

Information for team applications:
In order to apply for free PC’s for your team, first make sure you meet the following requirements:

• Confirmed full EU teams representing organisations only
  
• You are competing in the Blitzkrieg Open at Insomnia62.

To apply:
They must also sign up to the tournament (link found on this page: http://ukmasters.gg/insomnia62/)


Processor: Intel Core i5-8600K Coffee Lake CPU, 6 Cores, 3.6 - 4.3GHz
CPU Cooler: Chillblast 120 CPU Water Cooler
Motherboard: Z370 Gaming Motherboard
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB Graphics Card
Memory: 16GB DDR4 Memory
Solid State Drive: 250GB Solid State Drive
Hard Drive: Seagate 2TB 7200RPM Hard Disk
Monitor: Asus 24” VG248QE Monitor

The sponsor will not provide the peripherals (mouse, keyboard, headset)
Email us at esports@game.co.uk to apply for your team and we will chat with you directly.
Last date for applications will be Thursday 15th March and you will be informed if you are successful within 24 hours of application.


Tomorrow night at around 7pm UK time Brammertron will be live on Twitch playing Battalion with KingHoward, Big Tuna and other Bulkhead developers as well as talking directly to you guys by doing a live Q&A. This gives you guys a chance to talk directly and openly with our studio lead about the March 8th update and Battalion’s future. Brammer will also be dropping Warchests whilst on stream!


We hope this update provides some useful additions as well as some helpful tweaks and bug fixes. We want to thank you for buying into Battalion 1944’s Early Access testing period, we appreciate all your feedback and patience. Please remember Battalion 1944 has been in Early Access for just over 1 month. We are with you guys for the long term and we are working hard to get the game prepared for when we aim to explode out of Early Access into full release and bring new players into the game.

Remember: This client update will launch on the 8th March, 2018.

Happy fragging - more updates coming soon!

The Bulkhead Interactive Team.