Good morning everyone,

We’ve pushed Hotfix 2 on all platforms. This addresses the missing hedgerows in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and the Admin message pop-up issue:

• [SMDM] Hedges are missing on the map after Update 15
  
• [RCON] Message player pop-up doesn't register required keyboard input

U15 on PC comprised some night maps that still need further preparation for release. We have removed:

• Utah Beach Warfare Night
  
• Omaha Beach Warfare Night
  
• Hill 400 Warfare Night

These maps will launch in future content updates on all platforms when completed.

Thank you!

Hello everyone,

We hope you're enjoying Update 15 and Mortain! An unintended issue surfaced with last week's update, removing hedgerows from Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. You may have noticed...

The hedges will be reinstated in Hotfix 2, which is due ASAP, alongside a fix for the admin message pop-ups.

For now, please see the changes that have been pushed live in Hotfix 1:

• [Offensive] Attackers are able to spawn vehicles in inactive HQs
  
• [Offensive] Defending commander can not spawn vehicles on two of the Headquarters of the map
  
• [XR-064] Unable to send invites to other users
  
• [15.0][Mortain] Changing the Texture Quality will crash the game
  
• The server name in the top right corner of the Scoreboard will show up as "HLL Server" instead of the actual name on Win10
  
• [Offensive] Attackers are able to spawn vehicles in inactive HQs when there is a player in the enemy team
  
• [Mortain] All instances of the thin white tree asset are missing collision
  
• [Mortain] Collision issue when attempting to enter certain houses while crouched/prone.

We'll update you when Hotfix 2 is ready!

Hello everyone,


This update brings Mortain to Hell Let Loose – a new map and exciting environment to experience for all modes, based on the US defence of the French town of Mortain.

Mortain is our first map release; a significant milestone for us, created and refined with your feedback. Your dedication to Hell Let Loose helps us deliver content that serves an authentic WW2 experience. We’re delighted to see you all jump in and play today!

We’ve also updated Sainte-Marie-du-Mont – increasing overall playable space around the town to produce a better gameplay experience. Delving into these changes below, you can see how we’ve provided more routes in and out of the capture point, creating more viable outpost/garrison options and flanking opportunities.

Two new Skirmish mode maps are now available to play: Mortain and SMdM

Please scroll down for the full changelog and U15 information, including a look at the new German “Oak Leaf” Paid DLC.

Mortain sits in a shallow valley – where the US rallied against German troops amid Operation Lüttich. The battle took place in August 1944, in Normandy, France.

Units from the 30th Division, including the 2nd Battalion, 120th Infantry, and two tank destroyer platoons, were dispatched to relieve the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry. Their directive was to defend the town of Mortain, strategically utilising Hill 314 (also known as MontJoie) as a tactical defensive and overlook position.

During Operation Lüttich the town was destroyed, left in ruins with only a few buildings standing. The destroyed version of the town will be featured in the map.

Offering a plethora of notable locations – both historical and natural – Mortain features themes of contrasting areas throughout. Rock formations permeate the map alongside hilly areas of countryside and farmland.

Mortain - Environment Art

It brings the team great pleasure to finally release Update 15 and our new map, Mortain.

Since joining the project, the team at Expression Games have worked with our partners to deliver a map that offers a new and exciting world to experience in Hell Let Loose, while honouring the legacy that Black Matter had left for us.

Being our first map release, we wanted to gather feedback from the community early on, and as previously mentioned in other briefings, we cannot thank you all enough for supporting the PTEs that helped shape this map. Hell Let Loose has one of the most dedicated fanbases within online gaming, and although there have been some challenges bringing it to the standard previous Normandy maps have set, you have been instrumental towards its development and have made us accountable in creating quality gameplay and visuals.

Since the last PTE, the Environment Art team have been focused on fixing as many bugs and visual issues as possible for release, as well as incorporating some new dressing and polish. We have also supported Technical Art in producing some crucial optimisations, within Mortain and in particular textures across the game. We hope that these efforts mean you’ll enjoy the varied terrain and vast forestry of Mortain at its best performance yet.

To read the developer briefing from the PTE, which has additional details about Mortain Environment Art, Level Design and Front End Updates, click here.

During the last Mortain PTE, there was a known issue where aiming down sights caused noticeable discrepancies between LODs across the map, with foliage, in particular, losing shadows or changing silhouette significantly. This is an issue that is present across the game, however, due to the high contrast lighting used in Mortain, this was much more noticeable to the point where this was impacting gameplay, particularly with longer-range weaponry. There was a collaboration between Code, Technical Art and Environment Art to look into this issue, and a fix was finally found and implemented by Gage Griffiths - Senior Programmer at Expression Games.

The fix consists of two console commands that are run when you join a game within Mortain. To keep performance across Xbox Series S/X, PS5 and PC consistent, different values for these commands are set based on the platform.

Firstly, the density of foliage was scaled down slightly across the map. This was fine-tuned to ensure there is not a noticeable loss in visual quality, but enough to where we retain performance. The commands and values we used for this are:

PC - foliage.DensityScale 0.8
Console - foliage.DensityScale 0.65

Secondly, Unreal Engine uses a calculation based on how much of the screen a particular asset takes up, to determine what level of detail that asset renders. When you aim down sight, a tree appears larger on the screen so the game renders a high-detail version of it, but when you stop looking down sights the tree takes up less of the screen so a lower-detail version is rendered instead.

The fix essentially alters the distance from the player where the higher detail foliage would swap to a lower detail asset. These are not exact figures, but as an example, previously a tree may have been 10,000 triangles at 10 metres away, swapping to 5000 triangles at 20 metres. This has shifted so that the tree would still be 10000 triangles at 20 metres away, with the swap to 5000 triangles happening at 40 metres, meaning a tree has to be much further away before the lower detail asset is rendered.

The exact values we set are:

PC - foliage.LODDistanceScale 2
Console - foliage.LODDistanceScale 1.3

The results of our testing are extremely positive, and we hope that if you managed to play Mortain during a previous PTE you will notice that this is a huge improvement from before.

As this is an issue that has been in the game for a long time across all maps, and the results have been promising on Mortain, I can confirm that this is a fix that we are looking to implement across the entire game, which should improve foliage LOD issues on all maps. We are also confident that this would bring huge improvements to some urban maps, in particular, Stalingrad, as a large portion of the map including buildings are technically rendered as foliage, which was a performance-saving technique used by Black Matter.

Due to this being a game-wide change, we want to ensure there is adequate testing and feedback before it’s live across all maps, so Mortain will be the only map in Update 15 to support this change. However, if feedback is positive and the consensus is that assets are ‘popping’ less for players without performance impact, this is something we are eager to implement in a future update for all maps.

We have made every effort to ensure Mortain is ready for release, but if you experience any issues while playing, please don’t hesitate to give feedback through the appropriate discord channels or social media. The team frequently reads comments and shares videos with each other, so if there are any comments or issues you have surrounding the map we want to hear them.

Lastly, I’m pleased to share and hope you enjoy some final renders of Mortain. I’m incredibly proud of what the team has produced, and I hope these images showcase a new benchmark for content in Hell Let Loose going forward.

Ryan Thomason-Jones - Senior Environment Artist, Expression Games

Mortain - Technical Art

The Technical Art team have been fine-tuning the performance around the Mortain town area to accommodate the additional enterable buildings. This was a combination of LOD merging, forced distance culling and removing shadow casters on any object already in shadow. This was to ensure we retained the detail and storytelling of the interiors while reducing the cost of the extra detail.

Throughout the town, the Environment Art team made a wonderful set of modular destroyed building assets, creating a wide variety whilst keeping material and texture costs to a minimum. This, in turn, meant that we had smaller assets, however, this also increased the mesh draw calls, especially with shadow and occlusion checks. To address this as we did not want to create combined render meshes driving up the memory cost and with that texture cost, we created a series of shadow proxy assets that were lower in complexity and limited to one simple shader meaning a single shadow and occlusion call.

Many combinations of walls and buildings benefited from a Hierarchical Instanced Static Meshes pass, similar to that done with buildings in El Alamein (HISM is an instancing method that allows for better memory performance, supports LODs with good asset culling which results in better rendering performance).

On this map, we also limited the use of HLODs (Hierarchical LODs). One of the drawbacks to using HLODs extensively was increased memory overheads. This was limited to the town area and only used for medium-sized buildings.

In addition, the Technical Art team ensured that there were no unnecessary occlusion checks and unique assets, which were not adding to storytelling to save on mesh and texture memory.

To create a believable atmosphere for the destroyed part of town, we had to take into account the amount of dust that would be present in the air. However, adding a large number of dust particle effects can negatively impact performance due to overlapping translucent sprites creating overdraw.

To achieve the desired effect, we decided to create a fog to simulate the presence of thick dust around the buildings. Since using volumetric fog would cover the entire map, we opted for shader-based localized fog volumes instead. By placing a single volume over the destroyed area and adjusting the shader controls, we were able to control the fog's height, density, and colour. This approach helped to achieve the desired effect without the need for a large number of particles.

Although the fog worked well, it lacked movement. To fix this issue, we added a few variations of dust particles. However, we kept these fairly limited and added a couple of shader tricks to improve performance. The main shader trick we used was to scale the sprites down based on the player's distance from the effect, which reduced overdraw. Scaling the sprites down to nothing eliminated any render cost.

We also had to be mindful of when the player walks through the dust particles. Lots of large translucent sprites filling the screen could significantly impact performance. To tackle this problem, we used a similar method as the distance from the player. Only in this instance, we faded the alpha and scaled the particles as you moved through them, reducing the chance of frame drops. Having long sightlines with lots of particles could be costly. However, a combination of optimized VFX with a few shader tricks allowed us to create an area that looked heavy in dust with minimal impact on performance.

Technical Art team, Expression Games

Sainte-Marie-du-Mont - Map Updates

To coincide with the release of a Control Skirmish mode for Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, we looked into issues commonly brought up about the map as a whole across various community forums. Keeping in mind that the map is a fan favourite we chose to focus solely on the most impactful changes, those being to address the lack of enterable areas within the town and the inaccessible Brécourt Manor courtyard.

When tackling the updates to the town centre in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, we started by focusing internal playtests on just that space. Utilising feedback from these playtests, along with community sentiment derived from various social media platforms, we were able to help find and improve the key problems on just those areas of the map.

Our biggest focus was on increasing the overall playable space around the town, helping to provide more routes into and out of the capture point. This increase in playable space also lends itself to creating more viable outpost/garrison placement options, and more flanking opportunities for attackers and defenders alike. Within these newly opened spaces, additional enterable buildings were placed to further increase the opportunities for attackers and defenders to seize the capture area around the church.

Sainte-Marie-du-Mont Updates - Before and after, newly opened up spaces

The above GIF showcases the reduction in blocking volumes throughout the town centre, in turn showing the extent of the newly opened space. These changes should not only improve navigation throughout the town but also help drastically reduce instances of being stopped from entering an area because of an invisible wall.

The following images show before and after shots of the four main quadrants of the town, North West, North East, South East and South West. The areas captured highlight the largest scale changes to the playable space, with new routes that lead directly into the town.

Kienan Southern - Junior Level Designer, Expression Games

The set-up for this Control Skirmish mode is focused around the Cattlesheds capture point from Warfare and Offensive, allowing us to capture a nice balance of spaces that should make both infantry and vehicle combat intense.

The bocages surrounding the Cattlesheds provide cover and routes into the capture point and the space within it provides engineers ample opportunity to bolster your team’s defences.

For tanks, the nearby open fields afford the space to bombard the opposition from a distance, or to act as support for the infantry pushing the objective.

Kienan Southern, Junior Level Designer - Expression Games

Sainte-Marie-du-Mont Updates - Town Area, North West


Sainte-Marie-du-Mont Updates - Town Area, North East


Sainte-Marie-du-Mont Updates - Town Area, South East


Sainte-Marie-du-Mont Updates - Town Area, South West

Also known as Eichenlaubmuster, this was one of the many types of camouflage patterns used by several divisions within the German forces. Often worn in the autumn, it is unique with its distinct colourisation.

For players, wishing to combine this uniform and match it with headwear of the same pattern, we would recommend using the Leopard Covered M42 helmet, already available, in-game.

Matt White - Creative Director, Expression Games.

• New Map Mortain - day & overcast variants (This supports Warfare, Offensive & Control Skirmish)
  
• New Control Skirmish - Sainte-Marie-du-Mont Skirmish - day, night & rain variants
  
• Sainte-Marie-du-Mont Warfare - night variant
  
• Mortain Themed Front End Menu
  
• German “Oak Leaf” - Paid DLC
  
• Muzzle Flash Improvements
  - - - Added multiple light sources resulting in a more dynamic muzzle flash and physically accurate reflections
  
• Additional Nameplate Occlusion Settings
  - - - A player-requested feature whereby the user can toggle nameplate occlusion on friendly players in their team and/or squad
  
• In-Game Store Improvements
  - - - Implemented a “Purchased” label on any DLC item that has already been redeemed on the player’s account.

General

• [In Game Store] The UI will lose focus if entering and leaving the ‘Featured’ tab
  
• [Barracks] Character previews in the ‘Select Your Role’ menu appear too large when playing in ultrawide
  
• [Uniforms] The German Africa Corps DAK Uniform has an incorrect belt buckle
  
• [Vehicles] The Churchill MkIII gun will clip into the body of the tank if the gun is rotated 180° backwards and depressed to its lowest level while zoomed in
  
• [Skirmish] The map key may not be present for certain players
  
• [Weapons] The German Satchel placed on the back of the tracks on Stuart M3 ‘Honey’ is not defusable
  
• [Field Manual] In the Equipment > Watch tab there is no mention of the Forward Positions.
  
• [Field Manual] Incorrect information regarding Recon Vehicles is present in the Vehicles section
  
• [Field Manual] In the Equipment > Ammo Boxes tab in the explosive ammo section the rifleman is not mentioned
  
• [Field Manual] Small grammatical error present in the Field Manual > Deployment > Spawn Locations
  
• [Field Manual] The Forward Position description in the Field Manual says it can't be placed if too close to another Garrison
  
• [Field Manual] The summary at the top of the Outpost, Garrison & Forward Position Field Manual page does not mention Forward Positions
  
• [Weapons] Weapons that are held with two hands become misaligned with the player's hands in TPP whilst leaning
  
• [Locomotion] Dive to prone is playing multiple instances of footsteps during the transition
  
• [Weapons] Commonwealth faction weapons have no audio feedback when reloading
  
• [Weapons] Animations were not playing correctly when the user performed certain sequences of firing and reloading with the Webley Mk VI Revolver
  
• [Console] The 'Skirmish' activity does not appear in 'History of completed activities' following a network disconnection
  
• [RCON] Restarting a server also resets the map shuffle option to ‘TRUE’
  
• [Vehicles] Destroying a T-70 tank does not award any combat points
  
• [Skirmish] "Enemy Forward Position" & "Place Forward Position" tac map markers are only visible to the user that places it
  
• [In Game Store] Selected DLC shifts onto the featured DLC by itself when entering
  
• [In Game Store] The Uniforms tab is missing localisation in all supported languages
  
• [Equipment] TPP Animation for using the Watch is broken on all Factions
  
• [Weapons] TPP M1A1 Thompson reload animation causes the character's elbow to twist unnaturally
  
• [Console] In-game store does not populate after a suspended user change.
  
• [UI] The Back button loses functionality if the menu and the scoreboard are opened at the same time
  
• [Uniforms] British helmet names in the Barracks & Loadout screens have historically inaccurate formatting
  
• [UI] Grammatical error in the loading screen tip regarding the Ammo Carrier loadout
  
• [UI] Kick player prompt remains on screen for the Officer if a player leaves its unit
  
• [UI] The Enlist Screen is only showing up to 100 servers

Practice Range

• The map is unaligned to the out-of-bounds parameters of the tactical map by 10m
  
• Garrison cannot be placed in the Practice Range
  
• The Half-Track tactical map icon always appears at the far top-left of the map
  
• Missing grass foliage in the Practice Range
  
• Tank turrets have no audio when moved
  
• The scarecrow on the shooting range at the 75-metre mark has its feet sunk into the ground

Driel

• The Driel Skirmish - Day loading screen shows a different game mode name than the other variants

El-Alamein

• [Skirmish] The setup time blocking volume is in the wrong position
  
• [E4] Players can use an Airhead to spawn into an inaccessible area

Foy

• Metal SFX and PFX encountered when shooting the dead cows

Utah

• Metal SFX and PFX encountered when shooting the dead cows

Purple Heart Lane

• [C2] Players can drown when crouched in a small body of water

SMDM

• A blocking volume extends into the playable area on the north side of Saint Marie du Mont updates
  
• Trees render as large blocks in the distance
  
• A specific plane asset is missing player collision
  
• The grass is culling at around 40 metres

Utah

• [G6] The player drowns near a hedge

https://store.steampowered.com/app/686810/Hell_Let_Loose/

Update 15 deploys a fresh experience to Hell Let Loose with Mortain, a new map for all modes! Created and refined with help from the community, Mortain sits in a shallow valley – where the US rallied against German troops amid Operation Lüttich. The battle took place in August 1944, in Normandy, France.

During Operation Lüttich the town was destroyed, left in ruins with only a few buildings standing – which features in Mortain.

Offering a plethora of notable locations – both historical and natural – Mortain features themes of contrasting areas throughout. Rock formations permeate the map alongside hilly areas of countryside and farmland.




https://store.steampowered.com/app/686810/Hell_Let_Loose/

"We built a f***ing minefield in Hell Let Loose" - SoulSniper, 2024

Created by our War Correspondent SoulSniper, Mission Minefield will transform an innocent wheatfield into a truly terrifying and explosive minefield.

On May 25th from 8pm EST - 10pm EST squads will compete against each other in Mission Minefield, to see which squad can get the most soldiers through to the other side in one piece.

Squad Leaders will have to navigate the minefield without knowing where the mines are, and use move markers on the map to direct each member like pawns on a board game - what could go wrong?

Sign up to participate here: https://dyno.gg/form/7f775d6e *

Check out the event preview video here:

And may the best squad win.

*please note this link will require you to sign up via Discord

Hello everyone,

And welcome to the Update 15.0 PTE, this PTE will be running throughout the weekend and we’re looking forward to getting your input on some of the content we’ve been working on listed below.

• New Map: Mortain - Warfare, Offensive & Control Skirmish (featuring day, dusk and overcast/rain variants)
  
• Map Updates: Sainte-Marie-du-Mont (with new night, dusk and overcast/rain variants)
  
• New Control Skirmish: Sainte-Marie-du-Mont (featuring day, night and overcast/rain variants)
  
• New Front End: Mortain Theme

• Mortain Warfare - Day
  
• Mortain - Control Skirmish - Overcast/Rain
  
• SMDM - Warfare - Night
  
• SMDM - Control Skirmish - Rain

Mortain has been a labour of love for the Environment Art team for some time. The reception during the previous PTE and the feedback following it has had a profound and positive effect on the map’s development. I would like to extend sincere thanks from us all, for the community rallying behind us as a development team and putting your faith in us to deliver a map that players want to play.

As mentioned in a previous dev briefing, focusing on your feedback from the last PTE, we have made significant changes within the town adding numerous enterable buildings to aid players in urban combat. Alongside this, we have introduced new structures within destroyed buildings, to offer new verticality and sight lines across Mortain’s town.

We have continued to take steps in optimizing the map and with great support from Technical Art, various changes across meshes, textures and shaders have been made to increase framerates on both PC and console.

During the last PTE, grass, hedge, and wheat culling happened much too early on. We have increased the draw distance of all foliage significantly, which should help to aid players hiding in tall grass and foliage. Due to the sheer performance impact of rendering thousands of blades of grass 300+ metres away, there may still be areas where at long distances foliage does not render as expected, but we are approaching this issue as a high priority and you should notice a significant improvement over the last PTE.

You may notice when playing Mortain, that upon aiming down sights, there can at times be a sudden change between LODs and shadows close to your camera. This is a known issue that is unfortunately visible across every Hell Let Loose map, but due to Mortain’s lighting being particularly bright with strong shadows, it’s much more apparent. We are actively investigating ways to combat this, however this is a long standing issue in the game and is tied to how LODs are handled at different FOVs. Although this issue won’t be fixed for the PTE, we hope that this doesn’t impact your experience of Mortain negatively.

I would like to extend a personal thank you to the QA and Community teams who diligently helped filter through feedback and helped give the Environment Art team and Level Design team a much clearer picture of how we can polish Mortain for this PTE. Although this isn’t the official release of Mortain, we are confident through their efforts and ours, that this version of Mortain will be an experience you enjoy and we can’t wait to hear your feedback both positive and constructive.

Ryan Thomason-Jones, Senior Environment Artist - Expression Games

To celebrate this PTE and release of Mortain, we have updated the main menu environment for the game to include a scene from one of the main streets in the town. With this being the first new map since Black Matter departed, we wanted to do something special with the theming, so decided to make the world black and white reminiscent of films and pictures from the past.

The new environment is significantly lighter than the previous scene performance wise, so console players in particular should find that the scene runs much smoother, and assets load in quicker on full release.

Adding to the wartime footage aesthetic, post process effects such as static and scanlines were added, along side some fantastic work from the audio team, who adapted the Hell Let Loose music to sound as though it was playing through a gramophone.

Although our primary objective is to make engaging and beautiful in-game maps, we hope that the next time you boot up Hell Let Loose, you immediately feel immersed and it adds to your experience of the game.

Ryan Thomason-Jones, Senior Environment Artist - Expression Games

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to every player who took part in the previous Mortain PTE and provided feedback on the map. The Level Design team has taken the time to read every comment provided.

What was a clear takeaway from this is that the town of Mortain lacks a sufficient amount of enterable buildings. Having assessed the layout of the town, and taking into account optimization factors as well as sight lines, we have added more than 40 new enterable buildings, not just in the town, but across the entire map:

• More enterable buildings in the town around the Hotel De La Poste capture point
  
• The building at Les Aubrils Farm has been opened up
  
• Several buildings around Le Ferme Du Deschamps have also been opened up
  
• Other main design changes since the last PTE:
  
• The capture point “Le Hermitage Farm'' has been renamed to “Les Aubrils Farm” - this is a more thematic name for the region that we have captured
  
• The capture point “Farm of Bonvoisin” has been renamed to “Le Ferme Du Deschamps” - this is a more thematic name for the region that we have captured
  
• The capture point Southern Approach has received a cover pass

In addition, the Level Design and Environment Art team have been working on adding upper floors to the ruined buildings in the town. This creates additional opportunities and strategies for players to utilize the buildings more efficiently.

Carl Rutter, Senior Level Designer - Expression Games

Mortain is our first original Control Skirmish Mode and therefore the first map developed in tandem with the Warfare and Offensive game modes.

For the Control Skirmish mode of Mortain, we decided on making the La Petite Chapelle Saint-Michel the active capture point to fight over. Not only does this sit well within the centre of the map to provide a balanced experience for both forces, but we also feel that it is the strongest capture point in tone and theme.

Mortain has the same rules as the other Control Skirmish maps, with 2 transport trucks, a medium tank and 2 sets of pre-placed nodes per force that allow players to jump straight into the action.

Carl Rutter, Senior Level Designer - Expression Games

Thanks to the feedback provided by various community members, time was taken to adjust and iterate on the Southern Approach capture point. The focus of this was to address the lack of clarity on what was being fought over, along with a general lack of cover.

To tackle this, we increased the overall defences in the area to help sell the ‘defence in depth’ theme of the capture point, along with adjusting the location and size of the hard capture area itself. These defensive improvements consisted of an increase to the trenches in the area, a pillbox, a supporting barbed wire ring around the point and the narrative addition of a fight already taking place here between armour units.

Kienan Southern, Junior Level Designer - Expression Games

To coincide with the release of a Control Skirmish mode for Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, we looked into issues commonly brought up about the map as a whole across various community forums. Keeping in mind that the map is a fan favourite we chose to focus solely on the most impactful changes, those being to address the lack of enterable areas within the town and the inaccessible Brécourt Manor courtyard.

To this end, a lot of time was put into opening up new routes and buildings within the town centre. Opening these areas should allow for a more 360-degree approach to the capture point, reducing bottlenecks for players moving towards the church and providing more safe havens for outposts and defensive/aggressive garrisons.

The addition of new enterable buildings also allows for more close-quarter gunfights, as well as vantage points for machine gunners to aid their squad's approach through the streets.

Kienan Southern, Junior Level Designer - Expression Games

The set-up for this Control Skirmish mode is focused around the Cattlesheds capture point from Warfare and Offensive, allowing us to capture a nice balance of spaces that should make both infantry and vehicle combat intense.

The bocages surrounding the Cattlesheds provide cover and routes into the capture point and the space within it provides engineers ample opportunity to bolster your team’s defences.

For tanks, the nearby open fields afford the space to bombard the opposition from a distance, or to act as support for the infantry pushing the objective.

Kienan Southern, Junior Level Designer - Expression Games

These PTE sessions are a way for you as a community to feedback on Hell Let Loose work in progress, which means we can look to implement your feedback before a patch or update is released. Although we can currently only hold public testing sessions on Steam, we encourage everyone to take part to be able to share feedback.


For today’s session, there is a list of unfinished items/bugs that we’re aware of, including:

• [Mortain] The tactical map does not match the visual representation of most areas in-game.
  
• [Mortain] Collision issue when attempting to enter certain houses while crouched/prone.
  
• [SMDM] [15.0] Numerous parachutes are scattered around the north of the map with incorrect positioning.
  
• [Mortain] Aiming down sights can cause jarring shadow and LOD changes.

You are welcome to both stream and record PTE footage, but as these sessions are showing unfinished work, it’s always good to let your individual communities know that the footage is from a PTE session, where you might encounter unfinished items, bugs and other issues.


Once you have completed a game and are ready to provide feedback, please use the forms below!


Check your Steam Library for the Hell Let Loose (Public Testing) application, or re-download it from the Steam store, you’ll want to boot this version up to take part in the PTE!

Once you’re in and have selected a server, you’ll be able to test out the new game mode!

Submit Feedback: https://forms.office.com/e/kf9f2e6cRY

Share Bug Reports: https://forms.office.com/e/d12qrUXEqz


Please note:

Because PTEs are run on development servers that have logging activated, you will experience a slight decrease in performance. You will also not earn any XP and your progress will not be carried over to the live game.

Hello everyone,

We've just deployed a hotfix to address some issues that surfaced with Patch 14.8. Please see the changelog below.

We're continuing to work on Update 15, and are currently looking at scheduling in Mortain PTE 2.

We'll share more news on that next week! Thank you for your continued feedback and support.

• [Fixed] Restarting the game will reset the progression of achievements on XBS
  
• [Fixed] [Offensive] The Commander can't select the first row to spawn vehicles
  
• [Fixed] [RCon] All Skirmish variants are shown in the Admin Log as "Warfare"
  
• [Fixed] [Achievements] The "Rule Breaker" achievement unlocks also with Infantry/Recon full squad
  
• [Fixed] [PS5] [Skirmish] Won Skirmish matches are incremented 4 times than the default amount for all relevant Skirmish Achievements on PS5
  
• [Fixed] The AT-Gun of the British Forces cannot be destroyed by tank or anti tank rounds.

See you on the frontlines. o7

Hello everyone,

Patch 14.8 – British Forces Rework Part 2 and the launch of Skirmish, is now live on all platforms.

This update completes the British rework phase of development. We decided to expand on the initial release of the British forces last year following a swath of valuable feedback. After two content updates comprising overhauls, we feel confident in the enhancements and improvements to transform this portion of the game. Thank you for your assistance in helping us accomplish this!



We’ve also implemented a new game mode, Control Skirmish. Based on feedback from previous PTEs, we’ve focused on refining our ‘seeding’ (rebranded to Control) game mode which originally featured on Foy and Kharkov.

Skirmish is a gateway experience for new players of Hell Let Loose. This game mode allows players to get straight into the action and experience some of the core mechanics of Hell Let Loose with fewer moving parts.

This is a quicker 50vs50 experience for some of our core audience who want to hop in for a few games and immerse themselves in the battle immediately.

Featuring a new type of garrison - the forward position, each side will be limited to one Armour squad and one Recon squad; the Commander can only spawn in medium tanks and no artillery pieces will be placed on the map.

Both teams start with control over their half of the map while the middle sector is neutral with a single capture point. Both teams must fight, attack and then defend this single capture point. Only the middle section of the map and the single capture point can change hands. At the end of the game, the team that controls the capture point is declared the winner.

To support this, there will be dedicated servers on PC, running these Skirmish maps, 24/7, so they’re always available for you to join.

• HLL Official - Europe #16 > HLL Official Skirmish - Europe #01
  
• HLL Official - US East #12 > HLL Official Skirmish - US East #01
  
• HLL Official - Asia #16 > HLL Official Skirmish - Asia #01

When analysing the previous iteration of El Alamein, the map’s desolate landscape stood out as an area for improvement. Building placement has increased substantially to over 300%, whereas rocks have increased ~33%. We also recognised that many vehicle routes failed to connect throughout the map, featuring frequent dead ends – frustrating armour units. El Alamein was famous for its tank battles, and we’ve made changes to improve and add complete routes.

We’ve also worked on the HQs and capture points to improve balance and gameplay.

We’ve redesigned El Alamein to deliver an improved gameplay experience that also accommodates Skirmish. Map visuals and layout have been enhanced and improved – bringing graphical consistency to the level with an overall colour and tone pass. We’ve transformed the roads to increase visual quality; populated many open, empty areas; and new military posts have been set up across the map.

El Alamein has undergone a remarkable transformation, thanks to the hard work of the Environment Art team aiming to update the map making it feel refreshing and engaging. We recognised the frustrations and disappointments expressed by the player base regarding the previous state of El Alamein. Therefore, we dove into the level, eliminated dull open dead spaces, and elevated its overall appeal. The revamped version features many enhancements, including large and small canyons, new trench areas, revitalized town sections, abundant cover to thwart pesky snipers, an expanded oasis, and a newly incorporated town.

Additionally, lush foliage now adorns the entire map, enriching it with vibrant hues alongside the exciting new additions of ruins. But, for us, the most exciting new addition is the mines! You can move across the map through cool tunnels giving new routes and opportunities for gameplay across the map. We've listened to your feedback, and we hope you enjoy these improvements - welcome to the new and improved El Alamein.

Jack McFarland, Environment Artist - Expression Games

The Technical Art team have been working on steadily addressing the performance issues throughout Hell Let Loose. Some of these issues that stand out have been cataloguing and optimising excessive texture sizes, addressing missing VFX LODs, reducing excessive mesh densities and ensuring LODs are drawing at more performant distances.

The recent art refresh brought along a welcome facelift to El Alamein and with it some challenges for the Technical Art team. Working closely with the artists to ensure their vision was not compromised while keeping performance within acceptable limits. A lot of this was down to addressing the many new assets that had been added (adding to a strain on the CPU). This meant merging most assets as Hierarchical Instanced Static Meshes (HISM is an instancing method that allows for better memory performance and supports LODs with good asset culling which results in better rendering performance). When doing this pass we asked the artists to approach it with small to medium-sized HISM merges as we were mindful when reducing the draw calls on the CPU not to overburden the strain on the GPU.

In addition to this, we also addressed issues where there were excessive triangles on some assets (e.g. aircraft hangers) and proposed a much more efficient way to build them.

We addressed some VFX issues whereby some particles would continue to render beyond the point that they were visible to the player. An optimisation pass was implemented on the character driven VFX of dust/mud kick-up, we created LODs and set them to cull at a distance that was more performant and not noticeable by the player.

When looking at specific issues around frame drops, it was discovered that burning or damaged vehicles had a particle light with an excessive radius attached to the effect. This was drawing several times adding to light complexity and this has since been removed.

As well as optimising, we have been looking at improving the look of the fire VFX and adding some more atmospheric dust based effects to El Alamein.

There is also ongoing R&D into some new weather VFX coming to HLL which we can talk about in more detail in the coming briefings.

Technical Art Team - Expression Games

With Oasis being the central Capture Point on the map, it sits right in the heart of our talented Environment Art’s piece of map refresh work, so we decided to make that the centre of attention for Skirmish - Control Mode. The mixture of high, open elevation juxtaposed with the ruined compounds provide an interesting battle ahead which should cater to most playstyles.

Carl Rutter - Senior Level Designer, Expression Games

With Control Skirmish’s focus on a single Capture Point, we wanted to utilise an area of the map that catered to multiple playstyles, with a myriad of approaches to gain control of the area.

To accomplish this, we created a custom Capture Point just north of the traditional “South Railway” objective in Warfare and Offensive, allowing players to fight over the “Underpass”. To enhance this area we placed additional train cars to block overly long sightlines straight down the railway tracks, as well as increasing the foliage and defensive structures along the embankments and surrounding the underpass itself.

Kienan Southern - Junior Level Designer, Expression Games

The British Airborne played a pivotal role in Operation Market Garden, with Driel being one of the locations involved.



The plan employed all three Allied airborne divisions. The British incurred the hardest task of all – their directive was to capture the integral bridge over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem; the most distant objective from the Allied front line. Around 35,000 Allied parachute and glider troops were deployed to the operation.

The Red Devils DLC is playable in all recon and infantry squad roles.


Polish Paratroopers played a key role for the Allied forces in Market Garden. Held responsible for the failure of Operation Market Garden, Major-General Stanislaw Sosabowski was used as a scapegoat to blame for the Battle of Arnhem fiasco.

Only the inhabitants of Driel recognised the devastating struggle the Polish army troops endured; suffering heavy losses through unfavourable circumstances and poor planning by the British High Command. They see the Polish soldiers as their liberators, with General Stanislaw Sosabowski at their head.

The Polish Parachute Brigade DLC is playable in all recon and infantry squad roles.

With Black Matter’s inclusion of the Driel map into the game we did extensive historical research into this part of Market Garden (the Allied operation in Holland in 1944). One of our key findings was the role of the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, part of the Allied airborne deployment, alongside the British 1st Airborne Division. In particular their actions at Driel and the bitter fighting and sacrifices made to aid in the British withdrawal from Arnhem. To honour the Polish involvement at Driel, we have included a new Polish paratrooper uniform and beret for players who wish to represent the Polish forces in this battle.

Matt White, Creative Director - Expression Games

Created as a thank you for your support, especially over the past 12 months, the British Near Miss helmet references that trailer and the ensuing rework for the British forces.

As part of this rework of the British content, we have looked at what weapons the British forces would have been equipped with. With that in mind, we have introduced:

• Sten Gun Mk V
  
• No.4 Mk I Sniper
  
• Thompson 1928A1
  
• No.82 Gammon Bomb

These are more thematic reflective, representative of the weapons used in the theatres, and more authentic to some of the forces in the battle—for example, the Sten Mk V used by the British Airborne in Operation Market Garden.

We also looked at what vehicles and armour should be included in El Alamein and Driel. Part of this work was to include armour that is more reflective of the history and so for El Alamein we have included:

• Crusader Mk III (Medium Tank)
  
• M3 Stuart ‘Honey’ (Light Tank)

And for Driel we have included:

• Churchill Mk VII (Heavy Tank)

Extra effort was made to include a second type of Churchill with the Mk VII to better reflect the variant of Churchill that would have been present in Western Europe in this point of the war.

Matt White, Creative Director - Expression Games

Having the opportunity to create iconic weapons and vehicles for Hell Let Loose is a
tremendous honour for myself and the team, and represents a very fun challenge in
the form of doing justice to the real-world look and history of said assets.

Maintaining historical accuracy is of paramount importance on a project like this,
everything from the exact model (and sometimes even sub-model) that would have
been used in that theatre at the time, the tools and equipment, and of course the
camo and markings all play into ensuring the asset is as accurate as possible whilst
also playing and feeling well in-game.

As these are the first new weapons and vehicles that Expression Games have added to the
game, we were particularly keen to ensure that these assets looked as awesome as
possible. Plenty of time was spent gathering reference images and combing through
videos to cover every angle, and even more time was dedicated to modelling and
texturing these assets to both look great and tell a story about the kind of conflict
they would have gone through.

I truly hope you have fun taking the M3 Stuart for a spin around the dunes of El Alamein, and land some nasty headshots using the new No.32 Scope for the No.4 Mk 1!

Daniel Midghall, Hard Surface Artist - Expression Games

The No.82 Grenade (aka the ‘Gammon Bomb’) is a new and unique piece of equipment dropping into Allied loadouts on Driel for Patch 14.8.

This detonate-on-impact device can be a devastating ambushing weapon against enemy infantry and a useful tool for disabling and destroying enemy vehicles.

Due to its size, shape and weight, the throwing distance of the Gammon Bomb differs from other grenades in-game by having a shorter range. Players have the ability to underarm throw this grenade for the purpose of dropping it onto enemy positions from above, however, trying this at ground level may lead to… an unfortunate outcome.

The table below gives an idea of how the No.82 can damage or destroy different vehicle types.

Jack Jenkins, Game Designer - Expression Games

• Skirmish

• El Alamein Refresh
  
• Driel Updates

• No.4 Mk I Sniper (6 mags)
  
• Sten Gun Mk V (8 mags)
  
• No.82 Grenade ‘Gammon Bomb’
  
• Thompson 1928A1 Horizontal Grip Drum Mag (5 mags)
  
• Thompson 1928A1 Horizontal Grip Stick Mag (8 mags)

• Churchill Mk VII (Heavy Tank)
  
• Crusader Mk III (Medium Tank)
  
• M3 Stuart ‘Honey’ (Light Tank)

• British Airborne (Paid)
  
• Polish Parachute Brigade (Paid)
  
• Near Miss Helmets - British 8th Army (Free)

• The gore filter has been introduced as requested by content creators from the player base

General:

• [Fixed] Smoke grenades in the shadow of other objects appear to flicker with light and shadow
  
• [Fixed] Performance issues on all maps are observed when firing the flamethrower
  
• [Fixed] [TPP] Molotov's can be seen through smoke clouds
  
• [Fixed] Breathing while sprinting audio can overlap itself
  
• [Fixed] Sten Gun asset is positioned slightly too high when ADS-ing
  
• [Fixed] After changing video settings and leaving the game the settings did not apply to the game
  
• [Fixed] Loading in some specific maps will trigger a softlock - Rarely seen however a fix was found
  
• [Fixed] Character model arms will flail wildly & unrealistically when quickly switching between loadout items
  
• [Fixed] The top of the Churchill Mk III heavy tank has an area where there is no player or bullet collision
  
• [Fixed] The Churchill Mk III has high armour instead of medium on its rear panel
  
• [Fixed] The Lewis Gun has a capacity of 47 rounds rather than 97 and a different number of magazines for each British faction
  
• [Fixed] Players can hide the satchel charge inside the Churchill Mk III tank
  
• [Fixed] The Medic's armband is missing from the Khaki Drill uniform

Purple Heart Lane:

• [Fixed] [PHL] Sky rain PFX are generally invisible & do not match the intensity of the rain effect on the ground
  
• [Fixed] H1 Trees outside the playable area are brighter than others also low-quality bushes are present

Kharkov:

• [Fixed] Some destroyed vehicles across the map present stone SFX and PFX
  
• [Fixed] [F6] Burned house wrecks and snow assets are missing collision in sector F6

El Alamein:

• [Fixed] [B6] Tank stops after colliding with the sand near the main road
  
• [Fixed] [F7] [C3] Significant FPS drop in the sector when turning toward the landscape
  
• [Fixed] El Alamein's colour scheme feels flat
  
• [Fixed] Bullet collision is not present on canvas covered barrels and tires in multiple sectors
  
• [Fixed] Vehicle outlines can be seen on the tactical map
  
• [Fixed] Incorrect penetration value on wooden railings
  
• [Fixed] [C6] The smoke in sector C6 presents LOD issues
  
• [Fixed] Airfield Hangers - sandbag asset not rendering
  
• [Fixed] Invisible bullet collision is present on the hangar's door
  
• [Fixed] Uneven terrain can cause built items to glitch into the ground or sky
  
• [Fixed] [I4] Floating Cart Asset located in sector I4
  
• [Fixed] Infantry mines will partially clip through the rear floor of the aircraft hangers
  
• [Fixed] H8 The cliff found in sector H8 presents misalignment issues
  
• [Fixed] [A5] The cliff found in sector A5 is misaligned with the ground
  
• [Fixed] H4 Wooden Pallets present draw distance issues
  
• [Fixed] In multiple hangars the terrain is misaligned
  
• [Fixed] [E3] Misaligned rock formation in sector E3
  
• [Fixed] [B5] A pile of crate assets is floating on sector B5
  
• [Fixed] A ripple effect is visible in a small radius around the player when driving on flat surfaces
  
• [Fixed] [J6] Assets in this sector are missing textures, polygon faces or are very noticeably misplaced
  
• [Fixed] [J5] Assets in this sector are missing textures, polygon faces or are very noticeably misplaced
  
• [Fixed] [C9] Assets in this sector are missing textures, polygon faces or are very noticeably misplaced

Driel:

• [Fixed] [A1] Windmil presents LOD issue
  
• [Fixed] [G1] Black textures can be seen on some steps
  
• [Fixed] [H9] A road is misaligned on sector H9

Hell Let Loose console & PC owners will receive the ‘Hell’ Pattern Trench Gun for free in Classified: France '44!



You are tasked with commanding an elite team of allied special operators in Nazi-occupied France wreaking havoc in the run-up to D-Day in an ambitious turn-based tactics game. Take on the might of Germany's war machine and launch daring raids in occupied territory.

Classified: France ‘44 releases March 5th on Steam and current-gen consoles.

No activation is needed, it will show in your inventory if you own HLL.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2085370/Classified_France_44/

Hello everyone,

We loved your positive reception to the Mortain changes shared in the latest dev brief! Thank you for participating in PTEs and sharing your insights – we’re pleased with the valuable feedback the testing periods have provided.

We’re delighted to reveal the Hell Let Loose 2024 roadmap! All content stipulated below is not an exhaustive representation of this year’s content – all updates will continue to comprise quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes.

The content ahead represents a stable development plan and allows us to confidently meet targets, having learned from overly ambitious roadmaps in the past. Everything below will be released across all platforms.



We’ll share more on each aspect of the roadmap as we progress.

Thank you, we’ll see you on the frontlines in an exciting year for Hell Let Loose!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/686810/Hell_Let_Loose/

Hello everyone,

Welcome to our Mortain-focused dev brief, highlighting various changes and implementations thanks to your feedback.

Mortain is a new map for Warfare, Offensive and Skirmish gamemodes. This map is based on the US defence of the French town of Mortain, which sits in a shallow valley – where the US rallied against German troops amid Operation Lüttich. The battle took place in August 1944, in Normandy, France.

In this dev brief, one of our Senior Environment Artists will cover enterable buildings, provide additional context on Collégiale Saint Evroult and La Petite Chapelle Saint-Michel, discuss the environment; foliage and more. We want to be as transparent as possible when it comes to our development process on new maps – and we hope this provides useful insight into what it entails.

Mortain is due for release after part 2 of the British Rework.

I would first like to say a huge thank you to all of the players who participated in the Mortain PTE. The team across all disciplines are incredibly grateful for the tremendous amount of feedback, both positive and constructive about your experiences. Now we've had time to thoroughly process your comments, let’s talk about some of the pain points and changes we have already started to implement thanks to your suggestions.

Another thing to note is that when we have released images of Mortain in the past, I've used offline rendering techniques to produce the best image quality possible. But, to give you the most up-to-date images since the map is still in development, the in-game screenshots within this dev briefing are taken straight from the engine in real-time, so what you are seeing is Mortain from a developer-only point of view and may not represent in-game accurately. All of the work in this briefing is a work in progress and subject to change.

We acknowledge that players generally really enjoyed the urban combat that Mortain had to offer. Still, one consistent piece of feedback we received is that it was disappointing how few buildings were enterable by the player.

In truth, this is a concern we had about the map for a while, but due to the amount of new content required for Mortain and the significant amount of work required to retrofit old interiors with our refreshed buildings, we decided to create a singular variation of enterable buildings that could be reused across the map. Upon reflection, however, we understand that more enterable buildings are a priority for players. I'm happy to say that we have successfully created 3 more variations of enterable buildings and have begun their rollout in Mortain.

In real terms, due to the number of reusable assets we utilise within Hell Let Loose maps, this means up to 63 buildings already placed in Mortain could potentially be accessible across the map, with the possibility of more to come.

Given that we want the map to flow and provide enjoyable combat for players, our Level Design team now has the task of deciding which buildings they feel appropriate to be enterable - and will be implemented with support from our Technical Art team, to ensure this doesn't impact performance.

In addition to this, we are currently producing an extended amount of modular pieces used in our destroyed buildings kit, including floors, stairs and strategically placed inner walls, to offer players a similar experience to fully constructed enterable buildings, while maintaining the destroyed appearance and feel we offered in the PTE. We are excited to implement the new assets and thank the community for raising concerns which have created positive changes for Mortain's urban gameplay.

As with any PTE, members of the development team jumped into Mortain to experience first-hand how players were feeling as it went live and one piece of consistent feedback we heard was that the town, and in particular the buildings, felt too clean and lacked immersion.

Admittedly, with Mortain being the first map constructed by Expression Games, optimizing old assets and applying memory-saving shaders was our priority. We wanted to tackle performance issues seen across other maps, and although we researched to make sure textures and materials were dated correctly for the period and location, we missed the mark on creating a town that feels engaging and at war. Now that we are confident that our optimization work has been effective, we will look to polish the visual aesthetic of the town to be more in line with an active battlefield.

For us, that will include reworking textures to look old and grimy, smaller varieties of rubble will be implemented to compliment our existing piles and a VFX pass will be done as well as other ways we are looking to add polish and immersion.

Besides enterable buildings, further feedback we received, is that players were disappointed that both the Collégiale Saint Evroult and La Petite Chapelle Saint-Michel are unenterable.

We completely understand the community's frustration with the decision to have them closed off, and so I'd like to give a brief explanation of why this was the case.

Collégiale Saint Evroult - The large church within Mortain town, is a historically accurate building that remained largely untouched during the conflict, but I should start by saying that we agree that it really should be open.

The decision to keep the Collégiale Saint Evroult closed was made very early on in the development of the map. As with any game, there are a certain amount of people working on a given piece of work, and at the time we prioritised our efforts across lots of content which is to be revealed in the roadmap. Being a historically accurate building, we would look to provide an accurate representation of the interior, as well as the exterior, which is a large task given its size and technical complexity.

Having reassessed what we need to focus on to meet our proposed schedules, we have decided to concentrate our resources on delivering the rest of this year’s roadmap content polished and on time.

That being said, we want to be as transparent and open with players as possible, so the possibility of us opening the church post-release of the map is not out of the question, we just need to balance it across our priorities as a team and the roadmap going forward. For the time being, we will look to add set dressing around the church so it’s clearer to players that this isn’t accessible.

Much like the Collégiale Saint Evroult, La Petite Chapelle is a historically accurate building that would require a bespoke interior mesh, and although it could be feasible to open the Chapelle in time, we feel getting the town to a good place is our greatest priority, and so this also won't be available on the release of Mortain.

We received lots of positive comments about the elevation and uniqueness of the Petite Chapelle capture point, and the current consensus is that it's well-balanced from a gameplay perspective, so any decision to open it would have to be carefully considered. But again, this is not out of the question further down the line.

The positive reception to Mortain's luscious new foliage has been overwhelming, although we acknowledge that there were some teething problems.

To ensure the map ran smoothly during testing, we overcompensated by culling grass, trees, and crops earlier than we needed to. Given that the performance for Mortain's wooded areas is good, we are confident that we can push the distance at which foliage culls further away, so there should be less advantage for snipers and players with a keen eye.

However, we cannot guarantee that the foliage will always keep you hidden from several hundred meters away, as we need to ensure that the map still runs smoothly and that comes at a great cost. Despite this, we hope the next time you play Mortain there is a noticeable difference when observing foliage at a distance, and as a minimum, it maintains consistency with other Hell Let Loose maps in terms of render distance.

Although this is a general overview of the key pieces of content we are currently working on, every comment and score submitted through the PTE feedback form has been analysed by the team, so there are lots of changes being worked on that aren't mentioned in this summary.

I hope that this insight into our plans for Mortain shows our commitment to listening to and actioning your feedback. Hell Let Loose is defined by its gritty feeling and tactical gameplay, but more importantly, its community. As developers, we naturally won't get everything perfect the first time. But, I know first-hand that every person on our team is dedicated to bringing you the best experience possible, so we thank you all for your contribution to making that a reality.

See you in-game,

Ryan Thomason-Jones - Senior Environment Artist, Expression Games

We hope you enjoyed reading about the changes and improvements coming to Mortain. We’re looking forward to sharing more details and developer-focused information throughout the year.

Thank you to the development team across all disciplines for their contributions to Mortain, and for sharing their hard work and passion for Hell Let Loose.

Mortain will release after part 2 of the British Rework; but before that – the roadmap. Reveal coming shortly!