Jun 6, 2024

Hell Let Loose - G_Medlin

Hello everyone,

Today we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy beach landings – one of the most decisive and critical moments in 20th century history. Through sheer ambition and bravery, the Allies placed an immense, immovable force in occupied France. What makes D-Day Normandy Beach Landings impressive is that they were the largest seaborne-based land invasions of history combining various nations coming together under the Allied banner, and that they kept it secret during planning.

In commemoration, we’re going to use today as an opportunity to reveal the next Hell Let Loose map, set in the Ardennes winter months of 1944 – Elsenborn Ridge.

This initial look will also expand on the changeable weather conditions teased in the 2024 roadmap.

We want to show that Elsenborn Ridge is a work in progress, currently planned to ship later this year. We will open Elsenborn Ridge for public testing as development ensues in the months ahead. We can’t wait for you to try it and look forward to reading your feedback!

The team is really excited to finally reveal what we’ve been working on. Please read below for some developer insight into Elsenborn Ridge and its dynamic snow.

Dynamic Snow

It was decided early on that we needed a dynamic snow/blizzard scenario for Elsenborn Ridge, so the Technical Art team started prototyping some ideas to support this. The new tech allows us to blend between different intensities of weather, allowing us to go from gentle snowfall as can be seen currently in Foy to a heavy blizzard.

To transition the weather states, we take the current values and blend them over a transition time to new settings that we pull from a preset data asset containing all the VFX elements for each setting.

In addition to the above, the Technical Art team have been improving the occlusion system for rain and snow whereby render targets will be used to occlude rain and snow instead of having to manually check each level for mesh distance fields on buildings, in turn, this makes the possibility of adding differing weather scenarios a lot more flexible in the future.

The dynamic blizzard VFX tech is still in development and the Technical Art team are working to fine-tune, polish and optimise for when we are ready to ship Elsenborn Ridge.

While the work has been mainly based around snow, we added the functionality to do the same for rain as well, however, these will require further development.

Technical Art - Expression Games

Historical Overview

The Battle of Elsenborn Ridge is a less-documented, but important battle nonetheless set in the Büllingen region in the Ardennes. 43 miles away from Foy, the Elsenborn Ridge is but one of many examples of how far the Battle of the Bulge was spread out in 1944.

Set during the winter months of 1944, the 99th U.S. Division who had been stationed at Wirtzfeld were under heavy suppression from the 6th Panzer Army composed of the 12th SS Panzer Division, 12th Volksgrenadier and 277th Volksgrenadier to the east, who had finally broken their lines and forced a retreat to the Elsenborn Ridge.

The U.S. were forced to abandon their supplies en-route to the ridge, and settle in for weeks of bombardment from Wirtzfeld. Having retreated to the ridge and established a network where they had become heavily dug in with makeshift trenches, foxholes, camps and artillery gun positions.

Taking place between 16th-26th December, 1944 winter had fully taken hold in Belgium, the thick snow had settled, the roads were slippery and slushy, combined with the constant fog/blizzards made it impossible for the U.S. bombers and the Luftwaffe alike to battle from the skies without succumbing to the elements.

Carl Rutter, Senior Level Designer - Expression Games

Map Rationale

As with any Hell Let Loose map, we had considered which maps were already available to players, this allowed us to decide on which kind of thematic map that we wanted to create next. We had decided as a team that the map could be:

A map that is different to Foy in aesthetics, but fits in with the existing biome
A map that has a much more interesting topography to avoid the repetition of dull, flat terrain that exists in other territories
A challenge to create a map that’s based on controlling land, rather than buildings
An opportunity to design a map without the safety net of large structures and historical landmarks in mind, while retaining visual interest
A map that works for all playstyles, but will be more suitable for vehicles/armour

Because the Elsenborn Ridge itself is a forested region where the U.S. dug in with defensive positions rather than a historical landmark, this gave us a lot of space to choose from when designing the initial concept. We chose the absolute edge of Wirtzfeld over Rocherath-Krinkelt because it has a much better road network for vehicles, and to minimize the need to create another village.

Carl Rutter, Senior Level Designer - Expression Games

Road to D-Day 2024 - Presented by BR1 Gaming

Charity: Wounded Warrior Project 👉 https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/

📆 Saturday, June 8, 2024

5:00pm EST Omaha Beach - Warfare Mode
7:00pm EST Utah Beach - Warfare Mode

Website: https://www.br1gaming.com/road-to-d-day

BR1 invites the Hell Let Loose community to join in a charity event to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the WW2 Invasion of Normandy. We invite players to make a minimum donation of $5 dollars to participate. We encourage everyone to give as they can, and will even accept larger donations from our fellow gaming communities. All Donations will benefit the Wounded Warrior Project.

This is our 4th annual Road to D-Day event -- in the previous years we have raised over $6,600 for the WWP, and so we have set our sites a bit higher this year for a single year goal of $3000.

BR1 is a gaming community founded by Veterans and is dedicated to service and leadership. We welcome mature players interested in joining a fun and engaging community that promotes respect and congeniality, both internally and externally. One of our founding principals is providing social support for our Veteran members, as well as guidance toward professional help, when needed. This makes our partnership with Wounded Warrior Project a natural conclusion. WWP provides too many services to Vets and their families to try to list here, and their work speaks for itself. BR1 is proud to be a partner with WWP and by hosting our annual RtDD event, do our small part to help our Veterans.

Community Content

Check out some fun and informative videos from our War Correspondents to help you on the frontlines!

SoulSniper's Ultimate Artillery Guide

Everything you need to know about Resources and Nodes from Gebatron

A wonderful display of tank power from TheFreshBakesGoods

Thank you for reading! Next up for Hell Let Loose is Update 15.1 - we will be hosting a PTE for this in the weeks ahead.

Have a great day.

Apr 25, 2024

Update 15 is OUT NOW | Dev Brief #200

Hell Let Loose - G_Medlin

Hello everyone,

Update 15 has deployed on all platforms!

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.

About Mortain

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 - New Map

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

Mortain TacMap

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

Sainte-Marie-du-Mont - Control Skirmish

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

Oak Leaf [Paid]

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.

Update 15.0 Changelog:

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.

Bug Fixes:

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

Play Update 15

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

Mar 28, 2024

PTE Update 15 | Live For Testing!

Hell Let Loose - G_Medlin

Update 15.0 PTE

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.

Update 15.0 Content:

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

Server rotation:

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

Mortain - Environment Art Updates

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

Mortain - Front End Updates

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

Mortain Level Design - Updates

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 - Control Skirmish

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

Mortain - Southern Approach

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

Sainte-Marie-du-Mont - Map Update

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

Sainte-Marie-du-Mont - Control Skirmish

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

Work In Progress

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.

Known Issues

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.

Streaming & Recording PTE Sessions

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.

Feedback Questions

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

How to Take Part

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.