armello.com/updates


Greetings folks!

Here we are. The Road to 2.0 has begun and the Feb update is out and about. If you're the type of person that likes to dig through the patch notes, you can find 'em here. I'm going to give you a brief run down of the three primary features of this update.

Remember that you can expect an update monthly leading up to 2.0 later this year. Naturally the update and feature sizes will vary but we're excited for the journey.



We've given the Trickery Deck a little bit of love with two new cards that feature a new card mechanic in Armello, the Merchant system. Roxy has you covered for Followers, and Biff has all the Treasures you need.

Full description of the new cards and the Merchant system here.







The King Part One & Two, are now available and the rest will come in time. In order to obtain these, all you have to do is step into Skeeve's store and pick 'em up. Don't worry though, Skeeve is happy to hand these out for free. Once obtained, navigate to your in-game inventory, open one up and allow the beautiful words pour into your mind.

Full description of the Novellas and the in-game reader here.





For 36 hours every Wednesday, Stranger Games will become available - opening an additional multiplayer queue that features a different set of House Rules weekly. This will be an extra queue, so it's purely opt-in. Coin flips and therefore Chests and Keys will drop in this queue too, so you can get your dirty mitts on your loot in a different way now.

This new functionality has been applied to Fury Friday too, so those of you that want to avoid getting furious are now able to!

Full description of Stranger Games here.


There we have it please feel free to spread the love and the hype either in the comments below or on Twitter or Facebook. You'll be hearing from us very soon, and the Lunar Dice event begins today too!

Why is everything happening so quickly?

armello.com/updates


Greetings folks!

Here we are. The Road to 2.0 has begun and the Feb update is out and about. If you're the type of person that likes to dig through the patch notes, you can find 'em here. I'm going to give you a brief run down of the three primary features of this update.

Remember that you can expect an update monthly leading up to 2.0 later this year. Naturally the update and feature sizes will vary but we're excited for the journey.



We've given the Trickery Deck a little bit of love with two new cards that feature a new card mechanic in Armello, the Merchant system. Roxy has you covered for Followers, and Biff has all the Treasures you need.

Full description of the new cards and the Merchant system here.







The King Part One & Two, are now available and the rest will come in time. In order to obtain these, all you have to do is step into Skeeve's store and pick 'em up. Don't worry though, Skeeve is happy to hand these out for free. Once obtained, navigate to your in-game inventory, open one up and allow the beautiful words pour into your mind.

Full description of the Novellas and the in-game reader here.





For 36 hours every Wednesday, Stranger Games will become available - opening an additional multiplayer queue that features a different set of House Rules weekly. This will be an extra queue, so it's purely opt-in. Coin flips and therefore Chests and Keys will drop in this queue too, so you can get your dirty mitts on your loot in a different way now.

This new functionality has been applied to Fury Friday too, so those of you that want to avoid getting furious are now able to!

Full description of Stranger Games here.


There we have it please feel free to spread the love and the hype either in the comments below or on Twitter or Facebook. You'll be hearing from us very soon, and the Lunar Dice event begins today too!

Why is everything happening so quickly?

• Implemented a better colour picker
  
• Made pickups slightly bigger
  
• Added more fuel pickups to the Ship Graveyard
  
• The first checkpoint in a checkpoint mission will now always spawn in front of the player
  
• Added and changed text in various menus
  
• The pause menu now shows you the current mission, as well as the challenge if one is active
  
• Changed how the lighting works in the Crystal Caves stage to hopefully improve performance
  
• Reduced particles in the main menu to improve performance
  
• Fixed bug where the default keyboard mapping for photo mode had some keys being used for multiple functions
  
• Fixed bug where the colour picker couldn’t be used with the mouse
  
• Fixed some of the colliders in the Ship Graveyard that were in the wrong places

• Implemented a better colour picker
  
• Made pickups slightly bigger
  
• Added more fuel pickups to the Ship Graveyard
  
• The first checkpoint in a checkpoint mission will now always spawn in front of the player
  
• Added and changed text in various menus
  
• The pause menu now shows you the current mission, as well as the challenge if one is active
  
• Changed how the lighting works in the Crystal Caves stage to hopefully improve performance
  
• Reduced particles in the main menu to improve performance
  
• Fixed bug where the default keyboard mapping for photo mode had some keys being used for multiple functions
  
• Fixed bug where the colour picker couldn’t be used with the mouse
  
• Fixed some of the colliders in the Ship Graveyard that were in the wrong places

Holdfast: Nations At War has been updated. Ever took part in an organised event and experienced the thrill of the single life game mode? Within today’s addition, we’ll be bringing that on our official servers! We’ll also be paying more well-deserved attention towards organised play.

In addition to all of this, you’ll also find new maps being added to the game and more of our work on localisation.

Strategize, coordinate and make good use of cover to turn the tide of battle in your favour! You’ll have to wait until the round finishes before you can respawn if you meet an unfortunate end. New players joining the server will be unable to spawn if the three-minute mark has already passed.

Hop in on one of the official servers today to check it out yourself.

• Anvil Game Studios Official EU3 - Hardcore Assault
  
• Anvil Game Studios Official NA3 - Hardcore Assault

As new strategies and tactics evolve within the line battle scene so must the game! Crews and regiments (clans) host weekly events where they follow the rules of engagement relevant to the Napoleonic era. It is a delight of ours seeing servers fill up to the brim with players, as regiments battle in formation.

In the Hardcore Mode, enemies are no longer visible on the minimap, you’ll find yourself spawning with limited ammunition and most importantly, the accuracy of firearms over long distances have been reduced. This will encourage closer range engagements to take place and promote tactical play.



Hardcore Mode

• Your accuracy with firearms over long distances is reduced. The distance at which you engage your enemy is vital to increase your success at hitting your target!
  
• Your ammunition is limited. Every shot counts!
  
• Enemies don’t show on the minimap when they fire. Pay attention to your surroundings!
  
• Friendlies are only displayed on the minimap at a close distance. Officers must pay attention to the ongoings of the battlefield!

If you haven’t done so already, we highly suggest that you enlist in a crew or regiment and join in the good fun. You can also form your own if you’re up to the task. Head over to our forums using the link down below to do so.

Enlist in a Crew or Regiment.

We’ve now introduced firearm recoil into the game to give you that extra kick whilst you’re burning powder. Kills are now also more satisfactory when your shot hits your intended target!

Your aiming reticule will no longer remain in the same position after you fire. During line battles and other forms of organised play, it has now become increasingly important for officers to teach their rankers how to fire at various distances. It is in your best interest to maximise the effectiveness of volley fire.



A place for regiments to call home! An Officers’ quarters, a shooting range, melee arenas, field guns, mortars, several areas to host promotions at and most importantly, plenty of open space to train formations in.

Feedback is greatly welcome. If you’d like to provide us with suggestions on how we can improve the Training Grounds, you can do so on our Forums or Discord. One thing we have in mind is to place multiple spawn locations on the map so players can save time travelling from one area of the map to another.



We have another map coming in with today’s patch! Snowy Plains II has been specifically designed for organised play. You can find the code to play this map on your community hosted server further down the changelog.



We’ve now finalized the underlying system that takes care of localisation! Holdfast: Nations At War is now playable in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Japanese and Korean.

You can change your desired language by clicking on the ‘Language’ button on the main menu.

Our heartfelt thanks go to these members of our community for their assistance with translation.

Language Translators

• Chengda 'FeX Xcd' Xu
  
• Lingyun Zeng
  
• Refrain Song
  
• Hutao
  
• ilam
  
• George 'Winterfell' Miracle
  
• Sang-Min 'Bomulsun' Lee
  
• Ken R 'Hyuga' Kaminski
  
• Kimura 'Kagra' Kenta
  
• Obata 'Date' Takuto
  
• Sergei 'Mousecatcher' Zybin
  
• Oleg 'Haxor' Lukin
  
• Nico 'Deathstar' Jakobs
  
• Sergio 'Tenford' Cobo Peláez
  
• Alex 'Viriathus' Alexandre
  
• Charles 'iWeester62' Margueritte
  
• Alexandre 'Nastax' Lefeuvre
  
• Yann 'Black Wolf' Lopez

As this is our very first pass on these translations, there are bound to be mistakes. You can inform us on our Forums or Discord if you encounter any grammatical errors. We’ll continue improving upon and adding new languages as the game progresses.



Holdfast: Nations At War has now undergone another game engine upgrade. We’ve decided to embark on this massive undertaking in an effort to improve stability. Engine upgrades also provide us with additional features to optimise the game.

You’ll definitely be seeing more of these happening as we progress further through the game’s development.


There’s more to this update than what we’ve mentioned above! You can check the full changelog out yourself down below. We’ve also put more effort this time around into a couple of quality of life additions to aid with the administration of events.



Changelog 11 - Game Version 0.11.6620.1843

• Single life official servers. Strategize, coordinate and make good use of cover to turn the tide of battle in your favour!
  
• Hardcore mode! A mode specifically designed for organised and competitive play.
  » Playable on all the existing game modes. Army Siege, Coastal Siege, Army Battlefield and more.
  » Input the following parameter per map rotation to enable the Hardcore mode on your community server: game_type Hardcore
  
• Firearm recoil! Giving you that extra kick whilst you’re burning powder.
  
• New map! Snowy Plains II is now playable in the game.
  » Input the following parameter to host this map on your community server: map_name snowyplainsII
  
• New map! Training Grounds. A place for regiments to call home.
  » Input the following parameter to host this map on your community server: map_name traininggrounds
  
• Game engine upgrade. A massive undertaking in an effort to improve stability and broaden our options to further optimise the game.
  
• Localisation! Holdfast: Nations At War is now playable in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Japanese and Korean. We want to make sure that the game is widely available to everyone.
  
• NA Coastal Siege Server! We’re now hosting an official Coastal Siege server in North America.
  
• The round timer on the Coastal Siege official servers has been reduced by 5 minutes.
  
• Game information panel. To the top right of the spawn menu, a flashing question mark resides which if clicked on will present you with various information relative to the game mode you are playing.

• The Crews & Regiments button on the main menu now links directly to the recruitment section our forums. You better start planning ahead to keep your regiment thread more active! New players looking to join one will be browsing our forums more often.
  
• Players will now receive a notification if they are unable to join the round in the Army Assault game mode. This can either be caused by the player’s death or if they attempt to join the round after the round close timer has been surpassed.
  
• Server administrators can now privately message other players in the server through the ‘Round Players’ panel. We’re sure that this will come in handy for the administration of events! You no longer have to bother everyone with intrusive broadcast messages unless necessary.

• We’ve also introduced search functionality in the ‘Round Players’ panel. It’ll make scrolling through a list of 150 players just a little bit easier.

• Players now have the option to always show player names whilst using the Free-Roam Camera. Once again, we’re sure that this will come in handy for the administration of organised events.
  » The 'Show Player Names' option can be found in the 'Game' tab under Free-Roam Camera.
  
• You can now adjust the volume of firearm and artillery shots. We’ve done this so players can communicate better through VoIP.
  » This can be done by adjusting the ‘Weapon Volume’ slider found in the 'Audio' tab.

• Voice phrases in chat no longer show for Administrators.
  
• Client-side optimisations. Players running the game on low-end hardware should now see a slight performance improvement.
  
• Server-side optimisations. Servers will be seeing a slight increase in performance with this update.
  
• Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Arabic characters in broadcast messages now appear in white.
  
• Fixed an issue which caused 3D VoIP not to work for certain players.
  
• Additional tips have been included in the game. These tips are displayed when a map is loading.
  
• Desert Plains received a graphical re-work! In addition to this, two camps located near the spawns of both factions have been reinforced with mortar emplacements. The loading screen has been updated to reflect the new looks.

• Graphically improved the snow and desert environments. ‘Cold’ particle effects have been added on all snow themed game levels. The looks of the Atmospheric Scattering effect has also been improved.
  
• The British should now be able to destroy the French cannon using their own artillery piece on the Grassy Plains II map.
  
• Sharpton now has more artillery pieces when played on the Siege game mode.
  
• Added a natural crossing next to the bridge near one of the spawn locations on Sharpton.
  
• Fixed an issue which caused one of the wooden bridges on Sharpton to be inaccessible.
  
• Fixed an issue which caused players to get stuck underneath one of the shooting platforms on Sharpton.
  
• Fixed several issues with objects culling early on Sharpton.
  
• Several assets have been re-textured.
  
• Improved the grass wind animation.
  
• Improved the looks of the Polish Vistula’s shako.
  
• Improved the looks of grass on Dutch Canals and Sharpton.
  
• Adjusted the spawn points for the Army Assault, Army Battlefield and Deathmatch game modes on Southsea Castle.
  
• Fixed several issues with destruction on Fort Imperial.
  
• Fixed an error that occurred whilst loading the Spanish Farm map.

You’re welcome to join us on our Discord for a chat.

Thank you very much for your support and as always, may good health be yours.

- Anvil Game Studios

Holdfast: Nations At War has been updated. Ever took part in an organised event and experienced the thrill of the single life game mode? Within today’s addition, we’ll be bringing that on our official servers! We’ll also be paying more well-deserved attention towards organised play.

In addition to all of this, you’ll also find new maps being added to the game and more of our work on localisation.

Strategize, coordinate and make good use of cover to turn the tide of battle in your favour! You’ll have to wait until the round finishes before you can respawn if you meet an unfortunate end. New players joining the server will be unable to spawn if the three-minute mark has already passed.

Hop in on one of the official servers today to check it out yourself.

• Anvil Game Studios Official EU3 - Hardcore Assault
  
• Anvil Game Studios Official NA3 - Hardcore Assault

As new strategies and tactics evolve within the line battle scene so must the game! Crews and regiments (clans) host weekly events where they follow the rules of engagement relevant to the Napoleonic era. It is a delight of ours seeing servers fill up to the brim with players, as regiments battle in formation.

In the Hardcore Mode, enemies are no longer visible on the minimap, you’ll find yourself spawning with limited ammunition and most importantly, the accuracy of firearms over long distances have been reduced. This will encourage closer range engagements to take place and promote tactical play.



Hardcore Mode

• Your accuracy with firearms over long distances is reduced. The distance at which you engage your enemy is vital to increase your success at hitting your target!
  
• Your ammunition is limited. Every shot counts!
  
• Enemies don’t show on the minimap when they fire. Pay attention to your surroundings!
  
• Friendlies are only displayed on the minimap at a close distance. Officers must pay attention to the ongoings of the battlefield!

If you haven’t done so already, we highly suggest that you enlist in a crew or regiment and join in the good fun. You can also form your own if you’re up to the task. Head over to our forums using the link down below to do so.

Enlist in a Crew or Regiment.

We’ve now introduced firearm recoil into the game to give you that extra kick whilst you’re burning powder. Kills are now also more satisfactory when your shot hits your intended target!

Your aiming reticule will no longer remain in the same position after you fire. During line battles and other forms of organised play, it has now become increasingly important for officers to teach their rankers how to fire at various distances. It is in your best interest to maximise the effectiveness of volley fire.



A place for regiments to call home! An Officers’ quarters, a shooting range, melee arenas, field guns, mortars, several areas to host promotions at and most importantly, plenty of open space to train formations in.

Feedback is greatly welcome. If you’d like to provide us with suggestions on how we can improve the Training Grounds, you can do so on our Forums or Discord. One thing we have in mind is to place multiple spawn locations on the map so players can save time travelling from one area of the map to another.



We have another map coming in with today’s patch! Snowy Plains II has been specifically designed for organised play. You can find the code to play this map on your community hosted server further down the changelog.



We’ve now finalized the underlying system that takes care of localisation! Holdfast: Nations At War is now playable in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Japanese and Korean.

You can change your desired language by clicking on the ‘Language’ button on the main menu.

Our heartfelt thanks go to these members of our community for their assistance with translation.

Language Translators

• Chengda 'FeX Xcd' Xu
  
• Lingyun Zeng
  
• Refrain Song
  
• Hutao
  
• ilam
  
• George 'Winterfell' Miracle
  
• Sang-Min 'Bomulsun' Lee
  
• Ken R 'Hyuga' Kaminski
  
• Kimura 'Kagra' Kenta
  
• Obata 'Date' Takuto
  
• Sergei 'Mousecatcher' Zybin
  
• Oleg 'Haxor' Lukin
  
• Nico 'Deathstar' Jakobs
  
• Sergio 'Tenford' Cobo Peláez
  
• Alex 'Viriathus' Alexandre
  
• Charles 'iWeester62' Margueritte
  
• Alexandre 'Nastax' Lefeuvre
  
• Yann 'Black Wolf' Lopez

As this is our very first pass on these translations, there are bound to be mistakes. You can inform us on our Forums or Discord if you encounter any grammatical errors. We’ll continue improving upon and adding new languages as the game progresses.



Holdfast: Nations At War has now undergone another game engine upgrade. We’ve decided to embark on this massive undertaking in an effort to improve stability. Engine upgrades also provide us with additional features to optimise the game.

You’ll definitely be seeing more of these happening as we progress further through the game’s development.


There’s more to this update than what we’ve mentioned above! You can check the full changelog out yourself down below. We’ve also put more effort this time around into a couple of quality of life additions to aid with the administration of events.



Changelog 11 - Game Version 0.11.6620.1843

• Single life official servers. Strategize, coordinate and make good use of cover to turn the tide of battle in your favour!
  
• Hardcore mode! A mode specifically designed for organised and competitive play.
  » Playable on all the existing game modes. Army Siege, Coastal Siege, Army Battlefield and more.
  » Input the following parameter per map rotation to enable the Hardcore mode on your community server: game_type Hardcore
  
• Firearm recoil! Giving you that extra kick whilst you’re burning powder.
  
• New map! Snowy Plains II is now playable in the game.
  » Input the following parameter to host this map on your community server: map_name snowyplainsII
  
• New map! Training Grounds. A place for regiments to call home.
  » Input the following parameter to host this map on your community server: map_name traininggrounds
  
• Game engine upgrade. A massive undertaking in an effort to improve stability and broaden our options to further optimise the game.
  
• Localisation! Holdfast: Nations At War is now playable in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Japanese and Korean. We want to make sure that the game is widely available to everyone.
  
• NA Coastal Siege Server! We’re now hosting an official Coastal Siege server in North America.
  
• The round timer on the Coastal Siege official servers has been reduced by 5 minutes.
  
• Game information panel. To the top right of the spawn menu, a flashing question mark resides which if clicked on will present you with various information relative to the game mode you are playing.

• The Crews & Regiments button on the main menu now links directly to the recruitment section our forums. You better start planning ahead to keep your regiment thread more active! New players looking to join one will be browsing our forums more often.
  
• Players will now receive a notification if they are unable to join the round in the Army Assault game mode. This can either be caused by the player’s death or if they attempt to join the round after the round close timer has been surpassed.
  
• Server administrators can now privately message other players in the server through the ‘Round Players’ panel. We’re sure that this will come in handy for the administration of events! You no longer have to bother everyone with intrusive broadcast messages unless necessary.

• We’ve also introduced search functionality in the ‘Round Players’ panel. It’ll make scrolling through a list of 150 players just a little bit easier.

• Players now have the option to always show player names whilst using the Free-Roam Camera. Once again, we’re sure that this will come in handy for the administration of organised events.
  » The 'Show Player Names' option can be found in the 'Game' tab under Free-Roam Camera.
  
• You can now adjust the volume of firearm and artillery shots. We’ve done this so players can communicate better through VoIP.
  » This can be done by adjusting the ‘Weapon Volume’ slider found in the 'Audio' tab.

• Voice phrases in chat no longer show for Administrators.
  
• Client-side optimisations. Players running the game on low-end hardware should now see a slight performance improvement.
  
• Server-side optimisations. Servers will be seeing a slight increase in performance with this update.
  
• Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Arabic characters in broadcast messages now appear in white.
  
• Fixed an issue which caused 3D VoIP not to work for certain players.
  
• Additional tips have been included in the game. These tips are displayed when a map is loading.
  
• Desert Plains received a graphical re-work! In addition to this, two camps located near the spawns of both factions have been reinforced with mortar emplacements. The loading screen has been updated to reflect the new looks.

• Graphically improved the snow and desert environments. ‘Cold’ particle effects have been added on all snow themed game levels. The looks of the Atmospheric Scattering effect has also been improved.
  
• The British should now be able to destroy the French cannon using their own artillery piece on the Grassy Plains II map.
  
• Sharpton now has more artillery pieces when played on the Siege game mode.
  
• Added a natural crossing next to the bridge near one of the spawn locations on Sharpton.
  
• Fixed an issue which caused one of the wooden bridges on Sharpton to be inaccessible.
  
• Fixed an issue which caused players to get stuck underneath one of the shooting platforms on Sharpton.
  
• Fixed several issues with objects culling early on Sharpton.
  
• Several assets have been re-textured.
  
• Improved the grass wind animation.
  
• Improved the looks of the Polish Vistula’s shako.
  
• Improved the looks of grass on Dutch Canals and Sharpton.
  
• Adjusted the spawn points for the Army Assault, Army Battlefield and Deathmatch game modes on Southsea Castle.
  
• Fixed several issues with destruction on Fort Imperial.
  
• Fixed an error that occurred whilst loading the Spanish Farm map.

You’re welcome to join us on our Discord for a chat.

Thank you very much for your support and as always, may good health be yours.

- Anvil Game Studios

It's Chinese New Year now, I may not be able to update in time in this week, don't worry, I will catch up when I come back.

Fixes:
1. When enter a dungeon, this first equipment should be shown as selected.
2. After change equipment or item, the highlight shows previously selected equipment, but actually it should be reset.
3. Add limitation for early dungeons, player only be able to use just unlocked equipment and item. So player can seek the best record right way, no need for later get better equipment and item to come back for better record.

It's Chinese New Year now, I may not be able to update in time in this week, don't worry, I will catch up when I come back.

Fixes:
1. When enter a dungeon, this first equipment should be shown as selected.
2. After change equipment or item, the highlight shows previously selected equipment, but actually it should be reset.
3. Add limitation for early dungeons, player only be able to use just unlocked equipment and item. So player can seek the best record right way, no need for later get better equipment and item to come back for better record.

Optimizations and crash fixes now that the crash reporting is working.

• Generate face normals in the pixel shader - this is significantly faster than using the geometry shader for lower-end machines.
  
• If the game can't enter full screen mode, run in windowed mode instead. This can happen if the full screen mode is set to something invalid.
  
• Make the game tolerant of running out of dynamic buffer space. In *really* extreme cases with lots of enemies on screen who all die simultaneously, the game would crash previously. It will now freeze until the buffers fall back to normal levels.

I'll look at doing some particle throttling asap, since that seems to be the source of the buffers going over-capacity. In this case, we probably need throttling anyway since there are likely hundreds of thousands of particles on screen.

There's also currently no cap on the number of enemies in the world. There's room for optimization in extreme scenarios, but my (4 year old) dev machine manages to run about 250 enemies simultaneously at about 20 fps. There's room for improvement there, but I think I'll probably cap the number of enemies to something like 64.

Optimizations and crash fixes now that the crash reporting is working.

• Generate face normals in the pixel shader - this is significantly faster than using the geometry shader for lower-end machines.
  
• If the game can't enter full screen mode, run in windowed mode instead. This can happen if the full screen mode is set to something invalid.
  
• Make the game tolerant of running out of dynamic buffer space. In *really* extreme cases with lots of enemies on screen who all die simultaneously, the game would crash previously. It will now freeze until the buffers fall back to normal levels.

I'll look at doing some particle throttling asap, since that seems to be the source of the buffers going over-capacity. In this case, we probably need throttling anyway since there are likely hundreds of thousands of particles on screen.

There's also currently no cap on the number of enemies in the world. There's room for optimization in extreme scenarios, but my (4 year old) dev machine manages to run about 250 enemies simultaneously at about 20 fps. There's room for improvement there, but I think I'll probably cap the number of enemies to something like 64.