Aug 15, 2023

Battlefield Briefing - Development Update, August 2023

Battlefield™ 2042 - TOTALfps

Hello there!

We’re back for another Battlefield™ 2042 Development Update to share with you what’s upcoming later this year.

Season 6

We know you’re looking forward to Season 6 and we can already confirm that it will launch in October. We don’t want to spoil all the details just yet, but we’re excited to share a tiny glimpse of the new map in the Development Update video!

Expect a chillingly unique new battleground harboring dark secrets where you’ll confront your fear of the unknown. It’s one of our favorite maps we’ve built so far and we can’t wait to share more with you at a later time.

As we look forward to what's coming in Season 6, we also don't want to forget about all the great gameplay moments we shared with you in the past year.

We've heard from you that you would love to revisit some of your favorite previous Battlefield 2042 moments, alongside having the chance to earn new rewards, or ones you might've missed.

So before we head into Season 6, we want to give you that opportunity starting on August 29 with Redux.

Redux Overview

During Redux we're excited to bring back new ways to play across your favorite modes and maps, as well as making new and returning weekly rewards available to earn. From Rush Chaos XL, Tactical Conquest, Breakthrough Chaos to Conquest Assault, Shutdown and more. We're giving you a wide variety of ways to play and earn rewards.

But we're not just bringing these modes back as they were. We've listened to your feedback, so expect refined modes every week, on more maps, and with new players counts.

This also includes the return of The Liquidators, Battle of Nordvik and Leviathan Rising Limited Time Events, and modes.

Earning Rewards

During Redux we’ll have a dedicated progression track where you'll be able to earn Ribbons to unlock rewards. Just like you're used to from our seasonal Limited Time Events. However, we're making earning them easier and faster for you.

You can now earn Ribbons to unlock rewards through all official game modes in both All-Out Warfare and Battlefield Portal. That means during Redux you can play your official mode of choice and always progress towards earning rewards.

The rewards range from entirely new content such as character, vehicle and weapon skins, to previous Store content that now becomes earnable. We also have several Double XP weekends lined up to help speed up your progress!

We still want to keep the excitement of being able to discover new rewards, but we’ve already listed some examples for you here:

The Steady Drill skin for the AK-24
Vigilante cosmetic skin for Charlie Crawford
Cybergeddon outfit for Dozer
The Cataclysm skin for the PBX-45
Hijacker weapon charm
And more!

Redux Community Calendar

There is a wide variety of modes available for play during Redux which you can now play on more maps, and with increased weather effects. We've prepared an overview for you with our Community Calendar.

Revisiting Limited Time Event Modes

If you missed our previous Limited Time Events, or you need a reminder on how to play their unique modes then we also have a brief overview for you here.

Rush Chaos XL
In Rush XL, destroy MCOMs to advance across the battlefield, or protect MCOMs and hold the enemy's advance – now with up to 128 players.

Rush as you know it tuned and scaled up to support up to 128 players for maximum chaos through additional modifiers such as increased soldier movement speed, as well increased projectile speed for throwables and projectiles.

Tactical Conquest
Tactical Conquest is the infantry-focused, fast-paced twist on the classic Conquest experience where you’re pitted against opposing squads to try and capture and hold three flags. Win the round by depleting the enemy tickets.

Squad-based gameplay is going to be key here when attempting to retain control of objectives. Make ample use of Spawn Beacons, potential flank routes, and charge enemy-occupied objectives as a team. The more people on the objective when capturing, the faster the capture speed.

Conquest Assault
This is 32v32 Conquest Assault where attackers start with more reinforcements and must take defender-occupied territory, while defenders must hold their objectives – or it’s all over.

Defenders will find their HQ spawn disabled, but they can still rely on their squad and the EBLC-Ram’s Team Insertion Beacon to remain in the fight to hold the objectives.

Breakthrough Chaos
Breakthrough Chaos is the classic Breakthrough experience with faster movement, redeploy, throw speed, vehicle call-ins, and up to 128 players. In a word: chaotic.

Shutdown
In Shutdown attackers use the lance to destroy enemy data caches, while defenders protect them. Each match has two rounds, giving each side a shot at redemption – or revenge.

Play the Objective - The Lance: The ESA-500 Lance is a portable microwave device that fries data drives in a limited radius. Attackers can plant it where they choose inside predefined objective areas populated with crates full of said data drives, scoring points as long as the Lance stays alive, and culminating in a shutdown. Defenders on the other hand, can disable it with a short timed interaction. Playing it smart, and outwitting your enemy is key to Shutdown. Plant the Lance in the open and bait your enemy, hide it in a corner, protect it with your gadgets and throwables, or find an approach of your own, the choice is yours.

Shut it down: When a planted Lance scores enough points in an objective, it results in a shutdown of the objective and fully removes it from the map. Expect pure chaos as you start clearing more objectives and are forced closer and closer together with the enemy team.

Secure Victory: You'll play a round as both Attacker, and Defender. When the first round ends, you will switch sides and redeploy. You’ll secure victory by scoring the most points as the Attacking side while you battle it out within these fast-paced matches.

Quality of Life Improvements

Alongside the improved modes and rewards we'll also publish a small Quality of Life Update during Redux, which includes changes such as balance adjustments for Engineers and a new Codex feature for those who love to learn more about the lore of Battlefield 2042.

We'll share full details via Update Notes shortly before Redux goes live later this month.

And that’s all we have for you today! Our team is looking forward to seeing you relive and experience the highlights from our first few Seasons once again during Redux, with all the new content and improvements we’ve brought to the game. We’ll be back towards October to share more details on Season 6.

We wish you all a lovely rest of your summer and from all of us here at our Battlefield studios – stay classy, and PTFO!

//The Battlefield Team

This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.

Aug 15, 2023

Kansas - Colby & Hays

American Truck Simulator - London

Today we're happy to share with you not one, but two cities from Kansas, our in-development map expansion for American Truck Simulator! From local industries to landmarks, let's delve into what these areas can offer truck drivers.

Colby

Nestled in-between the High Plains, where the horizon stretches as far as the eye can see, is the city of Colby. Established in 1884, it has grown into a progressive agricultural community predominantly featuring farming industries. From farms, to machinery services to livestock auctions, there is no shortage of work for drivers looking for a job!

If the fields aren't for you, you'll also find a supermarket, car dealer and a new dynamic depot nearby; and whilst you're in town, why not take a moment to admire the sights! Near the city limits, you'll find the visitor centre, also known as the 'Grain Bin' thanks to its unique design which incorporates traditional Kansas limestone with a a real grain bin.

From there, you'll come across other prominent landmarks such as the Thomas County Courthouse, the First Presbyterian Church, the Pioneer Memorial Library and the Colby Mall. Be sure to explore a little when you do pass by, you'll never know what you might find!

Hays

Welcome to Hays, a city where history, education, and natural beauty can all be found! Located amidst the rolling plains of the Sunflower State, Hays invites you to explore its captivating blend of past and present.

Founded in 1867 as the southern branch of the Union Pacific Railroad, it has become a bustling city with a variety of local industries. On your visit in American Truck Simulator, you can find jobs to and from the battery factory, local city works, a dynamic parking depot, car and truck dealer, furniture and supermarket stores. On the outskirts of the city, you'll also find a Steel metal depot, Oil Service and a Livestock Farm.

If you happen to find yourself in Hays with some downtime, why not check out the local landmarks and attractions? Here you can find a Movie Theater with an accompanying art mural, statues of some of Hays' personalities, the Hays Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9076, the Hays Public Library and more.

No matter which city you choose to visit first, history and industries await you on the road! We hope you enjoyed this insight of what is to come with the Kansas DLC. If you like what you see, be sure to add it to your Steam Wishlist! Until next time, keep on truckin'.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2298430/American_Truck_Simulator__Kansas/

Aug 15, 2023

Launch Patchnotes | Patch 1.0

Cantata - ModernFox

Commanders,

Launch day has finally arrived! Cantata has been a collective journey and we want to give a huge thanks to the EA players for their patience and feedback as we turn this dream into a reality. This drop brings three new chapters of gameplay, a fresh tutorial, updated UI, bug fixes and much much more.

A few words from Lead Developer Kyle Kukshtell...

"With our official 1.0 release, Cantata has truly moved into the best version of itself. With the extensive feedback from all the EA players, we've done a lot to really "listen" to what the game is and try, at every step, to get out of the way and help the game blossom into itself.

With this release we think we've gotten there. The Campaign is now fully in focus, offering nine compelling maps across the strange planet Shoal that sees you alternating points of view from Commanding Officers from three very different factions. We estimate it's about a 30 hour game when played at a normal pace, and as such are excited to hear everyone's tales about what they see and feel as they explore the world we've created for you all. Explore the map, find Shoal's secrets, and see what it is that 10 Crowns feels here...

This patch sees *massive* performance gains in the game and most all lag has gone by the way side. It required a substantial overhaul of core parts of the game, but the game is so much better for it and plays more smoothly than ever before. We're also excited to talk soon about what the post-1.0 life on Cantata looks like, but for now, take a nice long sip of your favourite beverage, and jump into Cantata 1.0 to see what all we've got waiting for you!"

If you have any feedback, feel free to reach out on our Discord server!

See you in the field!

Afterschool Studios & Modern Wolf

🤖 Follow Cantata on Twitter
🤖 Join the community on Discord
🤖 Subscribe to our newsletter

1.0 Patch Notes

Major Features

Adds in final Campaign Chapters 7, 8, and 9
Adds in a new comprehensive tutorial for the game
Adds in new UI look for The 111th Reign of Harmony and Prosper
Adds in a new UI look for The Unified Spirit
Adds in a new UI look for The People of Sun and Shadow
Adds in a a "Neutral" UI look
Adds in much cleaner tooltips for units and buildings
Adds in more nested tooltip items for various tooltips
Adds in final sounds and music for all campaign chapters and units
Audio is now spatializes for most on-map entities in game
Massive performance increases around all elements of the game
Massive performance improvements around AI processing times + game no longer lags during AI turns
Makes AI smarter and more proactive
Large performance improves when multi-select moving units
Adds in loading screens that contain hints and lore about the game
Adds in nice transitions to starts of matches
Adds tooltips for Region UI elements
Adds in "Neutral" player that can be used as a special team for purposes of resource gathering (Scrap + Remains)
Projects can use health costs for execution
Projects can build to region inventory
Adds in images for all remaining unit projects
Adds in images for all perks
Adds in images for all radiant and granted passives
Adds in sounds for later chapter events
Adds indication in tooltip if pop is preventing unit build
Adds note in notification if damage was from surge
Gets rid of weight as a consideration for map tile occupation - weight now only matters for loading
Region nameplates simplified to show only the information you care about
Heavily improves time to load save menu
Juices up attacking with sound and visual cues (for some real 1.0 UMPH)
Improves game start-up time
Adds in indication in tooltip if a unit would be killed with an attack action

Bugfixes

Fix issue where you could load enemies into your storage
Fix issue where dead units would cause audio fetch issues
Fix issue where non-visible AI units wouldn't path to their target locations
Fix issue where multi-selected units couldn't move into tiles occupied by units of the same multi-select
Fix issue where outposts built in owned regions wouldn't radiate supply into tiles of non-owned regions
Fix tile outline for double height units
Immobile mining units are blocked from being built on non-resource tiles
Fix issue where projects could execute out of range
Fix issue where units in persistent visible tiles only were "warping" between destinations
Fix issue with projects not implicitly checking their execution range
Fixes bug where you could build units in tiles you didn't have vision of
Fixes issue where we were hearing duplicate button sounds when selecting a menu option that had a file browser in it
Fix issue where region UI close sounds were playing on dialog advance
Fixes issue where you heard region capture sounds at the start of loading new maps
Fix issue where all players would see resource depleted notifications even if they weren't on the depleted resource
Fix dialog text showing tag annotations
Fix issue with tooltips clipping when trying to be repositioned on the screen
Fix tooltip text for passives
Fix lots of UI overlap and overrun errors when encountering large numbers
Fix issue where units that killed themselves would error in tooltips
Fix issues around counter attacking and opportunity attacked units erroring the game
Adds in a default elimination victory for scenarios
Fix issue where storage UI wasn't updating
Fix issue where region nameplates weren't centred on regions
Fix issues with player de-sync in multiplayer
Fix issues where game would sometime leave lingering preview lines on the map
Fix issues where some instances of previewed infrastructure placement would error the game
Fix issue where outline colours weren't updated for units if their team was changed
Fix issue where spawn triggers weren't properly accounting for spawned tiles
Fix issue where you could see threat lines for non-visible units

Scenario Editor

Adds ability to move selected units in editor
Adds in ability to animate units to locations as a Trigger Action
Adds in ability to hook into match failure with a custom trigger
Triggers updated to no longer need "Target Player" — everything can be set in the scope of the conditions of a Trigger itself
Objectives migrated to now have "Target Player" but this only matters for the purposes of what players see the Objective in their UI
Maps can be set to have a target VP condition, a turn limit, both, or neither.
Triggers have new timing options to better reflect the lack of player attachment
Any trigger assigned to GameStart will play properly before the match starts, allowing you time to do match setup
Adds in ability to test scenario editor maps without needing to go back to the main menu
Adds in ability to press Enter in long text entry fields and not have the text box defocus
Adds in grouping ability for objectives
Various new trigger conditions and actions
Adds in ability to flag existing units as impassable and adds triggers to set the option on specific units or location units
Adds in ability to declare a starting camera position for a map (the camera is moved here before the map is faded in)
Adds in ability for objectives to have "hint" locations that are displayed on mouseover and not necessarily attached to a condition