Aug 23, 2023

Developer Briefing #194 - British Rework Progress & Developer Interview Wrap-Up

Hell Let Loose - Wombat Medic

Hey everyone,

If you haven’t had chance to read the AMA last month or tune into the recent Dev Interview, we’ll be summarising both in this week’s dev brief, as well as sharing a sneak peek at progress with the British forces rework.

But first, we want to thank everyone who took part in the PTE this weekend and joined us for a few games! Your feedback is much appreciated, and we’ll now be looking at what we can consider for Patch 14.3, as well as for future development.

Patch 14.3 PTE Feedback

Micro-Stuttering

Over half of those who took part felt that there was an improvement with stuttering, experiencing less micro-stuttering on most maps. We are aware of some reports about FPS drops in the live game since the last patch, and we will continue to look into this.

Ultrawide Monitor Compatibility

Three-quarters of those using an ultrawide monitor felt that there was a marked improvement, and the experience was what most players would expect from similar titles.

Panther Tank

Over three-quarters of players who used the Panther during the PTE felt that the reload speed was now 'just right.'

British Weapons

Although most players felt the improvements to British weapons were better, some feedback suggested the gun sights were still too large, and further work to improve weapon zeroing was needed.

Practice Range

We already have a list of work we’d like to carry out for future iterations of the Practice Range, and much of this was also identified by players who took the time to submit feedback on their experience. There were also some great ideas that we will take a look at to see how we could implement these in future versions.

Some of the feedback included:

Increasing Shooting Range to 500m
Moving Targets
More navigation and prompts
Respawning of vehicles and helmets

Plans for Optimization & Bug Fixing

Having realised our focus needed to change so that we could revisit the existing game and bug database, the roadmap for Hell Let Loose has changed, and we’re working to put a new one together that we’ll be able to talk more about in a future briefing.

Some issues that you experience in the game don’t always happen in our own testing environments, which can make these bugs trickier to tackle, and we can struggle to reproduce certain issues that require a lot of players over a length of time. Reintroducing public testing is already helping with better understanding some of these bugs, while also helping shape the direction of the game.

LODs

We know LODs are a big one for the community, and our Technical Art team are making their way through all the levels and optimizing some of the worst offenders. LODs are particularly important for console platforms, and decisions have to be made manually, with artists going in and tuning the distance at what certain objects should start rendering, which can be a lengthy and time-consuming process.

Most of our levels also use something called HLODs:

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
HLODs are a really cool bit of technology which makes it really cheap to render something, and if it's far enough away, it can look pretty close to what it would look like. But the creation of HLODs is tricky, it's very hard to get them to to look great, and is made harder with a more realistic looking game like Hell Let Loose.

It's basically a constant challenge for the tech art team to to balance creating these cheaper to render versions of geometry so this will still run at a decent frame rate on all of the hardware that we support, while not looking terrible - and it’s a time consuming process.

You will notice literally every single update the LODs will be improved in numerous different areas on all the maps, and this is one of those areas where I don't think we could, you know, within the next few years tackle every single part of every single level that exists and make them perfect - so if the community can basically let us know the worst offenders, they’ll go to the top of our priority list. - Kieran, Studio Technical Director

Patch 14.3 will be introducing some further LOD optimization for certain maps, however, if you’ve noticed particular issues that are having a high impact, please let us know by getting in touch with Player Support!

Rubber-banding

While we’ve made changes to both PC and Console platforms to help reduce rubber-banding, we know there is still more to be done.

VOIP

We’re continuing to work closely with Vivox to understand how we improve the quality and experience for players.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
They actually recently reached out to us as they had themselves been looking into user reports of voice issues and have managed to identify that there was an issue with people who were using mobile-based
data networks for connecting to the game. There was a high chance that the VOIP basically stopped working and the connection would fail. That has been fixed in the latest SDK which we have updated for Patch 14.3. - Kieran, Studio Technical Director

VOIP can be challenging for us, as it is rare we ever get issues in the development environment, and Vivox identified that there is a configuration difference between what we use for the development environments on the server side, and what’s happening in the actual live game - so we’re also working with them to make sure they’re the same, which may help us better understand some of the issues being experienced, during development, so we can fix them.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
We've typically had to make improvements and fixes and then wait for the next update to go live to then identify what is breaking. We are utilizing analytics to be able to identify issues, so it's a case of every single update we will spend some time sitting down and having a look at those analytics to go like, okay what's broken now, and then we can fix another thing, but again, typically we won't be able to reproduce that issue in our development environment so it becomes a case of making a fix and then the next update goes live we repeat the cycle. So, unfortunately, when it comes to this, it's currently quite a slow turnaround for us - but we do continue to work on it every single update. - Kieran, Studio Technical Director

British Forces Rework

Both during the AMA, and in the dev interview, we outlined what we’re doing to essentially make good on the British forces - including new, more accurate weapons, uniforms, and vehicles.

This is a large piece of work, and we want to get it right, so improvements to the British forces will be something you see arrive in the game in phases.

Historical Accuracy

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
The Bren absolutely should have a bipod. For someone who's been shown how to use a Bren gun by other historians, I can absolutely attest to bipod - the Bren needs a bipod. - Matt, Studio Creative Director

We want to ensure we’re bringing accurate firearms to the game on a per-theatre basis.
For example, although some British weapons were used across all theatres, there were some that were specific to North Africa or Western Europe - and we want to make sure the experience is accurate for both.

Weapons

Bren Gun - we are going to do a bipod for the Bren, which will be publicly tested to understand the best balancing, whether it sits on the Machine Gunner role, or whether it works for the Automatic Rifleman.

British Thompson - we will be doing the 1928A1 Thompson.

SMLE - we will be doing the SMLE No.1 MKIII that was used throughout WWII.

No.32 Scope with No.4 MKI - as a new sniper rifle.

Sten MKV - as an additional Sten gun.

Gammon Bomb - also known as the No.82 Grenade, this will work as an 'explode-on-impact' device to help specific roles deal with lighter armoured vehicles.

SMLE No.1 MKIII High Poly (1)

SMLE No.1 MKIII High Poly (2)

Armour

In terms of armour, we are going to do specific pieces of armour for the British, specifically for North Africa, and have a look at the armour that’s available for Driel, including:

Churchill Mk.III for North Africa
Churchill Mk.VII for Europe
M3 Stuart ‘Honey’

We have options when it comes to introducing the new British medium tank for North Africa - and we want to give you the vote on what we work on implementing!

Share your opinion and cast your vote for one of the following tanks:

Crusader Mk.III
Valentine Mk.II
Matilda II

Churchill Mk.III and Mk.VII High poly - WIP

Uniforms

We will also be making good on the uniforms for both North Africa, and Western Europe, including shorts and short sleeve uniforms for the British, as well as the German DAK uniform.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
We'll do the same thing with the camo for those Vehicles [mentioned above] as well, so you'll be able to play North Africa with the correct uniforms, with historically accurate weapons and vehicles and armour, against the Germans with the German equivalent. What it will do, is it will make the theatres much more flavoursome and historically accurate, but much more thematic as a player, so that North Africa will feel very different, as it should, compared to say, Europe.

I hope that gives people some inclination of the commitment we have to making sure
that all the all the gear, all the toys, all the weapons, all the equipment you'll be
playing with, is 100% authentic and accurate. - Matt, Studio Creative Director

Here’s a first-look at some of the uniform work in progress!

High poly for the new British desert uniform

High poly for the new German DAK uniform

Improved British helmet with straps, for a better fit and more accuracy

Firefly Tank

Improvements to manoeuvrability and how the Firefly works falls into a wider conversation around armour in the game, and it is something we want to look at.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
It’s an interesting one with Hell Let Loose, because of how Hell Let Loose classes it's different types of armour, you know, the Firefly historically is fundamentally the same chassis that's - for want of a better word - as a normal Sherman with a 75mm gun - it just has an almighty 17 pounder on it. So I'm gonna look into this especially when we do the Churchill, I'm going to look into the different game mechanic armour values of Hell Let Loose and how they work in relation to how they worked in WWII. - Matt, Studio Creative Director

Recon & Artillery

Reevaluating the game meta is not off the table for us, and we’re keen to explore what it could look like in the future - whether that be making artillery a Commander ability that can be called in, or a mortar team.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
The next sort of thing I have in my head is around self-propelled artillery pieces - so you get to drive the artillery around as if it were in a vehicle form and the vehicle has an artillery piece on it - and there are plenty of historical self-propelled artillery pieces as well and again, that creates a more interesting gameplay mechanic because they can physically move and maybe they're, depending on the piece that we're talking about, maybe the destruction ability of that piece could vary as well, so I think the the surmise of it is, as always with a lot of game development, there are a lot of things we want to try out and prototype and the way that we work is we'll have an idea - prototype it quickly - as soon as we think it's possible to run it in a PTE where it looks representative of the idea to see if it has legs, then we should do that and get feedback from the community.

Game development is a lot about iteration, so you you try something that could work, get some feedback, iterate, get some more feedback, and iterate and that's where you kind of find the magic in in the mechanics. I think it is very difficult to say on paper “this thing here will work 100% guaranteed” from my experiences and from the team's experience it's better to have a few different systems that we can try quickly and work out so there's lots of different options options to us but it's something 100% we want to look at. - Matt, Studio Creative Director

Node System

With some players finding the node system to have become stale, we also want to look at revisiting and understanding where previously in Hell Let Loose, the location of node placement would have an impact.

Creating a deeper mechanic is something we’ll look to do, and test out in a future PTE, where you’ll be able to share your feedback on the direction taken!

Garrisons

Building garrisons and defending them exists as a key mechanic, which can easily be the difference between a win or a loss.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
We may have a new type of Garrison. But I'm going to keep a little bit tight-lipped about it because I think there's a few development things that we've been experimenting with - and we've done some tests within the team that takes the good stuff out of the garrisons and maybe unhinges it from some of the frustrations people have with garrisons and we've done some prototypes and we had a system working that we're very excited about and that we will want to run it in a PTE.

When you’ve been playing the game for a while, you kind of get a feel for “I know there's going to be an enemy Garrison there” and that in itself can be quite a satisfying mechanic, but I don't think that should be the only mechanic within the garrison system. - Matt, Studio Creative Director

Progression System & Loadout Reworks

We never want players to feel as though they’re not progressing in some form, and some of the new weapon systems we’re going to be prototyping out will be touching on the idea of being able to use XP for other roles.

We also want to look at new loadouts, as well as revisiting existing ones, and will be doing a new set of loadouts for the German forces for El Alamein that would be different to their existing loadouts in Western Europe, for example. These more accurate loadouts will need to be prototyped and eventually put in a PTE for players to feedback on.

Tanks

There are a lot of variables for us to understand with armour, both as a mechanic, but also with the existing physics of vehicles in Hell Let Loose, and their ability to traverse certain terrain in the game.

We already have prototypes for being buttoned up, or with open hatches, and want to explore smoke dispensers, as well as a flamethrower tank, and are absolutely interested in revisiting armour in Hell Let Loose.

We want to go deeper with tank mechanics, and get to the point where we can introduce an American tank destroyer like a Jackson, or a Hellcat and have that make a lot of sense in terms of mechanics - giving players more opportunities to adjust their playstyle and tactics within a game.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
These are pieces of armour where the actual thickness of their armour is quite low, they're what I would call shoot and scoot type pieces - but they have a hell of a gun. This is where Hell Let Loose with it's Tiger, you know, we all know that there's a lot of myths about the pros and the cons of a Tiger tank - the fact that 90% of the time, they weren’t really capable of moving very far, often breaking down, but the Tiger, that sort of class of tank can dominate a battlefield and everyone just wants to be in that type of tank.

Where I want to get to, is where you can play in a Hellcat and it be a really fun and engaging experience and you understand the tactics of how to use that piece of armour, even though it's classed as a heavy or super heavy gun, but thin armour, so we need to think about armour in the entirety of World War II. - Matt, Studio Creative Director

Supporting Organised Play

We are consistently in awe of the incredible efforts clans, orgs, and communities put into fostering organised play and tournaments within Hell Let Loose, and it’s something we want to dig deeper into to see where we can support these efforts.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
I want to pick up the conversations that I initially started when I first came onboard, in terms of going “where can we support you?” and that might look like potential content calendars where we can feature upcoming tournaments and events and support those whether that's with promotion on our channels, or giveaways - DLC, game keys - that can help really drive traffic to these events. - WombatMedic, Community Manager

There’s a lot to consider when it comes to the idea of Hell Let Loose being a viable esports title - including balancing - but we want to support some of the community’s tournaments, and will be looking to re-evaluate where we can showcase these and encourage more players to watch the action and sign up to take part themselves. While we have a War Arranger role in Discord for players to recruit and highlight events, it is something to be expanded on to see how we can support the comp scene on a much larger scale.

Admin Cam

We have already done some work on admin cam designs for increased functionality, and will now need to understand when would be best to do the development work.

Console Server Browsing & Map Voting

While not shying away from the workload required to bring a form of server browsing to console, there is a lot to consider:

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
The server architecture on the base level is very similar, but in the environment, it’s very different and so it is looking at that and how do we get that to play nicely and is it possible, how do we do that. It's a lot of work basically, and we we want to look at doing that work, but it is - is there any quicker solutions we can do to help console players? Like being able to find maybe certain maps, maybe looking at certain game modes looking, at certain server populations, or how full a server is. We are looking at the longer term thing as well as short term on that, but it is a very tricky piece of work that needs a lot of thought putting into. - Adam, Senior Brand Manager

Another solution we’re looking at in the interim, is voting for the next map - which would definitely help communities better organise competitive games, as well as give them the freedom to vote on what they want to play, versus what the server rotation dictates.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
Ultimately, I think we do want to move towards having this browser, but that is going to take some time, it is far from trivial. This is something where the community can help guide us. We all want that, and we're working towards that, and we will get there, but if we acknowledge that it’s going to take some time - what can we do in the meantime to make your lives a little bit better? - Kieran, Studio Technical Director

What’s next for Hell Let Loose?

Our current focus remains on bug fixing and optimisation, with the upcoming Patch 14.3. With a new roadmap in the works, there will be more content coming.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author
That content will be PTE’d, it will be tested beforehand, and we will make sure that everybody is understanding of what's coming, what we’ve tried to do, and where it is, and some of that, it’s not going to be like next year - middle of next year sort of thing - we are looking at what can we bring to the community that's new content, while we're still making sure we do these major fixes first. - Adam, Senior Brand Manager

What new content is being worked on right now:

1). British forces rework - weapons, armour, and uniforms

2). 50v50 combined arms maps, including Mortain

3). Revising Dive to Prone and taking on board feedback from the community

There is content we would love to consider working on in the future, including the Pacific, however, we want to ensure we’re taking a measured approach to new content. A lot has been learnt from the delivery of the British forces, and we need to make sure the forces we deliver are accurate, what you as players expect, and also help inform and be respectful of the various history and forces within World War II.

Common Questions

For answers to questions on game meta, bugs, and more, please read our latest AMA on Reddit, or visit the Discord to check out the full answers in the #ama-july-2023 channel!

War Correspondent, Content Creator, and Community Videos

Make sure to post your videos in the #hll-videos channel in the Official Hell Let Loose Discord for a chance to be shown in future Developer Briefings!

Let’s Talk About The Practice Range

Missed out on the Patch 14.3 PTE? Check out The Fresh Baked Goods' video break-down of the first iteration of the Practice Range: https://youtu.be/Rvx5hBxRzHA

The Gang Tries Out The Gun Range

Shared by u/SuperMalarioBros on Reddit, this edit of trying out the Practice Range during the PTE session got our vote!

This is Why I Still Play Hell Let Loose

Watch Alpine Sniper pick out man from tree on Hürtgen Forest and land some great shots: https://youtu.be/0IdUOekw4nI

One in a Million Shot - Molotov Blocked by Grenade

Who needs to throw back grenades when you can just deflect them with one of your own!

Shared to Reddit by u/Slap_Life.

Join the Conversation

Submit clips and artwork by joining the Discord for a chance to be shown in a future dev brief!

Discord: https://discord.gg/hellletloose

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HellLetLoose/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/hell_let_loose

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/HellLetLoose

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/HellLetLoose/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellletlooseofficial/

Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/HellLetLoose

In Dev Brief #195, we’ll be taking a closer look at the updates to the character models that those who took part in the latest PTE session would have got to try out. Until then, we’ll see you all on the frontline!