Hello Soldiers,
I hope everyone is doing well. Today I bring you some new content to further expand the Brass Brigade arsenal. This "defense-themed" update has two major features - the Maginot Line map and the addition of two stationary field guns. Let's dive into them.
New Map - Maginot Line
The main bunkers in the Maginot Line.
The Maginot Line was a series of defensive structures built by France in the 1930s in an effort to deter and stop any potential invasion by Germany. The line stretched a vast distance through the south of France and proved to be a nearly impossible defense to breach. However, as German troops moved north through France, the line weakened/ended, and provided pockets and flanks for the German advance to leverage in the Summer of 1940. It would eventually become an expensive symbol of false security.
French soldiers overlook their forward defenses.
The new map available in Brass Brigade is an assault-styled map, designed to play as a front-line attack. German troops spawn just outside of a French village before the main defensive line. German troops will need to capture the town before attempting to cross a series of small fields and defenses before reaching the main line of bunkers and field guns. The attackers get four tanks to assault the line with, while the defenders get two tanks and a series of scattered field guns positioned around the line.
A German Panzer waits near the Ammo Dump spawn point.
The map is balanced such that the attacking team (Germans by default) start with less tickets, and gain more tickets each time an objective is captured. Conversely, the defenders (French Army) start with a full slate of reinforcements, but gain back less tickets for each objective captured than the attackers. This asymmetric reinforcement balance encourages the attackers to maintain momentum in their attack, as without consistently capturing flags, they will run out of tickets before reaching the final set of objectives. It also encourages the defenders to keep the attackers at bay, as merely stalling the attack may be enough to bleed the attackers of tickets.
Stationary Field Guns
Tanks have been a fairly powerful and dominant force on the battlefields for quite a while now, with only heavy explosives such as TNT, rocket launchers, and mortar strikes being the most viable option for stopping them. This left other troops completely defenseless against enemy armor - until now. New to many of the maps are stationary field guns that players and bots can hop onto to rain down heavy fire on enemy troops. But be careful! When manning a stationary gun, you are exposed to enemy fire. If you see an enemy soldier manning a gun, try to take them out with your small arms. Otherwise, you can damage a field gun the same as you would a tank. Field guns also have sights (just like tanks) so you can aim at far away targets.
A German officer mans an 88.
There are two field guns introduced in this update. The first is the Flak 88 cannon (for the Axis forces) acting more-or-less as an anti-tank weapon. It has a fairly slow traversal speed and can only be aimed high vertically when using the sight. But it has a fairly high projectile speed which makes long range target shooting fairly easy.
A French soldier fires the 25-PDR.
The second field gun is your classic 25-pounder styled gun with a short barrel (for the Allied forces). This gun has a quicker traversal speed but leaves the gunner slightly more exposed. They are smaller though, which makes them a harder target than the large 88s.
*As with all things in Brass Brigade, artillery guns can be toggled on/off in the Instant Action menu.
Other Updates
Anzio Day 1 & 2 Updates
- Foliage improvements
- Added more props to the German spawn area
- Added more foliage and micro-terrain to the exit from the Allied spawn area into the main town
- (This is part of a sweep I plan on doing to try and equalize the quality of all maps)
Optimization & Bug Fixes
- Adjusted culling layers on camera system which may result in minor performance increases for some users.
- Added occlusion culling data to Arras; some users reported lower performance on that map compared to others. This should help to balance performance.
- Fixed a bug that caused bots to stand still at spawn for extremely long periods of time after respawning when the bot count was high.
- Tanks & Field guns now have their vision affected by the "Vision" slider in the Instant Action menu properly. This should reduce the frequency of being "sniped" by distant tanks.
- AI will not attack a tank/field gun that has not been occupied.
- AI attacks vehicles based on the driver now, rather than the absolute team the vehicle belongs to; this should prevent friendlies from killing you if you steal an enemy tank for example.
Class Changes
- British Armies now have an Anti Tank Rifle class, equipped with the Boys AT Rifle & Sten (by popular request)
- German K98k Standard has 10% damage increase to better combat the semi automatic M1 Garand, 10 round Enfield, 8 round Lebel, and powerful Mosin Nagant of Allied Forces.
- G43 damage bumped from 30 to 50 to align it closer to the M1 Garand.
- German Early War Team no longer includes the Stug and Tiger tank; only the Panzer tank is available for the Early War variant.
The Future & Personal Note
I think the immediate future will bring some more maps to Brass Brigade. I have a few more maps that I would like to explore developing as I think they would provide unique environments and may offer unique gameplay scenarios. That's all I'm willing to divulge at this time. It's hard to believe in just about two months, Brass Brigade will be a year old - at least publicly. The game was in development for almost 2 years before that. It's been a three year sprint and I suspect another slowdown may accompany the fall/winter season - the combination of screen time and the still-persistent shutdown of much of where I live due to Covid make consistent programming/development strenuous. I still have more I would like to development, but maps are the easiest thing to add, so in order to pace myself, that's where I think I will put my attention for now. Thanks for understanding & your love & support.
Until next time,
Henry Kucab