Hello soldiers,
Year in Review & My Thanks
I hope everyone is having a safe and happy holiday season. For me, I've been taking the time to recharge my batteries, enjoy time with family & friends (responsibly, of course during Covid), and getting away from development for a bit. I'm sure you can understand why development slows during this time of year, but it's given me some time to reflect over the year Brass Brigade has been released. Since release, Brass Brigade has been updated with...
- 6 New Maps
- New factions, including the French, British Commandos, and more
- 5 New tanks, such as the Sherman, StuG, FT, and others
- Vast improvements to optimization, thanks in part to constructive community feedback
- The ability to mix & match teams on all maps & swap starting teams
- Added field guns
- Added the ability to command nearby troops
- Added a first person mode & sniper rifles
- Improved the visuals of earlier maps
- Added ragdoll pool to allow for many corpses
The game has grown far beyond what I originally planned it to be, with my personal thanks to Polygon Blacksmith & Synty Studios for their additions. Other than them, the game's development has been a one-man-show by yours truly. I'm humbled by everyone's love and support. It's been an adventure, a learning experience, and a success by all metrics. That's the best Christmas present I could have asked for.
Today's Update
Kursk Updated
Today's update is a smaller one. Mostly, I've been updating older maps throughout the life of the game, and Kursk was a map I had a love-hate relationship with. I originally intended for really large, open maps to be more common place, but I feel in love with the infantry combat when developing the game. Kursk fell a little by the wayside but now, it's been updated, with Ponyri Apocalypse serving as inspiration. Kursk now features trench networks in the center of the valley, as well as additional capture points on either side of the map to provide each team closer spawns to the action. This gives infantry much more to do on the map - the foot soldiers can fight over the trenches and adjacent farms while tanks flank from either side. I think the balance of the map is much improved over earlier iterations and better fits into the entire map rotation. Oh, and by popular demand, the map is no longer set at night. Visibility is much improved.
Improved Ragdoll Effects
Ragdolls have been improved, namely, bullets that impact them will now push them over, rather than their bodies simply collapsing to the ground. The way the ragdoll pool works required some unusual work arounds to preserve the kinetic energy of a bullet that hits a target. The ragdolls are affected by rounds physically. Faster bullets (like from sniper rifles), will topple an enemy & knock the ragdoll back more drastically than a pistol for instance.
Miscellaneous Bug Fixes
- Several bugs identified & corrected (mostly loose null refs) thanks to user feedback
- Fixed rare instance where player would not be able to spawn when they should be able to
- Possible fix which should reduce/eliminate buffer overflow errors in Unity D3D11 pipeline
- Various under the hood tweaks which should help improve overall stability
- Possible fix for Anzio Day 2 Crash if using default settings
I have another map still in the pipeline, but the holiday season has slowed development to nearly a crawl. I hope to get it to you soon. Until then, I hope this game brought you some joy in 2020; as difficult of a year as it may have been, it was exciting for me in having developed Brass Brigade. Here's to 2021.
Thanks,
Henry Kucab