Attention soldiers,
Weapon Recoil
This update brings a whole new dimension to the shooting mechanics in Brass Brigade - recoil.
For the entire lifespan of Brass Brigade, weapons have merely fired with a "cone" of accuracy & no actual recoil. Your crosshair always remained stationary when firing. The more accurate a weapon, the tighter the cone of fire would be. The cone was affected by your stance, getting more accurate the lower down you got. This was a pretty simple and effective way of implementing weapon accuracy. This is not an uncommon method of portraying recoil in third person shooter games at all either. In fact, games like Battlefield Heroes (which Brass Brigade has taken inspiration from) and Star Wars Battlefront I & II (the 2004 & 2005 titles, respectively) used a very similar methods of simulating weapon accuracy. It was in this style that Brass Brigade was conceived and followed suit.
However, as Brass Brigade has matured into a larger, more historically-grounded WWII experience (especially when compared to something like Battlefield Heroes), I found myself wanting to simulate weapon recoil a bit more viscerally. Sniping enemies from hundreds of yards away with a Thompson SMG on automatic shouldn't really be possible (or at least, not quite so easy). With this in mind, vertical & horizontal recoil has now been added into Brass Brigade. And don't worry - like most things in-game, it's optional and can be disabled if you wish to preserve the original shooting mechanics (under Settings > Gameplay).
Recoil can be disabled under Settings > Gameplay if you prefer the original shooting mechanics. It's all about your preference!
Weapons now kick upward and side to side as you fire them. The amount of kick is again affected by the player's current stance. Standing is least accurate, crouching is a bit more accurate, and lying prone is most accurate. If the player is actively aiming, the kick is lessened a bit more too. The recoil - while certainly noticeable - is not meant to completely disrupt the moment-to-moment gameplay, so in general, it's not designed to make shooting extremely difficult. The flow and pace of gameplay is still preserved, but it does help to emphasize each weapon's role in a battle. Rifles have a fair amount of kick, forcing you to reset your aim in between shots which makes lining up subsequent shots a bit more challenging, and landing them all the more satisfying. By comparison, smaller automatic weapons kick less, but their rapid fire will have you pointing way above target without burst fire at long distances. However, when you're up close, you can still mag-dump targets with relative ease, preserving their role as the king of CQB.
For now, weapon recoil is generally divided into categories for balancing purpose, so most weapons in a specific category share similar recoil behaviors. I will continue to adjust and tweak specific weapon recoil values to help make each gun more distinguished and true to its real life counter-part, but I think this first iteration adds a lot of color to the moment-to-moment gunfights.
Blurred Vision
Another small tweak that helps sell the impact and violence that surrounds you on the battlefield is a screen-blurring effect that will be triggered by nearby explosions. If an explosion lands close enough to you, your screen may shake & temporarily become blurred. Best to find cover if that happens before it's too late!
The screen blurs and shakes when near an explosion! Take cover, or else you might not survive until the next update!
Other Changes
Fixed a bug that appeared in the previous update which caused tanks to not see their team-mates and run them over. Tanks should be more aware of allies in their forward path and attempt to stop.
Keep your head down until the next update rolls around,
Henry