Welcome back to another Verdun update. This week we are still working heavily towards the launch of the next content update. A special news update will be released to inform you once we near completion and as we iron out some final touches.
This update also marks the beginning of a new sort of weekly update which will focus more so in in-game features, squads and new maps. To avoid confusion; the term weekly “weapon wednesday” as we called them in the beginning will no longer be used. (This being in part due to us having little in the way of new weapons to create as we finished most of the western front!).
Content Update
So what are we up to? Well our current plan for the upcoming content update is to deploy this on a separate testing game instance, so that you will be able to play both the regular matches and help us test the new content. The testing will be private initially, but should open up in the weeks to come. More information on this will follow soon.
We’re also excited to show the first impression teaser of the new map. The map is nearing finalization in terms of layout and content and it will be part of the upcoming content test. It will combine some long-requested community features. Take a gander:
More map impressions in our next updates!
Features
Now we’d like to tease some of the new features that have kept us busy. For a starters we have redone ALL the animations for all the first person weapons. Also weapon sights have been edited and they look a lot more immersive, for instance in this image:
The Belgian Kar 89 with updated sight picture
We also updated FP gas masks and added the allied French and British/American masks as first person models (No more German gas masks for all nations!) Here is a little teaser of the M2 mask:
Updated lens textures for more immersion
Cool work in progress stuff
As a bonus little for the 24 hour update delay we’d like to demonstrate an awesome new feature that we are currently working on as part of the gore system: Updated Ragdoll physics/animation hybrids. Gore will be part of the upcoming content update testing phase. Some elements have been polished since our initial trials in October and it is now ready to test again.
Seamless blending between animation and ragdoll
Next timewe shall reveal more features and some animated gifs of the verdun gore system (dismemberment being one of them)
In addition to the new weapons and animations, Unity 5.3 allows for a new kind of Physically Based Rendering technique which allows for a nicer representation of metals in-game. Our artists have worked tirelessly since new years to update weapon materials (as was as working on all of the other things). Here an example of some of the new material work.
The ruby was also reworked
Performance
In addition to all the content production, we have seen a massive gain in FPS increase across the board. The last few updates have a statistically measured 30% increase since December. Optimization is still ongoing as we find ways to deal with verdun’s detailed environments in more effective ways. We are specifically looking at lower-end machines this week.
Screenshots of the Week
“Gas cloud engulfs a trench, western front 1915”
That will be all for this update. We hope to inform you as soon as possible on the launch of the update test.