Welcome back to another weekly weapon wednesday update! This week is rather special because we are happy to announce the return of a yearly verdun classic: the Christmas Truce. Besides that, we want to update you on the status of the development as is and the exciting forthcoming content and updates.
The truce
With our team of skillful artists working around the clock we wanted to make this years’ event even more special. We are not going to spoil everything, but at Verdun we want to do something unique every year during the christmas season so you know it will be you have never seen before. Here are some ingame screenshots of the upcoming christmas special content.
What purpose will these have?
Noël is almost upon us
What is he cheering at?
Stay tuned for further teasing and screenshots...
More happened behind the scenes and this week because our weapons team also created some amazing new content:
Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr
In 1918 the greatest disadvantage the germans faced was the sheer number of allied tanks. The allies had collectively produced around several thousand tanks come 1918, with Germany producing a mere 20 or so ( capturing a few also) While the role of the tank was still in its infancy - it was still an extremely valuable piece of equipment on the battlefield. The Germans had a number of tactics at hand to try tackle the onslaught of Allied armour, but it was realised (perhaps too late) that a weapon designed specifically to take out armour was needed. Mauser developed the enormous T-Gewehr in answer to this call. The rifle was in essence an enlarged version of the Gewehr 98, and used the 13mm TuF armour piercing round (Tank und Flieger) a round that would quite readily handle any light/medium armour from the period. The rifle proved effective, if not destroying the tank, just taking out an engine block or damaging the track was enough to render the vehicle useless … which then left easy pickings for German tank hunters.
Surprise!
The T-Gewehr in game will be used to help take out heavily entrenched positions, as the weapon will be able to penetrate wooden structures and metal snipers plates.
In addition, the animation branch made some progress as well such as the madsen light machine gun animations:
Lighter than it looks
Notice the unique lip system on the side of the magazine that is animated
Development status
We also want to inform you that the current status of the testing branch is almost reaching stability to bring it to everyone. Next to the efforts of the art team our coding department made great strides improving the game's performance across the board. We have increased the overall FPS in the last week by for instance reducing animation workload and cut down on physics dramatically. We are also in talks with unity to fix issues on a deeper level. We hope to bring you that update this week as well.
Vote for us as Indie of the year!
This week the final round of the indieDB game of the year awards are in progress. We need your help yet again to bring us to the top! If you log in at indiedb (possible with a steam account) then your vote counts even more!
The 2015 Indie of the year! It can be your game: Verdun
Screenshots of the Week
“Distant observation of an allied gas assault, western front 1918”
“Community gathering in truce, Douaumont map, 2015”
That will be all for this week. See you in the trenches!