Welcome back to another installment of Verdun’s “Weapon Wednesday”, we use these media updates to tease upcoming content and provide you with an update on the overall state of the games development.
First of all a short announcement: Version 233 is now available for download.
Fusil Automatique Modèle 1917
In 1916 the French army recognised the need to start replacing its outdated (and arguably not so successful) Lebel 1886 rifle. They chose to go with a semi-automatic design, having tried and tested semi-automatic rifles ( for example the Meunier, albeit with some resistance) before the war broke out. The rifle was produced in fairly large numbers, with the production estimate being around 85k by the wars end. It had a 5 round enbloc magazine, and was gas operated, the mechanism is believed to have heavily influenced the design of the famous M1 Garand.
The RSC 17 will offer the french forces some extra firepower vs the overwhelmingly common bolt action rifles, and will be an option for tier 3 Machine Gunners (in place of the chauchat)
Fusil Automatique Modèle 1918
A shorter more compact version of the RSC 17, the RSC 18 started production during the very last weeks of the war. The rifle was absolutely renowned for it’s accuracy and loved by it’s users. Only a small number were made ( around 4000) with most of those being produced after the war.
The rifle will see exclusivity in the Attrition game-mode. It is unsure if it saw action but we figured as it was a quick piece to create, this little beauty was too good not to include.
Development status
On the development front, again we’ve made some great progress in all areas. As seen read above; weapons are still being made and animated (several were completed this week). We are more or less at the end of our list with new weapon being added to the game and animated ( of course, we haven’t shown all these yet! - this is by no means the last Weapon Wednesday!)
Early Work In Progress of the in-game RSC Mle. 1917 animation
The Gore system is also more or less ready to go live, several animations have been completed and polished in the last week and the dismemberment and blood systems have been finalized. In addition we will have recorded additional voice acting for the horrific scenes that will unfold in the game.
On the performance front we just received reinforcements! Industry veteran and isotix lead programmer Nico will be joining us. Having worked with unity extensively in the past few years we can double our efforts in areas like bug squashing and improving performance in the weeks to come.
Game update status
We are on track with deploying the next build to the main branch. We have received positive feedback on the beta branch, solved most of the bugs and will be rolling out a new game version right now. Tomorrow a new version with gore will be available on the beta branch for our closed beta testers. If all goes well, this should set us in motion to get Douaumont and the gore live and released as soon as possible, but for now do please bear with us!
Screenshot of the Week
Observing nomansland in Flanders, 1917.
That will be all for this week. Tune in next week for more where we’ll be unveiling some much sought after firepower.