As it’s been 1 year since the release of Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, I think it’s the perfect opportunity to reach out to the community and update everyone on the state of the game.
I’ll first begin by bringing everyone up to speed on all of the new additions and accomplishments of the past year. Following this, will be what the teams are actively working on at the present. Finally, I’ll be breaking down what the future holds for Rising Storm 2: Vietnam.
One Year in the Making
We at Tripwire Interactive and Antimatter Games are extremely thankful to our wonderful community base that has taken interest in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. Many of you have been with us from before launch day and many of you have joined the community over the past year.
As such, I’d like to take a moment to provide a brief review of what the teams have accomplished over the past year.
- Crash reduction and stability increase - During the first couple of months of Vietnam’s release, there were several crash issues that prevented players from either starting the game or disrupting a game already in session. We’re happy to report that we have reduced our crash #’s significantly. We measure crashes by number of crashes logged in Bugsplat, per peak player count, per day. Very roughly a measure of crashes per player, per day. As of 1.07, we’re down 89% from the highest point, which means we’ve removed almost 90% of the crashes. But, while that is always good news, we know that there are also still people having issues. So, wherever we can identify an actionable issue, we'll aim to resolve.
- Weapon Additions - One of the main focuses of any first person shooter game, especially a game such as Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, is the availability of weapons to the player. At launch, we had a total of 40 weapons. Since then, we’ve added 11 more, including:
- M1917 Revolver
- PM Makarov
- XM-177E1
- M1 / M2 Carbine
- L1A1 Rifle
- L2A1 LMG
- Owen Gun
- F1 SMG
- New Faction - Since launch we’ve added the complete Australian Forces and more in the Bushranger update:
- 3 new maps (Rung Sac, Long Tan, and Operation Forrest)
- 4 new weapons (L1A1, L2A1, Owen Gun, and the F1 SMG)
- A new Bushranger helicopter
- A new Commander ability (Canberra Bomber)
- Rain FX which also support both stock maps and custom maps
- 3D positional VOIP Chat - Players now have the ability to hear and speak to both friendly and enemy players within their vicinity. We also overhauled our comms system, such as the ability to hear other players communicating when they are within earshot, regardless of whether or not they are speaking in a private channel, or similar.
- Performance Improvements - The teams have been hard at work over the course of the year making great headway on performance optimizations across the board. One of the bigger systems implemented is called ‘instanced rendering’. This new rendering system takes batches of world geometry, or draw calls previously done by the CPU and places the work on the GPU. The result for many, is a much smoother gaming experience.
- Movement Improvements - One of the biggest points of feedback we received from the community is how the games movement system ‘felt’. Improvements to smoother mantling, adding camera animations and reduction in ‘prone jittering’ are just some of the bigger takeaways. We continue to monitor community feedback and will always look to improve movement where applicable.
Today’s Vietnam
As of this letter to the community, the cat is out of the bag with what the team has been hard at work on over the past few months. On May 29th, we will be adding the ARVN faction (Army of the Republic of Vietnam), to Rising Storm 2: Vietnam!
The ARVN update will bring the below new features to Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. As always, this content update is FREE to all owners of the game.
- New faction - Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)
- New Voice Overs
- New announcer Voice Overs
- New character art
- 2 new official maps
- Supremacy - Quang Tri
- Territories - A Sau
- 3 community maps brought into the “official” fold
- Territories - Firebase Georgina
- Territories - Border Watch
- Territories - Resort
- 5 new weapons
- M1 Garand
- M1-D Garand Sniper
- M1918 BAR
- M1919A6 LMG
- M1A1 Thompson SMG
- Visual improvements to leaning
- Smoother movement
- Quick Match system
The Future of Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
One of the pillars that Tripwire Interactive and Antimatter games firmly believes in and takes pride in, is establishing and maintaining open lines of communication with the community. In order for a game to continue to develop and grow over the course of weeks, months, and years... a relationship between a studio and its community is key to success on many fronts. As such, you can expect new additions and continued improvements with the following:
- Bugs - The teams will continue to review all reported bugs and look to address them as quickly as possible, while still keeping the quality of each update to high standards.
- Continued Polish & Refinement - As mentioned earlier, the teams have accomplished a lot of goals this past year. A portion of those goals being polish and refinement. This level of attention to detail will continue for the foreseeable future.
- Community Presence - Interacting with the community and keeping everyone up to date is very important to us. Moving forward, we plan to ‘step up our game’ with some of the items detailed in the below bullet points. You may even see developers starting to make an appearance on these outlets! We’ll have more details on this in the coming future, delivered by esteemed Tripwire community manager, Yoshiro.
- Community Requests - As developers, we’ll always have a vision of what features we believe should be added to the game or what bugs should be addressed over others etc. However, our philosophy is that a 2-way relationship makes for an even better product. With that said, we’d like to reach out to you, the community, to see what features you would like to see added and issues resolved. We can never promise to add or fix everything that is sent in, so top requests will take precedent. We’ll have more details on how we’ll be handling this in the near future.
- AMA (Ask me Anything) - We are discussing internally about hosting an AMA. This is where all community members will have an opportunity to ask all those burning questions you’ve been holding on to, to the developers of the game. AMA date and developer attendance is TBD. Stay tuned for more details in the near future.
- Top Community Questions Answered - Before the aforementioned AMA session, the Tripwire Interactive and Antimatter Games development teams will be providing specific answers to questions that have been sent in from the community over the course of the year, in an upcoming community post,. Topics include, but are not limited to, are:
- Will we be adding more weapons for the North Vietnamese?
- Do we have plans to make NLF/PAVN more distinct from one another?
- Are we still working on a multiplayer campaign, and if so, will we be sharing any specifics?
- When will the community see more maps added to the game?
- Is bot support still being considered as an addition to the game?
- Will there be any additional factions added to the game after ARVN?
- Are there any additional planned changes coming?
I want to take these last few moments to provide a hearty THANK YOU to all the players, fans, and community members that have and continue to support the Rising Storm franchise.
Thank you for your patience and support and we’ll see you in Vietnam!
Mike Stone
Producer
Tripwire Interactive