Hey everyone,
Welcome to Developer Briefing #73!
Before we jump into the brief with Lead Developer Max we’re excited to let you know that Update 6 will be launching on April 30th bringing with it a whole heap of new content including -
- Hill 400 (Offensive and Warfare Modes)
- Utah Beach Overhaul
- Ballistics System Overhaul
- Recon Vehicles
- Offensive Mode Changes
- New Commander Abilities
- New Customisation Items
- Bug Fixes
- Further Optimisation
- Unreal Engine Upgrade to 4.24
And more!
Now I’m going to hand over to Max who’s going to reveal all about the new ballistics system you’ll be playing with from next week.
Take it away Max!
The New Ballistics System
Hi everyone!
This week is an exciting dev brief for us! We’re very, very thrilled to finally be able to unveil our entirely new ballistics system that we’ll be launching in the next Update - Update 6. As you can imagine, this has been a huge undertaking that we feel will radically transform the feel of the game in very positive ways that we’ll outline below.
We’re very proud of the work done to implement this new system while retaining acceptable server performance. For a small indie team, implementing a system like this in a 100 player game (some of which last for more than an hour and a half) has been a huge task and one that we don’t want to understate the difficulty of.
Below we’ll walk you through the thinking of both the old system and the new system, as well as what you can expect in the future for the system. We apologise for the media we’ve attached to this brief. It’s really something that needs to be experienced and played to truly understand - although we hope the videos and gifs give you some idea.
Please note that in these videos we’ve enabled debug colors to better show you the travel and behaviour of the projectile over range. Also be aware that these videos are captured using our current (old) animation system.
Let's get started...
The Old System
Up until now, Hell Let Loose has used a modified line-trace system which adds bullet-drop from gravity - with the one exception of Snipers using a physical projectile.
Line-trace is typically a very good choice for multiplayer games, and is by far the most common method. It's very fast, has a low networking cost (important for a large-scale game like HLL) and more importantly - it feels reliable and consistent, even in high-stress network conditions (ie. with all 99 other players within 100m proximity of you). You can still simulate almost any physical effect with line-trace, despite the fact that there is no "bullet" to speak of.
The pitfall of line-trace however, is that the bullet travels very quickly from the source to the target - and shooting a player 500M away feels very similar to shooting a player directly in front of you. This can make mid-long range engagements feel dull, and devoid of skill.
The New System: Ballistics 1.0
For the next update, we have built a completely new ballistics system for our weapons made from the ground up.
The new system simulates every bullet as a projectile - meaning that you now have to accommodate for range and velocity, and lead your shots.
The ballistics simulation also adds new physical effects alongside gravity, such as drag from air resistance - and factors the calibre, grain, shape and profile of the bullet into the equation. The directionality and consistency of bullet "cracks" as they fly past the player has also been improved, and the visuals of tracers have been tweaked (the tracers you now see are the exact round heading towards you!).
All handheld weapons have been unified and updated to use this new system from Pistols to MG's and Snipers. This means that we’ve broken out every rough caliber in the game and built them using their real-world properties.
We’ve spent large amounts of time testing these to make sure no strange effects are produced from the application of real-world values. Please be assured that other non-handheld weapons will also be updated in the future to use this system (tank coaxial and hull MGs - the only bullets in the game to not use this new system).
Many of you may be excited, but some of you may be concerned that the end result may feel inconsistent. Often we’ve found that going for a straight facsimile of real world properties actually results in random and unsatisfying gameplay. Rest assured, something that we were very shocked by was how naturally fun the new system was.
The way the new system translates to in-game, is that each weapon now has a unique but characteristic feel that you can learn to master individually. Short-range shooting still feels snappy and responsive, and mid-long range engagements reward players who can make precision shots. The effectiveness and properties of each weapon is amplified, and the wide variety of battlefields in Hell Let Loose will be better showcased by this new system, creating a bigger distinction between short, mid and long range engagements.
Hit-Detection
As part of the ballistics overhaul, we have also developed a new hit-detection system to work alongside it. We have added a comprehensive Lag Compensation system for all player weapons, which improves consistency across different servers and eliminates the effects of latency on shooting and hit-detection. This has also allowed us to tighten up our anti-cheat measures, as we can verify hits much more precisely than before (this also improves the reliability of headshots!)
The new hit detection system adopts a favour-the-shooter approach, except in cases where the victim does something to mitigate being shot (such as getting into a vehicle).
This is just the first of many steps towards improved weapon handling and feel in Hell Let Loose, and we will continue to add and iterate on the ballistics system over time (such as bullet penetration).
Damage Values
We’re currently using the previous system’s damage fall-off charts per weapon caliber. We haven’t yet touched these as we feel it’ll complicate the feedback and response to this new system. The idea here is to update the ballistics system as a whole in order to specifically gauge its network and gameplay performance in a live environment. We’ll be in the game playing with you in order to get the best idea of how it’s faring. Once we feel that the fundamentals of the system are solid, we’ll then revisit the damage charts to see if any changes need to be made.
Please be assured that we won’t be softening damage or making the game less lethal.
Conclusion
As you can imagine, this is a huge new system to be brought into the game. We’ve been testing this system in simulated and real latency conditions with the goal of creating a system that functions well even at 400 ping. We know that many players enjoy playing on servers all around the world - so we’ve made a large effort to make sure the system is reliable in high latency conditions and feels good for low and high ping players.
This will be a ridiculously huge update for us. Paired with the new Unreal Engine upgrade to 4.24, we’re very keen to collect feedback on how the system performs.
As with all aspects of development of Hell Let Loose, we’re keen to iron out as potential issues or negative experiences.
We feel as a dev team, that this change to ballistics combined with our coming animation overhaul and continued sound overhaul will drastically change the game for the better. Please know that initially this new system will require some re-learning of the way to conduct engagements at range. Close quarters engagement will largely have the same feel, whereas the further the distance to target the more you will need to aim above the target to compensate for drop, as well as lead the target in order to compensate for the travel time of the bullet through the air.
We have been playing with this new system for many weeks now and have found that - once learned - this new system creates a more logical sense of battle (less instant-death at very long ranges) and defines each weapon’s sense of purpose (machine-guns are now more potent and true-to-function) - as well as creating a better soundscape and more atmospheric battlefield. Ultimately, we find this system to be both far more realistic and far more fun. We’re looking forward to seeing your feedback!
Finally, this is one of the huge infrastructure overhauls that we’ve been keen to finally reveal and implement. The next one will be the animation overhaul. Stay tuned as we’ll dive deep into that in the coming weeks.
Asia & South America Community Server Update
One last thing before we sign-off, we've been listening to your feedback in regards to server access in Asia and South America. From Monday 27th April we're pleased to say one of our server hosting partners, G-Portal will be allowing members of the community to rent HLL servers in both Taiwan and Sao Paolo.
We’ll see you on the frontline.