Hey everyone,
Patch 7 is live now!
I know we've said this already, but we really want to reiterate how grateful we are for everyone's patience and feedback following Update 7's launch. It's really helped the Dev & QA process as we've worked to iron out the crash and FPS issues.
Lead Developer Max will be taking the reigns for the Patch Notes themselves, detailing what you can expect from today's Patch as well as what we're working for upcoming Patches and the next Update.
Oh and make sure you scroll all the way to the end...
Patch Notes from Max
Hi everyone,
We hope you’ve had a great weekend!
We’re happy to launch Patch 12 today as we have been working hard to try and resolve as many issues as we could - as fast as possible.
Please note that this patch is non-exhaustive, and we’re continuing work on any remaining key issues.
If you have any questions about this, feel free to drop us a comment or post and we'll endeavour to answer!
Performance
A huge number of improvements have been made to the way we handle culling and total meshes within a scene. As a result, we expect there to be a significant performance increase across the board (5FPS+). Results will vary depending on the exact spec of your machine.
Please note:
These were optimisations that we were able to apply in time for the close of patch. We have continued significant optimisation work in our main branch (for release in U8).
Crashes:
2 of our most aggravating crashes have been solved, with our third one sitting as top priority.
Please note:
We wanted to acknowledge that the Update 7 Hotfix temporarily disabled cloth physics in the game as a change in the way they are handled occurred between UE 4.21 and UE 4.23. This was causing crashes for some users. We will be bringing this back for the next Update.
The Third Crash
This crash is a very unusual one, in that it is happening as data leaves our code and enters the PhysX black box within the engine code. We’ve attached a huge amount of debug to replicate this. We’ve also found that some players may never experience it, while some players may experience it frequently. Some players have found that deleting their PhysX cache has solved this issue, while some find this doesn’t help. For the last two weeks we’ve been working with our QA team to try and isolate any fix reported by the community, and A/B testing it. During this time, we’ve worked our way through the majority of other issues affecting the game. We’ve dropped in several community-found speculative fixes below which are worth exploring if this crash is persisting for you.
FPS Dip
We’ve profiled this a huge amount and have applied several speculative fixes to address the mass FPS dips experienced by some players.
In our profiling, and collection of data across the board, we’ve isolated that the spawning of 4-5 body parts per dismemberment is causing significant CPU bottlenecks on specific machines. As a result of this, we’re trailing a test where we’ll despawn unseen body parts (not visible in-camera) within a second of them being out of sight.
Visual Improvements
- Fixed: There are severe LoD issues with many of the buildings found in Carentan when only a short distance from them.
- Fixed: [Omaha] Pre-placed Garrison is clipping into a destroyed vehicle. Fixed: [Carentan] Very low quality LOD when 50m from a building.
Animation
We are aware of a few outstanding animation bugs, and are continuing to fix and polish.
- Lowered prone head bob intensity to reduce sea-sickness (we’ll be looking at implementing a switch that will allow you to disable all head bobs/camera moves in the next update).
- Fixed: [FPP] Missing weapon switching animation while crawling
- Fixed: [FPP] Wrench audio/animation does not work correctly
- Fixed: DF shadow appears for the player's helmet.
Gameplay
Several features we’ll be introducing in coming updates will flesh out the current meta for both Offensive and Warfare mode (especially looking at Offensive mode, and mixing in objectives (eg. blow up enemy gun position), but we were keen to fix low-hanging fruit as fast as possible.
- Enemy Garrisons in enemy territory can now be destroyed, and can be dismantled but with a longer (30 sec) dismantle time.
- Show difference between enemy near and overrun on Garrisons (icon will now turn red when Garrison is overrun.)
- Fixed: performing a partial reload with the M1 Garand gives 1 extra round on the next clip.
- Recon markers have been tweaked and are now visible for 60 seconds and the Recon Plane ability has a cooldown of 5 minutes. Recon vehicles remain the same.
SFX
- Altered the way incoming fire is spatialised.
- After lots of play, we’ve nullified the bullet-flyby “whiz/crack” for all friendly gunfire, to better enable you to determine when an enemy is firing at you. The sheer amount of nearby friendly fire was often totally drowning out the soundscape of the gunfight.
HUD/UI
- Fixed: Create Unit screen is missing a "Cancel" button
- Fixed: Admin broadcast message disappears too quickly
Speculative Fixes
We’ve also collated several of the community-suggested fixes for those experiencing a wide variety of issues:
Speculative Fix 01
Type in "%LOCALAPPDATA%" in the "url bar" down by the Windows logo on the bottom left of your screen, find the folder "HLL" and delete the entire folder.
Speculative Fix 02
Try setting your audio to “low” and try to relaunch the game.
Speculative Fix 03
- Reinstall HLL (Uninstall, clear steam cache, reinstall).
- Wiped the HLL config in AppData\Local\HLL\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor.
- Cleared the Nvidia Shader Caches.
- Rebooted the PC and relaunched Hell Let Loose.
- Disable Steam Overlay.
Speculative Fix 04
Also try lowering the dead body despawn to 0.5 (30s).
Speculative Fix 05
Also play from a SSD or NVMe.
Speculative Fix 06
Reverting back to a previous Nvidia Version also works.
Currently working on:
- Upgrading to Unreal Engine version 4.25. While painful, this is designed specifically to future-proof us to continue working for years to come within Unreal Engine, as well as to allow us to fix current engine-version specific problems and crashes.
- Optimisation on both GPU and CPU.
- Bullet penetration.
- Engineer role overhaul.
- Support role overhaul.
- Adding transport and logistics vehicles.
- Supply systems overhaul.
- Ammunition systems overhaul.
- Unannounced New Map 01: approximately 75% complete.
- Unannounced New Map 02: approximately 15% complete.
- Unannounced New Map 03: approximately 55% complete. vTweaks to weapon sounds per feedback and constant playing.
- Continued application of sound “environments” per map (ie. making sure the forested areas alter the gunshot sound correctly).
- Refining and assigning different interiors sound volumes (industrial, residential etc.)
- Overhaul of all heavy weapons sounds (tank explosions, grenades, mines, bombing runs etc).
- Continued refinement of vehicle sounds.
- Scoping out voice over lines for soldiers within proximity. vOverhaul of footsteps sounds.
- Overhaul of bullet impact sounds.
- Fixing any occurring bugs.
- Working through visual bugs and glitches for both FPP and TPP.
- Refining systems for TPP to create more fluid visuals. This includes altering and expanding some methods for player inertia.
- Setting up new weapons.
- Scoping out several new gadgets.
- Scoping out melee systems.
- Working on new 3D assets for the Engineer and Support overhaul, as well as the new supply and ammunition meta.
- Working on new weapons.
- Working on new vehicles.
- Working on multiple new map assets.
- Overhaul of vehicle vision port textures to up-res them.
- Overhaul of lower res firearms in order to optimise them and increase visual quality.
- Overhaul and expansion of Crewman and Tank Commander uniforms for both forces - including additional unlockable uniforms.
- Polishing off outstanding aspects of HUD and UI that do not yet share the same design language. vScoping out additional force UI elements.
- Revising tactical map readability issues.
- More undisclosed items.
Thanks to the entire community for your patience and support as we continue our Early Access development.
We will be following up in the not so distant future with our next roadmap.
Cheers and see you on the frontline!
Support & Something new...
That wraps up today's Patch Notes, as delivered by Max!
We also just want to take this opportunity to remind you that if you do experience any bugs, issues, crashes or anything under that umbrella we've got your back!
Hell Let Loose has access to a dedicated Player Support Team over on Team17's side who will give you 1 on 1 assistance to get you back into battle. You're more than welcome to use it and you can find them at the following locations:
Report a Problem Steam sub-forum
Team17 Website Support Page
We're also lucky to have members of the community sharing useful information over on the official Hell Let Loose Discord, so feel free to stop by there too!
Now about that something new...
We're pretty sure you'll have a blast with this in the future:
See you on the frontline.