Hey everyone,
Welcome to Developer Briefing #93!
This week Max has stopped by to reveal an updated mechanic coming to Hell Let Loose, including a first look at one of a set of new tools that armour and infantry units alike will be getting to grips with.
To turn up the heat on this Dev Brief, here's Max...
A Message From Max - Patch 13 Deployment & New Tools!
Hi everyone,
We’re thrilled to see that Patch 13 solved several endemic issues that were being experienced. We want to assure you that this is nowhere near the end - more that we wanted to attempt a final round of critical fixes before we move seriously towards working on Update 8.
We want to remind everyone that if you are using DX12, there are still some known issues that are likely to cause crashes such as alt-tabbing.
Update 8 may as well be called the “nuts and bolts” update, as so many seemingly peripheral areas of the game are being overhauled in a way that will allow us to lift the total quality, as well as expand functionality and the tactical thought needed to engage with each mechanic.
We’re going to start looking in depth soon at all the features, content, fixes and optimisation that we’ll be introducing in Update 8, but initially we thought we’d chat a bit about repairs!
A Wrench of all Trades, Master of None
The trusty wrench had been an ongoing mainstay in the way we communicate deploying anything into the game world within Hell Let Loose. While it’s quite a nice looking device, it doesn’t make much sense (building a supply box with a wrench anyone?).
Now that we’ve overhauled the animation system, we’re returning to some of the key utilities and refining them in ways we’d always wished to - giving each tool a specific purpose and widening and polishing each utility so it made as much sense as possible.
In Update 8, we’re decoupling the repair function from the wrench and have created a unique tool to fulfil this - the trusty field blow torches carried by the engineers of all forces. It will act much like the wrench, but allows us to be more specific in the function of the wrench (which will now act as a planning and placement tool), while also giving many more loadouts specific utility.
(Please note that these assets have been compressed to fit on Steam, so do not accurately portray the current or final visual quality of this tool)
For a long time we’ve felt that we need to give tank crews specifically the ability to repair their own vehicles. We felt eventually that it’d be interesting to enable tank crews to specify their loadout towards vehicle support, or perhaps re-arming. By creating this new tool, we can now easily assign it to specific tanker loadouts and other roles to create a wider range of utility - enabling players to also specifically tool logistics-focused smaller infantry units (perhaps to just run supplies and transport, as well as repair and re-arm frontline armor). We’re revisiting the way exp is assigned for this and are now able to make this mechanic far more robust and integrated.
As per usual, while this sounds like an easy task - we always want to make sure we make the most beautiful and authentic asset possible - including working on a nice little flame fx paired with a nice sound fx. Additionally, we also want to make sure you’re using the right blowtorch for the right force.
We especially love these assets as they catch the light beautifully and look and sound great in-game.
We also feel they may go well with a Mechanic uniform. Eventually you may even be able to use it to set the enemy on fire - but that’s for another time.
Coming soon we’ll be looking at the supplies rework, wrench functionality and hammer functionality. As always, the team is working on a whole suite of new things to polish and expand the game.
The weekend frontline beckons!
That wraps up this week's Dev Brief!
We hope this first look at some new mechanics and tools coming to Hell Let Loose gets your tactical cogs turning.
Have a great weekend everyone and we'll see you next week.
See you on the frontline.