Hey everyone,
Today we're pleased to share with you all that Hell Let Loose will be leaving Steam Early Access on July 27th, heralding the arrival of the Eastern Front and the Soviet Army.
To mark the announcement, Lead Developer Max sat down to share a few words on how we've got to where we are today, including a first look at a small part of our Early Access launch trailer:
The full trailer will be coming soon...
If you're particularly interested in the trailer tease you can watch that part straight away below:
Yep, that's Stalingrad!
Naturally this is a big step for Hell Let Loose, and the next one on our continued journey that we're excited to take. To go into more detail and hopefully answer any questions you may have, Lead Developer Max shared some thoughts and details in Dev Brief #131 which I've brought across for anyone that may have missed it.
A Message From Max - Leaving Early Access and Welcome to the Eastern Front
Hi everybody,
We’re excited to announce that we’ll be leaving Early Access with the launch of Update 10 in the coming weeks and the introduction of the Soviet forces. For us, it represents the solidification of several foundational elements for the game. We know that there will be many questions around us leaving Early Access and what that might mean for the future of the title. Don’t worry - as you’ll discover below this represents the completion of some key infrastructure beneath the hood - including finalising workflows that will enable us to work far more efficiently in the future. You’ll also see that we’ve got huge things planned for the game that we’ll talk through below.
Our Goals During Early Access
Hell Let Loose is an epic journey for both the whole development team and community.
Beginning in 2015 as a hobby, we’ve both expanded and learned so much during the development of Hell Let Loose.
When launching into Early Access, we had several key goals to accomplish during the period:
- We knew that there were several fundamental infrastructure overhauls that we’d need to achieve during the period in order to make sure we were best set up to support the title well beyond our Early Access period. Our animation system required more than 50 handmade animations per item, our texturing systems meant both our vehicles and weapons were so expensive on VRAM usage that they needed to be crushed in quality, and there was a total absence of ballistics in-game - to name just a few significant absences or issues.
- On top of this, we also wanted to build out the core offering of maps, roles and vehicles - and expand and polish Commander abilities.
- Lastly, we also wanted to expand the size of the studio and bring on new team members who could join us in refining and building Hell Let Loose long term.
For us, Update 10 represents the success of these initial goals and our leaving Early Access. All underlying infrastructure in the game has been rewritten for much easier iteration, expansion and optimisation and were used to help us introduce the all-new Soviet forces to the game.
Why leave Early Access?
As developers, we’re aware of every issue within the game - both technical, bug or features that could be polished, changed or refined. We’d be happy to stay in Early Access for several more years, however as part of our original commitment we felt that it’s important to draw a line under what we’d consider to be the “base game”.
As mentioned above, Early Access represented a time for us to implement huge infrastructure overhauls to the underlying code of the game - including entirely reworking our animation, sound effects, ballistics, mapping and texturing pipeline in a way that means our future work is far easier to adapt, optimise and expand.
We are also aware that every player will have their own feeling about what would be considered critical to achieve before leaving Early Access - and that there won’t necessarily be consensus. That said, it’s important to reassure the community as a whole that this is the end of the first foundational stage of our development.
Lastly, leaving Early Access will help us as a studio to continue to work on and support Hell Let Loose well into the future.
When will we leave Early Access?
We will be leaving Early Access with the launch of Update 10. We will be doing a special announcement this Sunday with the exact date as well as first teaser footage of the second unrevealed map and our new Eastern Front trailer.
Are you leaving Early Access because of the console development?
No. Many Early Access games stay in Early Access while also launching on console.
Will you honour Kickstarter Backers pledges?
Yes. We are fully committed to honouring these pledges and will be following up with specific backers. For example, we are currently testing one of the kickstarter uniform rewards in the PTE.
Does this mean the meta or “feature/bug I don’t like” will never be fixed or changed?
No. Hell Let Loose is an enormous game with hundreds of features that all need to coexist and all will continue to be refined or changed as we always have.
New content will continue to shift the meta towards our ultimate vision for the title. For example, the introduction of halftracks will shift the way in which teams stage attacks into enemy territory, while the new armour rework will shift the power of AT from the straight destruction of vehicles to component damage.
Does this mean that updates and work will slow down or end on Hell Let Loose?
No. This simply represents another milestone in our development journey. We will be releasing a roadmap soon to outline what you can expect to see in the future. This roadmap will include large amounts of content underpinned by continued polish, fixes, balancing and optimisations.
The future includes:
- Addition of new Western and Eastern Front maps
- Continued polish on all existing maps
- Addition of new forces and theatres
- Addition of new vehicles eg. halftracks, jeeps, heavy tanks, assault guns, specialist variants etc.
- Addition of new weapons eg. trench guns, flamethrowers, mortars, FG-42 and many more
- Addition of new gadgets and features (night maps, flare guns etc.)
- Expansion of types of deployable emplacements (HMGs, AA guns etc.)
- Expansion and continued balancing of Commander abilities
- Campaign mode to tie public matches together
- Solo and grouped matchmaking
- And much, much more.
Thank You
Fundamentally, World War Two is an enormous conflict, with thousands of different aspects worth exploring. As a development team, we’re fully committed to continuing to work together with the community to build on this core foundation of Hell Let Loose well into the future. We’re very excited to have you on the journey with us!
Onwards to the Eastern Front!
That wraps up today's announcement!
Thank you all so much for your continued support and we'll see you later in the week for Dev Brief #132!
See you on the frontline.