Great news from the Verdun front!
Today we have concluded most of the work of conversion to the brand new unity 5 engine. We are very excited as the new engine is a lot faster and better looking. Unity 5 uses so called "Physically Based Shading" (short: PBR), this means that surfaces are lit and reflect based on actual physical properties. This is most evident in the characters and really makes the all the details really come out more.
Overall lighting and shading improvements can also be seen, most notably on the Flanders map. More advanced Screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) and motion blur are now also noticable and bring the graphics to live. Unity 5 also offers a new way of audio management and this enhances the immersion even further, we hope to expand its use in the future. First reports indicate that the performance has increased dramatically for the participants of the beta branch which we deployed in the past month for the testing.
But that is far from all. Besides working on the conversion to the new engine and all effort that went into that, we also continued to upgrade the gameplay. Some major improvements have been implemented in this area:
Supression
Players will now receive suppression when they are under fire. Their screen becomes fuzzy and desaturated and aiming becomes tougher.
Shell shock
When an explosion occurs nearby, the screen will be shaking and aiming will be thrown off. In addition the particle FX for grenades and mortars has been greatly improved as well as the audio effect.
Weapon sway overhaul
Weapons now have more realistic sway with the front sight (the arm that is holding the rifle or gun) now sways as a whole.
Private Matches
This long awaited and requested feature has now been implemented as well. it is possible to set up a private server (both Frontlines and Rifle deathmatch), with administrators and several commands as well to organize clan matches (such as restarting a round, changing maps). Besides these new features we have also put a massive effort into fixing bugs. Most notably the many connection and matchmaking issues have been addressed.
The changelog can be found here, it also includes smaller features such as a brightness/gamma setting and gas lethality increase.While this was a major step forward in the development of the game, we are not 'dun yet and the current build will undoubtedly include some bugs or missing features . We greatly appreciate all the players who have put faith in the project and participate in the the early access program. We would very much like to work with you to prepare the game .
Some impressions (characters):
Awesome ill have to check it out.
Great news! I like Verdun, but even though I can run more demanding games much easier, for some reason Verdun has seemed choppy since I got it a bit after it released on Steam.
We are still very much in the process of optimization, especially with the jump to the new unity engine
Awesome. However, the uniforms seem TOO clean for a trench war.
Well this is a bit of an artistic choice, the uniforms are dirtied, but not overly dirty as not all the maps feature passchendeale-flanders waste deep mud but also the open fields of the marne or picardie. Perhaps in time it becomes possible to do some kind of dynamic dirt based on player location (the new engine supports this)
Looks like a really epic game! I would love to see an immersive single player campaign for the different countries involved. Multiplayer servers eventually have an end of life and this looks like a game I'd want to have fun playing even years from now, but right now, not having single player is sort of keeping me from spending my money on it. Listen to Dan Carlin's podcast Hardcore History, his podcast series called Blueprint for Armageddon is excellent at telling the "mud and blood" details of WWI, really intense stuff to listen to. I would totally spend 60 bucks on a PS4 version of this game with single player campaigns!
Really like the improvements, (I have not played this game yet) and was wondering if there is any mustard gas ?
There is, you need to use the gas mask when it hits but the gas mask is a little awkward when aiming, the gun sight is in the middle of the eyes rather than in front of the right or left eye. Coming from someone who is often at the range it just feels a little awkward, they should really have the gas mask eye sight with the right or left hole directly over the gun sight, that would feel more natural.
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