News Update #64: State of the Game

In our last update we talked about the continuing development of our internal build 'Overlord-lite' and the process of refinement we are currently going through. Development over the past couple of months has continued at an accelerated rate. The team have been focused on both refining the existing gameplay, along with properly implementing some of the remaining features and ironing out the inevitable bugs this creates.

One of the key features we have been implementing recently is squad rally points - a feature we know the community has long requested. We are still refining the way rally points work in the game and we are yet to implement mechanisms to prevent players from abusing rally points.
For those not familiar with rally points, they are placed by a squad leader to provide a forward spawn location for the squad. If a rally point has been deployed squad members can then select their squad’s rally point from the spawn screen, just like regular spawn points. Rally points can also be destroyed by the enemy if discovered.

We have also been working on improving player identification; something we discussed in the previous 'State of the Game' update. We have been experimenting with options and have currently settled on a solution which we feel strikes a good balance between realism, immersion and playability. We will be releasing a Dev Blog to discuss this in more detail next week.

Our efforts to ensure the game is well balanced continue. We have been refining weapon characteristics to ensure they are both fun to use but not frustrating to play against. In addition to these tweaks the level designers are pushing forward with their work on our currently unannounced fourth map. We are not yet ready to reveal the operation this features, but rest assured we are working on more than just Pegasus and Merville Battery, the two environments most frequently shown in our previous updates.

At the present time we are continuing to work with CRYENGINE 5.2 in order to avoid disrupting our current momentum, although the public roadmap for CRYENGINE 5.4 does offer us some important optimisation improvements which we look forward to incorporating into the game in due course.

Next month many of the team will be getting together in the UK for a three-day development conference. We have become very good as a team at working remotely in different countries, but these larger meet-ups are an invaluable opportunity for the team to get around a table, work through ideas and plan the development of the game to release and beyond. This time we're not going to TankFest!

That’s all for this update. Next week we will be publishing an update on how we have addressed the issues of enemy identification. Until then please visit our forums and our official discord channel and follow us on the social networks below.