September saw the opening of the epic Closed Alpha, where even more of our Kickstarter backers got a chance to finally jump in and play! We are definitely listening to your feedback and concerns, and are trying our best to incorporate as much of it into the next build.

Aside from work on the Closed Alpha, valuable ground has been made on a lot of other fronts too, from art to mapping; programming to optimization. The list goes on, and it’s the purpose of these recaps to let YOU know what’s been happening behind the scenes.

Without any further ado!

Systems

Continuing work on player possession, which is key to getting development on emplacements and vehicles moving

Added Bandaging and Reviving

Changes to rally-points now mean that they will disappear after 9 players have spawned, as well as the squad leader being limited to placing a new one for 2 min after placing the last, unless the SL respawns at a FOB

FOB capture time increased

Flags now require 3 players to cap and 60 seconds of cap time to capture

Changed inventory system, weapons can now have a much more complex mag/ammo layout and button presses can be empty (pressing #2 on rifleman kits now no longer does anything)

New Ammo / Magazine functionality. Ammo is now saved and sorted on reload.

Damage model balance tweak on all rifles, carbines and LMGs to account for some edge cases

Adjusted sights alignment on the SVD to be much more intuitive

Moved weapon sway and stamina code to c++

Fixed an error causing rifles to have an unintentional ray trace instead of bullet drop

Continued progress on Steam integration and automated website purchases

Reworked spawn position checks and mechanics

An interesting piece of design can be seen with how the spawn checks are done. Any spawn point by code, drops a series of spheres around that location, and depending on whether the spheres are landing on an elevated surface, or a position where the player can’t physically be, it will flag that particular spot as being bad for spawning on. The system would preference the green spheres to drop the player into when they spawn in.

Art

Added 7 new AK and RPK variants to the game as well as remaking the existing RPK

Added 3 new variations of the RPG-7 skin

Modelling, Rigging complete on Russian soldier models, entering texturing phase

Progress on US supply and transport truck

There is a greater emphasis on improving the fidelity of the first person view, so a lot more tris have been allocated to the hands and arms.

Mapping

Progress on new Afghan assets

Progress on environment assets for Fools Road and an eastern European environment

Added new Assault and Secure flag capture mechanics and systems on all maps

Preliminary layout of a new large scale Green-Zone map, Chora, has been started.

Fools Road layout nearly complete and entering detailing phase

Added two gameplay layers for Kohat Toi

As part of a larger environment art update which can be read HERE.

Sounds

Added automated reverb systems to all buildings

Heavy breathing now stops when you go into incapacitated state

Added bleeding heartbeat sounds for bleeding and low-health states

Breathing from stamina no longer plays when in incapacitated state

Added Main menu music by Alkali.

New M4, M249, AK-74 and RPK fire sounds.

Added more deploy and reload sounds.

More footstep sounds and bullet impact sounds.

Added Rocket flyby sounds.

Added Radio filter for Squad and Command VOIP with transfer sounds.

We hope youve enjoyed this months recap, and stay tuned to all our social media outlets as well as the front page for more news on Squad.

Offworld out.