Soldiers!

New update

Just before the new year we are releasing a small update in which we have revamped the entire animation system. This gives us a lot more flexibility in the future, when we want to add special animations for different weapons for example. For now you will already notice changes to facing and proper ragdolls on death. There might still be some odd animation transitions in this release, but they'll quickly be ironed out in future updates.
We have also made the map loading sequence a bit more robust and should therefore have fewer occurrences of disconnection on room load. Some stability and performance improvements have also been added to the latest version of the lobby.

Divided We Fall in 2016

To put it mildly, this has been an interesting year for Divided We Fall. A lot has certainly happened. - The new name of Call of Combat "Divided We Fall" was made official - The game was accepted and released as an Early Access game on Steam - Our lobby was rebuilt to be up to 2016+ standards. - New interface. New gamemode. More weapons. Expanded regiments. - A map editor has been built and is still continuously improved on - Improved the performance over 9000x (seriously, the game runs well on ancient hardware) - KAVA moved offices, was burgled and lost its mac :( The Early Access was a major milestone for the project. It was a big moment of truth and we passed it successfully. Maintaining a high level of activity 24/7 can be tricky for a multiplayer game in Early Access and the same was true for us. But the reach and amount of attention was a lot bigger than during the Kickstarter and that was a really good sign for the future. Lots of lessons were learned to prepare the game for official release.

Divided We Fall in 2017

So we have a heavy schedule for 2017. Here are some of the things that are coming next year in Divided We Fall: Tutorial In order to make the experience smoother for new players, we are building a full fledged tutorial to give the best possible introduction to the core of the tactics of Divided. It's a big endeavor, it's like building a completely different game with single player in mind. Gameplay We've been talking about it, there is a lot to do about gameplay, especially make the SMG's (close quarter king) and MG's (death delivery service) work as intended. Along with that we will improve how suppression works and turn it into a real tactical tool. We will also improve how you set weapon modes and fire stances to make weapons more distinctive. After that we will start adding new weapons and equipment like deployable machine guns, smoke grenades and possible firearms and melee weapons. Progression We also want to review progression and reward system. Some members of the community are currently helping us in shaping a more rewarding system. This will include tweaks to the ranks, and the addition of medals, ribbons and badges as part of your commendations. There is also the tournament system coming which will facilitate the life of whoever wants to organize tournaments. It will include a subscription form, it will send reminders, and the game will automatically create the proper rooms for the tournament participants at the right moment.
Polish and quality of life improvements Last but not least, there is a lot of polish we will add to the game prior to the official release. The new animation system was one of the items there. We will make the game more stable, make the interface look and feel nicer with little animation effects for better readability. We will add a ready button for pregame screens and for the briefing. We are also working on a replay feature where you can record games and then watch and share them afterwards. We will also work on improving music and sound effects. Extras We've always wanted to have more theaters of war and nations, and it is still the idea. The next soldier nations we will add will probably be the British and the Russians. After release, we will want to have updates with other nations and other conflicts (early war, Balkans, Pacific, etc...). Another big thing is that we are investigating is building an AI for certain type of game modes. It would be a very complicated endeavor given the peculiar nature of the gameplay of Divided We Fall, but it is an exciting one. We have thought of a co-operative humans vs AI mode, and of a 1v1 where the two players are the dedicated commander of large AI armies who obey their orders.
In the meantime, enjoy the Holidays and prepare for 2017 as more is to be expected in Divided We Fall!! Cheers, Antoine, Florian and the rest of the KAVA team!

[ 2016-12-22 12:20:31 CET ] [ Original post ]