Hello Everyone,

Update 16 has deployed on all platforms!

This update brings the release of the brand new Elsenborn Ridge map, the anticipated Freelook Mechanic, a Dynamic Weather system, along with multiple QOL and bug fixes.

Elsenborn Ridge was a less-documented but integral battle nevertheless in the Ardennes ‘44 campaign of WW2. Set in the Belgian region of Büllingen, just 40 miles away from Foy, the U.S. valiantly tried to hold their position in the small village of Wirtzfeld. With territory having exchanged hands multiple times between the U.S. and German Forces, the U.S. was eventually driven out of Wirtzfeld, and onto the Elsenborn Ridge, where they dug in throughout the brutal December period of 1944, having been forced to abandon crucial ammo and fuel stores near the village.

The map joins the battle between 16-26th December 1944 with the U.S. Forces having established their defensive networks on the Elsenborn Ridge, while the German Forces controlled the village outskirts of Wirtzfeld to the South. The map comes with the following game modes:

• Warfare
  
• Offensive U.S.
  
• Offensive German
  
• Control Skirmish

Update 16 introduces Elsenborn Ridge, a new map set during the Battle of the Bulge - 71 kilometres north of Foy in the Büllingen region of Belgium set during that bitter winter in the closing months of the war.

As our most significant content release since Mortain, we’ve focused on delivering a map that balances performance and visual quality. As with preceding Black Matter maps, we have crafted a biome that reflects the terrain, settlements and the biting cold endured by the troops in this region.

The result is a map which offers an engaging gameplay experience and is visually distinct. We are extremely grateful to the members of our community who took part in our PTEs and have helped drive that vision forward.

Environment Art - Expression Games.

Six new achievements have been added for Elsenborn Ridge.

• Blaze of Glory - Whilst injured, kill an enemy with a Flamethrower on Elsenborn Ridge
  
• Hit the Road Jack - Drive or ride in vehicles for 1 hour on Elsenborn Ridge
  
• Ultimate Price - Destroy an enemy garrison with a satchel on Elsenborn Ridge
  
• Rations for the Ridge - As the Support role, drop 25 Supply Boxes on Elsenborn Ridge
  
• Snow Angel - Revive 50 players on Elsenborn Ridge
  
• See No Evil - Get killed whilst using Freelook on Elsenborn Ridge.

Elsenborn Ridge Night

Elsenborn Ridge Day

Elsenborn Ridge Morning

Elsenborn Ridge Morning

Elsenborn Ridge Tacmap



Freelook has been a highly requested feature in the community, and as frequent players ourselves, it has been a goal of the development team to bring it into the game. Running through fields always has been a risky endeavour with threats always looming. Freelook allows for a 130 degrees horizontal view angle that allows players to scan their peripheries while running, holding a position or even mounted on your MG. This helps to give players more control over their situational awareness which allows for more calculated actions.

Due to some limitations with our character system, such as first person characters not having full bodies, there are some known issues which occur. This includes some visual clipping with certain weapons and uniforms. We are exploring solutions for these issues and will fix them in future updates.

Freelook is mapped to the Alt key on PC and right bumper (hold) on console layout A.


We’ve made waiting in server queues a better experience! Previously, players were stuck on a locked screen with no access to other features while waiting to join a server. Now, you can freely navigate the entire menu while in the queue; customise your appearance, choose your loadout, or explore other options to get game-ready. Queue details are conveniently displayed in a small overlay in the top right corner of the screen, keeping you informed while you wait. We hope that this change puts the downtime to good use, so you’re always in control.


We’re excited to share an update to enhance our community's onboarding experience! We’ve streamlined the UI by removing Basic Training, an overly complex menu with unnecessary loading screens. The two key features from that menu, the Practice Range and Field Manual, are now directly accessible from the main menu. This change simplifies navigation and ensures new players can quickly dive into essential tools that help them learn the game and sharpen their skills. We hope this improvement makes your journey into the game even smoother!


We’ve made some key improvements to the deployment screen to better equip players with critical information while waiting to spawn. One major update is the addition of the game progress bar which allows players to see which capture points are being contested in real time. This gives players the tools to make informed decisions about spawn locations and capitalise on pivotal moments during the match. Also, we’ve refined the spawn list to include more detailed information including; spawn types, their quantities, and individual cooldown timers. These changes aim to support Commanders and Officers in deploying critical spawn points when numbers are running low, while also reducing the friction of checking individual spawn timers for everyone waiting to dive back into the action.

The technical art team have been investigating the introduction of a dynamic weather system to Hell Let Loose, in particular a way to convey the weather that affected troops in Elsenborn Ridge. Troops were subjected to freezing conditions and blizzards affecting visibility.

We needed a system that could change throughout and be as unpredictable as the weather at that time to reflect this.

A set of VFX particles were created consisting of various intensities of snow. As we needed this to be configurable, we decided on a set of presets utilising data assets. This made it easier to drive the intensity of each level of snow.

This meant we could tune each scenario easily in isolation. Each scenario includes parameters referenced from the VFX and lighting to allow us balance intensity and atmospherics.

The VFX scenario was broken down into a set of presets:

• Light snow
  
• Medium snow
  
• Heavy snow
  
• Blizzard snow

The data assets were then accessed by a singular blueprint placed in the map which would blend each preset over time (all of which could be tuned in terms of frequency, probability and transition length). We added the probability of when the transition between each stage would occur in order to add some randomness to it.

The snow VFX behaviour has been improved since the PTE and we have made some changes to each stage to make the snow intensity transition more noticeable. Light and medium snow presets have fewer particles and a lighter feel, while heavy and blizzard presets have a significant increase in intensity. The transitions are now longer and feel more natural with the flow between each stage ramping up and down and not as immediate.

This introduced some challenges for how we would implement this for the online player experience of Hell Let Loose. Changeable weather conditions would need to be consistent over time for each player. The code team worked hard to ensure the levels of snow remained synchronised and consistent throughout.

In addition, the team went through the map to do a series of optimisations including:

• Terrain layer density, reducing the amount of terrain materials used in any one sector to reduce the strain on memory and GPU
  
• Particle quality settings, adding performance scalability for particle spawning
  
• Reducing the material complexity of various meshes
  
• Optimising the number of meshes found in each sector through merging assets and using the Hierarchical LOD system as a proxy for assets further in the distance to reduce the strain on both draw and GPU
  
• Optimising shadow depths throughout the map

Technical Art - Expression Games

This is a very exciting update for the engineering team. Along with freelook, UI improvements and the weather system, we also took the opportunity to overhaul the VoIP system in Hell Let Loose. The game requires heavy communication, and we understand that reliable VoIP is paramount to successful gameplay for Commanders and Officers.

We have introduced fixes for longstanding VoIP connection issues. As a player, this will result in a much smoother and more reliable VoIP experience. To achieve this, we reimplemented the VoIP management system from scratch with an updated version of the Vivox SDK. This was a large piece of work, but we knew that it was the only way to ensure a polished VoIP experience for the community.

Engineering Team - Team17/Expression Games

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3312110/Hell_Let_Loose__Wacht_am_Rhein_Units/

• Freelook mechanic added
  
• “Blizzard Dynamic Weather”
  
• Server Queue
  
• Ability to navigate menus whilst queueing to join a server
  
• VIVOX Upgrade / Reimplementation

Elsenborn Ridge

• Warfare
  
• Day
  
• Morning
  
• Night

Offensive

• Day (Offensive German/Offensive U.S.)
  
• Morning (Offensive German/Offensive U.S.)
  
• Night (Offensive German/Offensive U.S.)

Skirmish

• Day
  
• Morning
  
• Night

• New Elsenborn Ridge ISS screen
  
• New Elsenborn Ridge themed front end menu
  
• Freelook sensitivity added to the control menu
  
• The controller layout graphic was modified to reflect the new layout on a controller (Freelook)
  
• Removed the separate “Training Room” and added Practice Range and Field Manual to the front end for ease of use
  
• Elsenborn Ridge added to the Server Browser Filter

More authentic winter uniforms were added to the U.S., Germany & Soviet Union, including:

German

• Reversible Padded Parka
  
• Winter Covered M42

Soviet Union

• Padded Telogreika
  
• Winter Covered SSh-36

United States

• Wool Overcoat
  
• Snow Jeep Cap

• Map progress bar added to the deploy screen
  
• Timers added to deploy points
  
• Deploy points are split into categories on the deploy screen

• [Corps] U.S. Hair becomes way brighter in the sun
  
• There is no option to filter between the offensive team for the offensive game mode
  
• Certain maps do not have certain time of day/weather conditions, but the server filter does not inform the user of that
  
• Panzer Lehr DLC text is not localized for all non-English languages
  
• The Photosensitive seizure warning is missing localisation during boot flow
  
• Winter heads show clipping when Panzer Lehr Uniform is equipped
  
• 10 minutes after booting the title the servers will no longer appear in the enlist screen and a reboot is needed for them to appear again
  
• Temporary poor network conditions will cause VoIP to stop working until the game is relaunched
  
• The garrison count on the Officer's/Commander's watch is not a global team tally, only local
  
• The title soft-locks when the "Confirm redeployment" prompt is active if a player requests to join a locked unit

• [Factory Asset] Players can climb through a wall

• Cement block presents clipping with terrain in C10

• [A3] A trench has missing collisions

• [C10] Corrupted house asset can be found in sector C10
  
• [F7] House asset present inverted texture on wooden planks
  
• [G1] The Player can become stuck between a fence and house
  
• H2 Gate asset present on a closed fence
  
• A specific house asset presents tessellation issues at the foundation
  
• [C10] Supply truck can get stuck under a gateway
  
• [C7] Player cannot pass through wooden door without crouching
  
• [E4] The roof of a destroyed building found in sector E4 is missing texture parts
  
• [F1] Misaligned road, rocks and grass in sector F1
  
• [G4] The user can flip a tank on the bridge by driving into the cart located on it
  
• H8 A road texture is misaligned with the environment[H6] Destroyed house lacks bullet collision, allowing player to shoot through building and kill other players

• H6 Destroyed house lacks bullet collision, allowing player to shoot through building and kill other players

• [C4] The player doesn't have collision with the grass hill
  
• [E2] Incomplete stone asset
  
• [E3] A tree asset is misplaced inside a stone fence
  
• [E4] Invisible collision near bridge
  
• [F4] Missing collision on a wall inside a house
  
• [F4] Missing player collision on hedges
  
• [F4] Rain is falling through the roof
  
• [F9] The terrain is slightly misaligned with a large bush on a small hill
  
• [G2] Stone wall presents no player collision
  
• Invisible collisions in between hedges.
  
• Telegraph lines are connected out of sequence across the whole map
  
• H9 Trench wall presents missing texture and collision

• [RUS] Floating bottle in attic next to shooting range
  
• [RUS] Tree clipping through house
  
• [RUS] Wooden posts clipping through a wall
  
• If the player highlights the pause menu in the practice range, the subtitle above the Back button says Enlist

• [D7] User can get stuck inside a broken brick tower