Last week we launched Vanguard: Normandy 1944 onto Steam Early Access. It has been a great week seeing people playing and enjoying the game, and we are looking forward to another weekend of gameplay!
The community and developers are pushing our game nights this weekend. We’ll be in game from 7PM GMT+1 each night, so come and find us on the battlefield!
What’s Next in Development?
Today we have pushed an update to that game that includes several quality-of-life improvements. One of the biggest things noticed from last weekend was players were struggling to play with their friends. We’ve added in manual team-selection to work alongside our auto-balancing, so you should now find it easier to play with friends on the same team! We’ve also added customisable keybindings, the ability to switch teams - so you can play with your friends/clanmates, automatic kicking of idle players and scalability to the raid gamemode so on smaller servers everyone is fighting over the same objective.
Screenshot from our Steam Group: The sun rises over Merville (credit: Kelly's Hero)
The full patch-notes and additions to the game are below:
BETA 231
Version 0.5.1 Changelog
Thank you to everyone who has provided us with constructive feedback. We read all of it even if we don’t respond to all of it. If you have a crash and get prompted to submit a crash report - please submit it so we are notified and we can look into the cause.
Known Issues:
- Server sometimes unexpectedly disconnects all connected clients from the game
- Graphical glitches and missing weapons when joining the game for the first time
- Level loading time can be very long on slow hard drives - we are working on optimising this
- Audio settings menu is not yet implemented
- Decals can be stubborn and cause texture glitches
- There is no audio warning before being kicked - this will be added soon
- Localisation of some of the new features is incomplete. We’d appreciate any help from the community to get these translated.
Highlights:
- Custom key bindings
- Ability to switch teams from spawn menu
- Rebalanced raid when there are 8 or less players on a server
- Idle players who are alive (not spectating) are now kicked in 60s
- Player markers for team mates are now visible at any range
Game:
- Added ability to set custom keybindings in Options > Controls
- Raid gamemode now features only one objective per phase if there are 8 or fewer players on the server. All objectives will appear at the beginning of the next phase if 9 or more players are in the server or just one if the number of players drops back down below 9.
- AFK Kicking: Alive players are now kicked from the server after 60 seconds if no input activity is recorded. A discrete text warning is given after 20 seconds inactive & large visual warning and countdown after 40 seconds inactive. Doesn’t apply to dead/spectating players.
- Player markers over the head of team mates are now visible at infinite range
- Fixed bug which stopped players from being killed automatically after 3s when attempting to swim across the river on Pegasus as designed
- Added additional logging of connections to help identify connection issues reported we cannot reproduce
- Improved reporting from crash reporter
- Added support for additional resolutions (please let us know if yours is not already supported)
- Fixed glitched 'name in the game’ Kickstarter backer rewards
- Fixed collision issues around the staircase and preventing players from getting into the first floor rear rooms in damaged enterable house
- Fixed missing objective capture dialog line for the German team.
- Removed flags from server browser
- Added developer message area to main menu & beneath scoreboard for breaking news/events
- Added localisation for new afk notifications
- Updated server browser to hide obsolete server versions. Recently outdated servers will continue to show
- Fixed disconnecting players from being returned to an outdated server browser
- Optimised scoreboard to reduce performance impact on opening
- Added “network error” popup when connection fails due to a network issue
- Increased confirmation time when changing settings from 15 seconds to 30 seconds
- Fixed game start countdown displaying “waiting for 63 players” briefly at the start of rounds
- Updated layout of settings menu to reduce confusion on location of toggle settings
- Fixed an issue where the scoreboard was not instantly updated when a player disconnected
Balancing:
- Fixed hits to arms not causing enough damage
- MG34 bullet spread reduced by 20%
- MG34 ‘draw speed’ reduced by 20%
- Bren Mk.II bullet spread reduced by 20%
- Bren Mk.II ‘draw speed’ reduced by 20%
Levels:
- Pegasus Bridge
- Blocking off certain areas that were accessible when it shouldn't have been
- Fixed glitched backer-names in the level
- Numerous floating objects fixed
- Numerous terrain fixes
- Numerous texture fixes
- Numerous vegetation fixes
- Visual enhancements to the café-area
- Merville Battery
- Blocking off certain areas that were accessible when it shouldn't have been
- Removed invisible wall in the field on the attackers right flank when assaulting the Chateau objective
- Fixed glitched backer-names in the level
- Numerous floating objects fixed
- Numerous terrain fixes
- Numerous texture fixes
- Numerous vegetation fixes
- Scaled enterable house with blown-out piece so player may pass
- Visual enhancements to the Merville and Town-area
- Lion-sur-Mer
- Blocking off certain areas that were admissible when it shouldn't have been
- Fixed wrong Tobruk model near beachside
- Fixed glitched backer-names in the level
- Numerous floating objects fixed
- Numerous terrain fixes
- Numerous texture fixes
- Numerous vegetation fixes
- Scaled enterable house with blown-out piece so player may pass
- Visual enhancements to the surrounding areas along the borders and main play area towards third phase
Screenshot from our Steam Group (credit: ThePistaCZ)
Screenshot from our Steam Group (credit: dani24852)
Screenshot from our Steam Group (credit: lakersdad201)
Screenshot from our Steam Group (credit: ≡F:Arg≡ DAM)
