I think it's about time that I say a loud THANK YOU to all of you! Since the release of Beyond Enemy Lines back in february it was a very stressfull but amazing time. You created an amazing, friendly and constructive community for which it's a pleasure to work for! Everyone who contributed their thoughts, ideas, reported a bug or just played Beyond Enemy Lines - thank you very much! It was a long journey and it's not over ...
The future of Beyond Enemy Lines
Updates: I'm currently working on updating the Engine from Unreal Engine 4.13 to 4.16 and reworking parts of the code to allow propper multithreading (where possible and supported). This worked payed off very well and resulted into a performance boost of ~15%. I'm also researching the possibilities of reworking all material shaders for an enhanced graphics, if - when - how is unknown and will be announced in the near future.
I'm also working on the next free Mission Update which is adding another large scale map to Beyond Enemy Lines.
Ubdate release date: TBA
Mission Editor: The Mission Editor es developing in a solid state and is pretty much fully usable. The associated Workshop tools are in the final state and are 95% done and working properly. But as always with such big projects someone won't cooperate. In this case: the AI.
I hoped to have solved all remaining issues of the AI by today but unfortunately not. The AI is almost fully functional, gets spawned correctly, is reacting properly to the Player but for some reason won't patrol along waypoints. To make it even stranger - if I create a mission in a Preview Build running withing the Unreal Engine 4 Editor, the AI is working. If I load this mission into a standalone build used in a Steam Beta Branch the AI works fine and moves along the waypoints. Only if a mission is created from within a standalone build, the AI won't work properly.
So there are still some problems but I hope I'm able to sort the out in the next days. I'm planning to release a public beta of the editor in June 2017 with a limited amount of assets (all remaining assets will be added later with free updates).
The future of Polygon Art
The Next Game Project (TNGP): I'm proud to announce that Polygon Art is currently working on a new Project which will be revealed later this year. This also means that most of the resources and work are now redirected the the new Project and there is less time available to work on Beyond Enemy Lines. This will result in a large time span between new updates for Beyond Enemy Lines. But don't worry, the support for Beyond Enemy Lines won't stop and more content is planned to be released over the next month.
Polygon Art Value: I'm also very proud to announce Polygon Art Value, a newly foundet team of 5 higly talented game design students. Working together with me as the Project Lead, the goal of Polygon Art Value is to develop small and entertaining game for various platforms.
The first project is set to be released this summer. If you don't want to miss any details about new Polygon Art games, make sure to follow Polygon Art on social media.
Here’s the situation: Zykov escaped on your last mission, he is still our priority target. Intel was able to locate an arms dealer with a connection to Zykov in this region. We don’t know who he is or his exact location, but we hope to receive more information about Zykov’s whereabouts from him. We had another Agent on the mission to observe and arrest him, his signal was lost 12 hours ago. Intel thinks he was takes hostage by the arms dealer somewhere around this region.
This is your objective: locate and rescue our agent and retrieve as much information as possible. We need names, locations and all the data you can find!
Content:
New, 4 mission long story with ~2-3h playtime
4 new weapons
New engine features: Night Missions and dynamic weather changes
New mission objective structure: Hostage Rescue
Unlocks winter themed objects in the upcoming Mission Editor
The first expansion for Beyond Enemy Lines will be released this month and along with it's release there will be a major update available for the base game. Here are all the changes:
added new Campaign selection screen
added 4 new weapon slots for the new expansion weapons
added editor core code (but currently disabled for public use)
added new DLC licence check system
added new achievements for DLC owners
reworked several sounds
remove >100 non critical warnings in the code
The update addes all Operation: Arctic Hawk related files als well as all Editor files to the base game. DLCs from now on contain ownly a licence check to unlock ingame items and no additional downloads are required. This decision was made due to fact that the editor needs always all files and a seperat download wouldn't change much. So the filesize will increase around 1GB to 6GB in total.
The owners of the Military Airfield Donation DLC and Dome Donation DLC will recieve an additional supporter achievement the next time the mission is completed.
Beyond Enemy Lines will recieve it's first paid expansioncalled Operation Arctic Hawk. It comes with a 4 mission long new Story set in siberia after the events of Beyond Enemy Lines.It introduces a winter themed graphical set and 4 new weapons as well as dynamical weather changes and a night mission.
Operation Arctic Hawk will be a paid expension, wether the price is not set, expect it to be under $10. This expansion does not only serve the purpose to add more content to the game, it's helps to fund the continued support and the development of the ingame editor introduced in the next part.
All changes and improvements apply to the main game and will be updated uppon the release of Operation Arctic Hawk. There will be free mission updates for Beyond Enemy Lines after the release of Operation Arctic Hawk and the Editor.
Content: New Story with 4 Missions, 4 new Weapons, new graphical set
Release Date: TBA
Price: TBA
Create your own mission and share it with our friends and the community!
A frequently requested features arrives for Beyond Enemy Lines - The Mission Editor! Create your own Mission with the build in Editor within minutesand no programming knowledge is required!
Drop the Objects you like into the mission. Move, rotate or delete them, change the landscape and day of time on the fly. Playtest it directly within the editor and if your creations works just fine, upload it to the Steam Workshop and share it with your friends or the entire Beyond Enemy Lines Community.
A fully fledged and detailed mission as a filesize of <10mb, even with slow internet you are able to share and play missions.
Early Work in Progress demonstration: Build a mission in under 3 minutes The Editor will be released for free to every owner of Beyond Enemy Lines with full Steam Workshop integration and the graphical set of the main game. More graphical sets like the Winter set from Operation Arctic Hawk could be added later on.
v30300 Changelog (03. April 2017)
Weapons:
- slightly increased damage of all weapons
- reworked bullet physics
- resized bullet size to a more realistic size
- reworked sniper recoil
- added bullet trace to sniper bullets
- reworked hit registration (from AI accept damage to bullet deal damage)
AI:
- reworked AI code
- purified Cover Search Algorithm (Runtime O(n^3) -> O(n^2))
- removed 2 deadlocks in state machine
- AI nolonger starts by default, now gets called by AI-Manager when ready
- increased hear radius from 1200 to 1650
- AI can now react to nearby bullet impacts (depending on surface and distance -> reaction is randomized, bullets can be ignored or path to "check impact" is to long)
- AI now returns smoothly when hear or see player (somethimes rotates long way -> needs additional research)
- AI is now playing a fire animation when shooting
Other:
- cleaned and improved code
- added casual option to settings menu
Upcoming Feature Update - Weapon & AI Improvements
Beyond Enemy Lines will recieve a Feature Update in the next days to improve the overall feeling and handling of the game and to prepare it for the next big Content updates which will be announced in April.
What will be improved?
reworking and cleaning programm code which can improve the performance a bit
new Damage Model - Hit registration is now working in a faster and more precise way
reworked Projectile ballistic
reworked Sniper handling and adding tracer bullets
several AI Improvements - reworking reaction time, improving several algorithms
implementing optional casual mode
Casual Mode:
A new, additional difficulty mode for unexperienced players or those who just want an easier experience. The Casual Mode is optional and needs to be turned on specificly in the settings menu. It will reduce the numer of AI's in a mission as well the damage caused by the AI.
Today a month ago Beyond Enemy Lines was released. And it's about time to show the first screenshots out of the second free content update.
Single Mission: Dome Infiltrate a radar observatory located in a forest. The thick vegetation provides countles spots to set up an ambush or run into an ambush. The rising sun casts long, dark shadows and makes spotting enemies a real challenge.
Update v30270 released - New Sky, Light, Mission Improvements & Controller Support
v30270 Changelog (13. March 2017)
Missions:
- extended Trainyard and opened new routes and possibilities
- changed basement doors in Radar Observatory to sliding doors
- changed basement doors in Launchpad to sliding doors
- reworked sky light on all missions
Sound:
- reworked and added new environment sound effects in higher quality
Other:
- added full Controller Support including menu
- added dynamic sky
- added day/night cycle in main menu
- new Text-Message-System
- fixed bug where it was possible to melee attack while using binoculars
- fixed bug where it was possible to use binoculars while ADS
- reworked several objects and materials
- updated mission loading and preview screens
- several minor bug fixes and code improvements
