In the wake of recent events in the Soldat community, I think, everyone felt the need for some kind of change and resolution. Trying to help with the situation I only discovered I can't help much, because Soldat needs a strong leadership and management. Not only from the community side, but it needs a developer effort. Unfortunately I can't provide that because my efforts are entirely focused on Soldat 2. Out of this seeming despair a solution sprang out during the last few weeks.
I have been contacted by a team of individuals offering to take over Soldat and help fix everything that is currently wrong. At first I was skeptical, but after much talking, I learnt they have not only good ideas but the resources and work power to do this. They want to first and foremost fix the Gather situation, unite the community and fix some of the long-standing Soldat bugs and issues.
It sounds very good to me, that's why I think we need to give this effort a chance, it might be exactly what the game needs. So, this week, we made a deal and Soldat will be taken over by a new management. This includes the community sites like Discord and forums and Steam. The game will remain open source, so anyone wanting to play with their own version of the game is welcome.
More information will be revealed as the transition takes place. I do realize how much this game means to you, that's why I've thought carefully about what I can do and what I can't, to help this game. And I've come to the conclusion that letting go of my creation is the best I can do now. Time will tell what this brings.
But I do hope this is a new chapter for Soldat and that the game will bring even more fun times for the next 20 years!
Have fun! MM
"Totally Rehauled" Soldat 2 coming tomorrow!
[previewyoutube="jjVSXzCk184;full"]
The patch I've been creating together with the community for 14 months is ready to ship tomorrow. Are you ready? :)
Some of the major changes:
REMADE MAPS & VISUALS
See the gameplay video!
REMADE MOVEMENT
Fixed a lot of things like kick-jumping and roll to be exactly like in Soldat 1. Balanced speeds and forces for greater fun! Plus there's more moves like hardroll, superman-dash and sliding.
NEW PRE-GAME LOBBY WITH TONS OF MODIFIERS
Many modifiers including realistic damage, movement and Fog of War!
REMADE UI
ADDED MATCHMAKING + RANKS + STATS
NEW WEAPONS!
+ 3-shot Rocket Launcher + secondary RPG launcher with a guided missile! + all weapons rebalanced
This patch is launching tomorrow 6PM CEST. Check your local time.
Have fun! MM
🔥 SOLDAT 2 Released! 🔥
Soldat 2 Released on Steam!
Put on your rocket-boots and grab your gun. Soldat 2 is ready!
Can't join us today? No worries 😉 Grab your bowl with popcorn and watch the LIVE!Stream. 🍿 We made a special Facebook event with links to all the different live streams!
Early Access Features:
online multiplayer (with dedicated servers)
iconic physics-based movement
essential multiplayer gamemodes (capture the flag, point capture, battle royale)
See you in the battlefield... And remember to have fun! MM & THD Team
Legendary Soldat 1 movement recreated in Soldat 2
The Soldat 1 movement inspired many games including N and was analyzed in the book "Game Feel" by Steve Swink. I'm happy to have recreated it in Soldat 2 and expanded for even more fun! I've been making this sequel for over 2 years now as a "one man army" developer.
[previewyoutube="-ZZ5gH4mSuk;full"]
It's coming to Steam on Tuesday, September 22, 2020!
After nearly 2 years of a “one man army” style development I can finally announce the release date.
The game is in the final phase of several weeks of multiplayer testing and will be ready for release in Early Access on Steam for Windows, Linux and Mac. WISHLIST NOW if you haven't already!
It will be still in development, I'll be collecting feedback from the players and introducing new features.
Soldat 2 Capture The Flag multiplayer tests gameplay on CTF_DIVISION: [previewyoutube="jrszzOrV3wM;full"] Soldat 2 aims to recreate the classic experience of online deathmatch famous in Soldat, with the same physics-based movement, violence and guns. But it is much more than that with a new 2.5D look, weapons, customizations, gamemodes and experimental features such as:
motorbikes
battle royale
and an agar.io inspired gamemode
Early Access Features:
online multiplayer (with dedicated servers)
iconic physics-based movement
essential multiplayer gamemodes (capture the flag, point capture, battle royale)
I still remember the game I started making which was the beginning of Soldat. I was in high school 2000/2001 and in my free time I was coding a game called “Strike of the Dragon”. It was a karate platformer. Something like Karateka by Jordan Mechner but based on ragdoll physics.
If I’m not mistaken, the first game ever to have ragdolls was Hitman (released in 2000) and the paper written by one of its creators inspired me to do ragdolls in 2D (so I think, Soldat was the first published 2D game ever to have ragdoll physics).
“Strike of the Dragon” had platformer tile-based maps and when I conceived Soldat in my mind I knew I wanted to make something like Liero. But bitmap-based maps like Liero were out of the question because of how much memory that would take. Also I wanted the physics to be much smoother. And this is where I remembered Elastomania.
A game where you drove a motorbike on polygon-based maps. So I learned DirectX 8.0a in like a day and a half and quickly rendered polygons. When I saw those little ragdoll soldiers running on polygons I knew I was onto something big. I followed that intuition and it became reality. The rest is history and now it’s maybe time for you. Because you can join Soldat’s future and take part in its making.
Anyone interested in expanding, improving and fixing Soldat or simply interested in how it was made can now do so with the open source version. I hope this will spawn many amazing creations, mods and even full-conversions.
The current public version 1.7.1 (the one playable from the homepage and from Steam) is different from the open source version 1.8. The source code for 1.7.1 is available on request for anyone willing to join the official dev team (just email us at support@thd.vg or contact on Discord). 1.8 is available from gitHub here.
There are two reasons for this double source:
1. To prevent easy to build hacks for the current public version until an anti-hack system is incorporated with the open source version 1.8 2. Soldat 1.8 source code changes have key differences and cannot be easily merged
Soldat 1.8 key differences:
Source can be compiled with FreePascal (instead of Delphi 7)
Fully cross-platform
Uses well known libraries (SDL, OpenAL, GameNetworkingSockets, PhysFS)
Old GUI has been removed and needs replacing
Config files have been replaced with IdTech style Cvar’s
Major refactoring
In short version 1.8 allows for much more than 1.7.1.1 and we hope to see some amazing creations (like full conversions) built upon this.
And lastly a big thanks for everyone that ever contributed to Soldat, especially for helloer for putting this together and of course all the key contributors (sorted alphabetically):
Peters "daaw" Brede Gregor. "Shoozza" A. Cieslak Nick "EnEsCe" Cooper Mariano "urraka" Cuatrin Paweł "helloer" Drzazga Daniel "Skoskav" Forssten Justin "splitcoffe" Gascoigne Joe "jrgp" Gillotti Chris "ChrisGBK" GreenBank Michael "tmtgr" Himing Umut "ExHunter" Karakas Tomasz "Falcon" Kołosowski Oliver "Mr" Kuckertz Tony "zakath" Libell Jacob "Fryer" Lindberg Michał "MM" Marcinkowski Maciek "Mighty" Miłowski Ryan "FliesLikeABrick" Rawdon Jason "thestoreybook" Storey Reko "reko_t" Tiira
You can watch the story of how the game started on THD's Youtube channel:
[previewyoutube="FpWuOOs0TMg;full"]
And now I’m going back to work on Soldat 2 cya! and remember to have fun! MM
Soldat 2 Demo
Hi everyone :) I'm MM and I created both games so I thought I'd share this with everybody (I won't be doing it frequently cause this is a space for Soldat 1). So for over 2 years now I have been making Soldat 2 which will soon be available in Early Access. But right now you can already play the Soldat 2 demo for free!
If you want to be alerted for future news, such as the game release, please WISHLIST the game on the Steam store page (wishlisting helps me very much!)
I'm working hard on polishing the game for its multiplayer release, making sure the movement is as fun as in Soldat 1. But don't worry about S1 being replaced. S1 will always remain free and I'm sure both games can co-exist and mutually benefit from each other (remember that Soldat 2 news and marketing brings people in for Soldat 1 too!)
If you have any feedback on S2 do not hesitate to post on the official Steam forums or the Discord.
All Soldat moves are possible in Soldat 2 and more! For a full list click here.
Patch Note 20/04/2020
Creating a game for your buddies has not been so easy – until now! The latest version implements Steam P2P Networking which allows your friends to connect to your game without any hassle! No more port forwarding or unblocking! Start the game, share the join code or invite them in-game through Steam Overlay and let the fun begin!
We also enabled Steam Cloud synchronization so your precious game configs and taunts won't get lost!
A lot of our players use Discord, so we integrated Soldat with it! Your discord status will show on which server you are playing on, on what map and how much time is left! You can also invite others to join the server you're on.
Changelog (since 01/04/2020): - Implemented Steam P2P Networking for local games - Implemented Discord Integration - Enabled Steam Cloud synchronization for game configs and taunts - Updated application icon with the higher resolution version - Added -notray launch option to disable the tray icon - Added -nodiscord launch option to disable discord integration - Added -nosteam launch option to disable steam integration - Added -windowed launch option to start the game like a normal windowed application - Implemented Steam's Enhanced Rich Presence system - Fixed a bug that caused graphics scaling problems (known as big gostek bug) - Fixed an issue that caused high ping on game join - Fixed "Steam must be running to play this game (SteamAPI_Init() failed)" - Soldat will now fallback to non-steam version if Steam initialization fails - Fixed a bug that triggered false positive "anti-cheat" violation kicks - Fixed an issue with the game not responding to keyboard input - Fixed displaying wrong country flags in the server list - Fixed lobby filters not working properly - Fixed ForwardClient mechanism - Fixed demos not being opened - Added an option to change skin color changer in Player Tab - Added UPnP port forwarding for local server - Server list is now sorted first by the number of players and then by ping to the game server
SCTFL Sign-ups are now open
You can now sign-up your team to participate in the league's 30th season. Also, make sure to check out this amazing teaser by our community member Fame:
[previewyoutube="VWkepEAhk2U;full"]
If you have any questions on the procedure of signing-up, make sure to read this post: http://www.sctfl.net/forums/index.php?topic=56938.0
For anyone who is new to the competitive side of Soldat, make sure to check out our Discord: https://discord.gg/soldat