It’s been a couple of months since we last gave you all a brief look at the 3rd Chapter 2 map which has now been in development for quite some time and for good reason. Let’s chat about it.
The map has finally reached a stage where it’s presentable and we can finally unveil the location of this 3rd location from our 1940’s Battle of France.
MAGINOT
Meet the “Maginot” map which will be the up until now mysterious 3rd Chapter 2 location. The Maginot map as you can imagine is based on the most northern part of the Maginot Line specifically the Secteur Fortifiée des Vosges (Fortified Sector of the Vosges) part of the line.
The Vosges region is an area of low mountains in the northern region of France, close to the Ardennes.
We chose this location as it offers some truly unique fighting conditions that we feel mix all the good things about our other maps.
Being the same size as our other maps at 4 km² Maginot features plenty of varying terrains, like rolling hills, mountainous terrain, dense forest areas, villages, open fields and of course the Maginot Line itself making its way through the map
The Vosges sector was one of the few places that saw any or limited combat during the 1940 Battle of France. It was attacked by the 215th Infantry Division from the German Wehrmacht, while the French 154e and 163e RIF were primarily in charge of the sector defence.
Fighting in the Vosges region kept going until July when France’s official surrender and capitulation was announced, so while the Wehrmacht preferred to avoid the Maginot Line we have a chance to relive the fighting that did occur on this rather infamous defensive line.
We hope you enjoyed getting to know this 3rd map that will be joining our large roster of maps in the near future. We cannot wait to see how players will tackle the difficult challenges that lie within the Vosges region and the Maginot line that it features.
Sometime late last night Post Scriptum's Server Browser started having issues with showing and loading servers. This is a global issue affecting several games including our Publisher. We have been working with our publisher and Steam to fix the issue and we are awaiting Steam on the matter.
As it affects our players we've got a hotfix which aims to alleviate some of the issues with the Server Browser.
If the fix does not work please try applying our temporary workaround as detailed here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/736220/discussions/0/2843417619892457336/
As per usual get your changelog below!
Changelog v2.0.944.15560
Server Browser: Changed the server browser timeout to 60 seconds. This might help alleviate missing servers.
Level Design: Fixed some water shaders.
Effects: Fixed some grenade and HE explosions rotating with the camera while leaning.
Effects: Fixed new White Phosphorus blasts rotating with the camera as you lean.
Last week we launched our new Tank Deck System and we're actively monitoring its implementation within the game and the meta changes. One notable issue has been that games were ending very fast due to the number of tickets each vehicle costs their teams, to help alleviate this we've reduced the vehicle ticket cost across the board.
We are still evaluating balancing between decks and will likely be making some changes soon.
This update also addresses community concerns that the new tank kick hampers armoured events where 2 sections are not enough. This we've also addressed by allowing all admin spawned vehicles to be entered by anyone.
As per usual get your changelog below!
Changelog v2.0.939.15538
UI/UX: Renamed Daimler AC Shot Mk. 1 APCBC to Shot Mk. IXB/T
Gameplay: Lowered Kill Death Ruleset ticket cost for all armoured vehicles.
Gameplay: Rebalanced M51B1 & M71B1 Pen Curve for M5 Stuart & M8 Greyhound.
Gameplay: Replaced M51 with M51B1 for T17 Staghound.
Gameplay: Admin spawned vehicles not being considered section vehicles to allow non-armoured members to use. (Leaving a section will still kick you.)
Effects: Fixed MG-42 muzzle flash effect being offset.
Effects: New White Phosphorus Bangs for grenades and mortars
A little over a month has gone by and we have been pretty busy in the office, two weeks ago we released a development blog detailing the new tank deck system that will replace the majority of our random spawners currently in the game.
This update will release the new tank deck system to the public for the first time, we are sure that there will be some issues in particular with the balance between teams, we will be monitoring this and adjusting it as necessary.
This was done to address some concerns about our random spawners that wasn't liked by our tankers. We have spent the last couple of months on trying to find a solution to this problem, the solution comes in form of the new tank deck system.
We won't go into details about this new system, but you can read the development blog here if you missed it. https://steamcommunity.com/games/736220/announcements/detail/2890703513471210440
As per usual get your changelog below!
Changelog v2.0.935.15526
Added: New Tank Deck System with Central repository and Spawner on all Chapter Offensive & RAAS Layers.
Added: Chapter 1, 2 & 3 Tank Decks to central repository
Added: Ability for Commander to view the Tank Spawner menu close to a radio.
Added: New Panzerschreck model.
Added: Smoke mortar shell to 2 Inch mortar.
UI/UX: When getting kicked, leaving or disbanding an armoured section a warning will be shown telling them they were kicked from the vehicle.
Gameplay: Rebalanced Kill Death Ruleset for all vehicles.
Gameplay: Fixed Panzer III F turret speed not working.
Gameplay: Players leaving or kicked from armoured section should now be forced out of a tank.
Gameplay: Removed M24 from St Mere Eglise.
Gameplay: Removed M4A3 Wade Sherman from Carentan and St Mere Eglise Invasion.
Gameplay: Panzer II now uses 2 cm sight.
Gameplay: Added Matilda textures without Chapter 1 markings.
Gameplay: Fixed Pen curves for Panhard 178, S35, H35, R35, APX, W15TCC, B1, Pz II and Pz 38t
Effects: Cleaned up several particle folders.
Additionally, we have put together a public Google Drive with a bunch of community resources from us, this ranges from Layer information, minimaps, tank decks, vehicle ticket cost and much more.
You can find the community resources here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/2/folders/1Bc0iNcgZP_wYzKQIuLAWTnkv3SwVCbCL
As part of our ongoing focus on the core gameplay elements of Post Scriptum, we have spent the last couple of months working towards a game that rewards teamwork and tries to further discourage lone wolfing.
One of the biggest challenges for us revolves around our combined arms gameplay, particularly the Anti Tank meta vs our Armour, since infantry Anti-Tank will often spend much of their time hunting armour rather than participating in battle we introduced a rebalanced a couple of patches ago that addressed the concern somewhat, making the Anti Tank much less effective on his own.
This had the inherited drawback of making the Armour crew much more of a challenging issue especially with how the current spawn system works. To address this we’ve been working towards making Tank gameplay more dynamic and challenging.
NEW TANK DECK SYSTEM
With the next major update, we will be introducing a Tank Deck System, this new system will replace the old random spawner that our players didn't like very much, and while still partly randomized it puts the choice and control of tanks more in the hands of our tank players.
How does this new system work? To understand the difference we need to explain how the old spawner worked.
The old random spawner worked on a set of spawners called “Recon”, “Medium/Light”, and “Heavy” these spawners contained a list of available vehicles based on the layer that it was on, every time the map changed or restarted the list of vehicles is shuffled and a single random vehicle in each pool is picked, this had the benefit of not knowing what armour you’re given for a battle, with the drawback of sometimes being pretty unbalanced.
This also meant that once you knew what the enemy tank was, you knew that this tank would be present the entire game and while it works in theory, it did mean that your tank matchups can sometimes be unbalanced and with tanks like the King Tiger you could be reckless at not much of a consequence.
Killing tanks also wasn’t very rewarding as you knew it was a matter of time before another one would be back on the field. All of this culminates into a pretty mediocre tank experience.
Now that we understand how it used to work we can understand the new system, which instead of selecting a single tank for each spawner type “Recon, Medium/Light, Heavy” will pick a “Deck” for each spawner type, a “Deck” is a pre-defined set of vehicles that exist within the game.
These tanks are of limited quantity and so you will need to use your armour cautiously as you could very well run out of armoured vehicles, in which case you will need to rely on Anti-Tank guns or Anti-Tank infantry. Losing a tank like a King Tiger will not only cost your team tickets but the tank will not respawn back in for the rest of the game.
Below you can find a breakdown of the various elements and states of vehicles you'll be presented within the new Spawner.
There are currently 6 decks per spawner type for each team. Across all 3 Chapters.
Every time a map restarts or changes the decks are shuffled and 1 random deck of each type is picked out to make up your tank deck for that round. The benefit that this new system has is that it allows flexibility for tank crew, in the sense that they can pick their own tanks and the combination of tanks that suits their needs. For example, both armoured crews could take out 2 Churchill tanks instead of being forced into picking one of each category.
This makes the engagement of tanks much more dynamic between not only the opposing tank crews but also to infantry Anti-Tank who will have the ability to take out a tank for the rest of the game, thus making their efforts more rewarding, bearing in mind that hunting tanks now is much more dangerous with several tanks being at play.
The Commander also got a treat with this new system as he has the ability to see what tanks are available to his team, what tanks are dead and what tanks are active in the battle (As long as he is close to a radio of course). This gives him more information to be able to better direct tanks on the battlefield.
We can’t wait to share more about this new tank system very soon as we enter into public testing.
NEW PANZERSCHRECK MODEL
Moving on from the new spawner, we’re also going to address a couple of other issues with the tank
We’ve added a brand new Panzerschreck model to the game, this new model will replace the very outdated model we currently have in the game, this will make aiming a bit easier and more accurate to this historical counterpart.
NEW STUG III AUSF. A
Joining us on Chapter 2 in the near future is a new StuG III model, namely the Ausf. A variant which was one of the first StuG’s to see service during the war, this particular model saw limited action during the Battle of France in 1940.
Built on the chassis of the Panzer III F that is also part of Chapter 2, with the same short 7.5 cm howitzer that the Panzer IV D carries it’s a very good assault tank with a low profile and a big gun.
NEW US 37mm AT GUN
And the most recent entry is one that we’ve been wanting to add in for Chapter 3. We’re bringing in the M3 37mm Anti-Tank gun that at the time Normandy happened was pretty outdated, but we feel that the introduction of a new anti-tank gun within the allied tree is welcomed.
We decided to add this rather than the M5 as it would call for the introduction of several counterparts like the 17-pounder or PaK 40, while we aren’t opposed to their introduction seeing as they were the mainstay of the armies of the time, we need to be careful with such an introduction as they were very powerful guns. Both this and the StuG III will join Post Scriptum in a later update.
After our major patch last week there were several issues that were missed during initial QA.
These have been found and corrected, most notably the Armour Penetration system wasn't working as intended causing issues with the ability to pen vehicles, as well as destroy others with certain types of vehicles and weapons.
We have addressed the drivers in trucks being unkillable due to collisions and the deployable causing a collision even when not built.
We also fixed the MOTD not having a close button when there is an excessively large amount of text.
We also heard the feedback about our Entry map with Utah beach being too loud and obnoxious, so we've changed it back to the more quiet Arnhem Range.
We have also made several other fixes, improvements and optimizations.
Changelog v2.0.888.15384
UI: Fixed MOTD Close button not being visible for excessively large text amount.
UI: Changed Main Menu entry map back to the Arnhem version.
Fix: Fixed the Armour Penetration system.
Fix: Fixed mines and other deployables not showing up if placed beyond a certain distance from the player.
Fix: Fixed drivers in trucks being unkillable due to collision.
Fix: Fixed M3 Halftrack center of gravity being in the rear causing the vehicle to nose up.
Fix: Panzer IV G Turret shield being misaligned.
Gameplay: Fixed and rebalanced all soft-skin vehicles with more realistic damage resistance.
Gameplay: Fixed the deployables having fully built collisions in unbuilt state.
Level Design: Fixed British QF6 AT Gun for German team as defender on Driel Offensive 05.
Level Design: Fixed Driel Offensive 05 pre-placed construction crates having no supplies.
Level Design: Fixed flying boxes on Stonne RAAS 01.
Effects: Possible fix for AP Mines not having FX under certain circumstances when stepped on.
Effects: Assigned proper Muzzle FX to Panzer II.
Effects: Optimized 20mm AP impacts on wood and concrete material.
Effects: General fixes to texture size and streaming.
Effects: Assigned correct impact effect and sound from AT Grenades against armour.
Sincerely, Periscope Games
Update v2.0.877.15334 - Changelog
Greetings!
We have a quick hotfix coming in to fix some issues that slipped past testing. Including a nasty exploit.
We will likely push another patch next week to address some other issues, we couldn't address today.
Changelog v2.0.877.15334
- Fix: Churchill Coax MG having infinite ammo.
- Fix: An exploit involving vehicle tents.
- Level Design: Fixed all game restrictions being left off in Arnhem Offensive 01.
- Level Design: Fixed Southern Minefield not disappearing on Utah Invasion 01.
Sincerely, Periscope Games
Update v2.0.875.15329 - Changelog
Greetings!
Since our last patch that brought some fixes to our deployable AT guns as well as some well-needed weapon adjustment, we have been hard at work on cooking up another sizeable update.
This update introduces several new additions to improve the experience of our players, with this update you will see the addition of the “Victory Screen” which will replace the scoreboard as the default end screen for matches, you can still find the old scoreboard by pressing and holding TAB the same way you do during a normal game.
Depending on your winning and losing conditions of the game you will encounter different titles and messages on the victory screen, these range from Minor Victory/Defeat, Major Victory/Defeat to Total Victory/Defeat. As well as the winning or losing conditions like the enemy won by holding the objectives or from running out of tickets.
The Victory Screen will also feature several statistics separated into the best section and best player categories, these categories are:
- Objectives Time spent in the objective either as an attacker or defender. Having a full squad in a cap will give you a multiplier
- Combat Efficiency Kill / Wound / Death Ratio score Accuracy and Suppression Overall score.
- Camaraderie Revives Healing
- Logistics FOB Uptime in total Emplacements constructed
- Personal Statistics Shots fired Accuracy Headshots KIlls / Wounds / Deaths ratio Soldiers Revived Vehicles Destroyed
All of these stats are only relevant to your match and it’s is not being tracked or saved.
The update also brings our own Message Of The Day (MOTD) screen to the game, this was a big request from a lot of our communities who are seeking for better ways to inform server rules and information to their players.
The new MOTD is very customizable, allowing you to change headings to various sizes, colour coding of text and even allows for you to upload a 64x64 pixel server logo for you to use. The MOTD will be the first screen the player will be presented when they join your server and you can see the MOTD at any time by pressing the MOTD button on the top left of the scoreboard.
For our logistics players, we are also introducing some enhancements, now all emplacements will generate a colour coded outline around the which will tell you the building state of a structure. The colour is Red for unbuilt but placed state, Yellow for Semi-built and Green for fully built emplacements. Additionally, you can see the health of a deployable you are looking at, the healthbar will be located in the lower right corner of your screen.
We have also gone ahead and added a new M3 Halftrack to the game, we have given the Lee Enfield and the Springfield sniper scopes the same treatment we gave the K98k in the last patch, the M10, M18 and King Tiger will also be present on Chapter 1 maps alongside the armoured layers.
(.50 Cal included)
And lastly, we have gone ahead and made several game fixes to short and long time bugs in the game, adjusted and rebalanced several items as well as several optimizations and level design fixes to the game.
Changelog v2.0.875.15329
Added: Victory Screen + Team & Personal stats.
Added: New Message Of The Day when connecting to server.
Added: Outline over deployable when equipped with the shovel + health status of deployable.
Effects: Fixed PIAT projectile playing two effects at the same time upon armour impact.
Effects: Fixed 20mm on the Sdkfz 222 and Panzer II was using the 14mm rifle impacts.
Effects: Fixed chimney smoke material always rendering on top of other VFX.
Effects: Fixed 9mm/38cal rounds playing 303 impacts on the ground.
Effects: Fixed hay bales not having physmats.
Effects: Optimized .50 cal muzzle flash FX.
Effects: Optimized 20mm impacts on concrete and wood with a newer version using way fewer sprites.
Effects: Optimized GPU collision method from small arms ground impacts.
Effects: Optimized 20mm impacts on armour to be less resource-intensive.
Effects: Made various FX optimization to distance field GPU particle collision.
We hope the new features will be enjoyed by our playerbase as we continue to work towards the SDK, Sandbox, Territory Control as well as more fixes for the game.
One more thing!
Post Scriptum is closing in on its 2 year anniversary and we are so incredibly thankful for having such a passionate community dedicated to the game. We are hoping for even more awesome times ahead as we look to the future.
So from all of us here at Periscope Games. Thank you!
Post Scriptum is 25% off for the Steam Summer Sale!
Greetings!
It's that time of the year again! The Steam Summer Sale 2020 is upon us. Both Post Scriptum and Squad will be 25% on sale.
The 25% sale will run throughout the entire Steam Summer Sale.
One of our latest updates added knives, deployable Anti Tank guns and many other Quality of Life improvements.
So if you've been eyeing Post Scriptum or know a buddy you'd like to bring along, now is the chance to get a good deal on Post Scriptum.
We also want to let you know that we are currently raising money for charity in order to save and preserve history. We have an all-day event happening on the 27th of June, in just a few days. You can read about that effort as well as the events here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/736220/announcements/detail/2463980472057830956
Sincerely, Periscope Games
Update v2.0.820.15079 - Changelog
Greetings!
Last week we released the update that introduced the deployable AT Guns and we have been monitoring their use and implementation closely, this helped us identify a few issues that were never thought about, this update should help this.
We also did a little more rebalancing to our Sten gun due to community feedback and we hope the changes will do good to the gameplay.
We will continue to monitor the update and the deployable AT Guns.
Get your full changelog below:
Changelog v2.0.820.15079
Fixed Deployable AT Gun being spawnable for free on FOB's.
Fixed Deployable AT Guns being available on Utah.
Fixed Deployable AT Guns being placeable inside most objects and on top of buildings.
Fixed Deployable Pak 36 spawning Pak 38 on Chapter 2 maps.
Fixed Sten to have same recoil pattern as the MP40.
Added Flak 36 to Chapter 2 deployable AT Guns.
Changed Panzerfaust MOA from 60 to 200.
Changed Sten sway to match the MP40.
Changed Sten sight to has less blur.
Changed the Zf39 Scope for the Kar98k to have smaller scope border.
Changed the Thompson recoil pattern to be less random and violent.
