As we are expanding the backend and frontend of the game in this update, the patch release has been pushed back. However, we're releasing it now before Christmas hoping everyone could enjoy the end(?) of 2020. Thank you for your patience.
In this post, we'll introduce what's new in v0.7.1 and what we have planned for v0.7.x updates until v0.8.
Here's what's new in v0.7.1
Unit hover UI : Hover your mouse over a unit (or pause) to view health, suppression and status info. You can hover over each status icon to get even more info. You'll also be able to see how much damage you're dealing, amongst other useful information.
New weapons : There are 3 new backer weapons added (Colt Monitor, M1903 Air Service, MP 18).
Field of view and Fog of War : A new and improved fog of war is returning to UW. Line of sight now matters more, as you won't be able to see enemies outside of your soldier's vision.
New Camping (prototype) : We're altering the camping system in order to make it more intuitive and less tedious to use. This is an early version that might initially seem barebones, but we'll be building on and improving it over the 0.7.x updates.
Blood is damage : We've removed the hidden damage to blood conversion, so the damage will show as blood in ml. This change was made so it's easier to tell how much damage each weapon does and how much damage it takes to neutralize an enemy.
Bunch of bug fixes and (possibly) even more new bugs added to wake up the samurai.
As you may recall, we've planned and announced that melee and stealth would be a part of v0.7.1. Unfortunately, while we made progress in them, we couldn't finish it to include in this update. You can see where we plan to add the features in the roadmap below.
Roadmap to v0.8
Here's what we have planned for the next updates until v0.8 which will be a huge update. Please note that the roadmap below includes only key front-end features of each update and some of them may change :
v0.7.2 :
New weapon types (MGs, Lever action rifles, Mortars, etc)
Equipment revamp & more items
Better weapon degration system
v0.7.3 :
Melee
Aim modes (conserve ammo vs ratatata)
Allowing selected units to possibly opt out before combat
Tank revamp
v0.7.4 :
Class system (prototype)
New enemy types
Stealth levels
Fog of war improvement (additional layer of fog)
v0.7.5 :
New cover system
Better unit management(fire groups)
New camping (final)
Destructible trees and obstacles.
v0.7.6 :
Fire improvement
Gas gas gas! and smoke
Events & quests management
Retreating from combat
v0.7.7 :
Weather system (prototype)
3D worldmap
Combat grading system, improving suppression
Improve issuing commands
v0.7.8 :
UI revamp
v0.8.0:
New character models
New levels
New story
New graphics(rendering tech)
Weather system (final)
Improved sound system
Physical rewards
There were some difficulties, including the pandemic, with our production plans for your physical rewards, but they are being worked on and we already have some samples. Take a look :
Please tell us what you think about anything from above and feel free to ask any question about it. We always appreciate your feedback and bug reports.
We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!
Update v0.7.0
As we've said in the previous posts, most of our efforts have been on the back-end of UW for this version. Fixing and cleaning this will enable us to add more features faster in the future. This is good news but also means that you might not see enough visible changes in the front-end for now. We'll do our best to deliver new features more quickly.
Here's what's new in v0.7.0 :
Fire system : Grass, bushes and trees will spread fire over time and you don't wanna be near the fire.
New weapons : There are 5 new weapons(4 of which are our backer weapons) including a flamethrower and a Thompson SMG.
Automatic error detection & log sender : You will get a pop-up window if your previous gameplay crashed or was problematic. You can also manually send a log file or open log folder via settings menu.
Testing ground : You can now access the new Testing ground from the main menu where you can test different classes, tanks and weapons of UW freely.
Minor gameplay changes : including stores having more items, enemies dropping more variety of items, global weapon accuracy increased and more.
Backend improvements : No visible changes. Will allow better bug tracking & feature addition.
We're already working on v0.7.1 which will be focused around combat improvements including improved melee abilities, better cover & flanking system and more.
Here's a sneak peek of bayonet charge that we're working on atm for the v0.7.1.
Again, this isn't included in this v0.7.0 update but I wanted to share that a lot of front-end improvements are coming!
Thank you for all the bug reports and feedback. Please keep sharing your ideas with us!
Progress report & plans for v0.7
As we're getting closer and closer to the next demo update, I think this is a good time to share some progress and what we have planned for v0.7 and forward.
Progress report, sir!
["Here are some of the progress we've made!"]
One of our backer characters, Kaede, is now in 3D. We've experimented a few variations on her in both 2D and 3D.
She doesn't officially wear glasses but since no one is wearing glasses (yet), our 3D artist, SquareAnon, tested how they look on her.
We still have 3 out of 4 limited Colonel tier slots left, so if you're interested in designing and / or adding your own character into UW, like Kaede above, check out the tiers here.
[Bonnie model old vs new]
We didn't make a proper announcement, but as many of you have already noticed, we're upgrading all of our 3D character models. This upgrade is a direct result of our successful Kickstarter campaign, so thank you again for your support!
[Katya's gonna be okay, right, medic? .... medic!?]
It's gonna be lit!
Fire system has been one of the main focus for the past few weeks and is getting close to a presentable state. A simpler fire system that fakes fire could've been easier and faster, but we wanted to make something that's more realistic and that can add more depth to challenge you in combat.
The fire system more or less behaves true to life, with fire realistically catching, spreading and extinguishing. Combustible objects like tress and grass can catch fire and the heat will damage units(and objects) nearby. You can imagine how this can be utilized in combat, especially if the battlefield has a lot of flammable objects.
When's the v0.7 release?
We're aiming to release it in about a month from now, hopefully sooner with some good old industry standard crunch. Despite the long gap since the v0.6.x, v0.7.0 won't have that many new features outside of the new fire system.
This is because we've been spending most of our time in fixing the backend of UW. Without going into too much detail, you can consider the backend as a foundation of UW's programming and where most of the bugs came from. We've been working on fixing that so we can fix bugs easily and add new features more frequently.
Here's a rough summary of the future release plans (not in any particular order other than v0.7.0) :
v0.7.0 : Fire system, new weapons, testing ground(where you can try out all items in game), automatic bug reporter, Backend improvements
v0.7.x : Visual update (new models, effects and rendering tech)
v0.7.x : AI update (Improved combat AI, different behaviors for enemies)
v0.8 : Large content update (more story and related contents)
Some details can change but the general structure of releasing updates will be like this.
So that's it for this update. Please feel free to ask us any questions. You can leave them here or in our discord server where you can talk directly with us.
[Jotaro Bragg training his stand]
Cheers!
Devblog #4: Funded!
Hello, soldiers of UW(U)!
Thanks to your support, our Kickstarter campaign has been funded and we're excited to work on UW as planned.
Until recently, a part of our team has been working on patching the current v0.6.x Steam demo, while the rest has been planning and working on v0.7. After the v0.6.3 release, we'll be mostly focusing on v0.7 and beyond to deliver the next big feature updates to you asap. Further updates to v0.6.x will be limited to only the most critical bugs. Patches for minor problems and balancing issues will have to wait for v0.7.
Early plans (that are subject to change)
So what are our plans going forward? Here is a rough overview over what we have in mind for the future of UW:
Combat
The current combat system is mostly a carryover from the early days of UW. A lot of the game surrounding it changed, and it is about time it too gets updated. We’ll discuss the finer details of what combat is going to be like its own post in the future. For now, here are some of the main goals:
Cover System
The cover system has to be more transparent to the player - Am I in cover? Am I flanked? - How effective is it?
Positioning units has to be more intuitive - No more pixel hunting - Managing multiple units at once shouldn’t require micromanaging every unit
There should be multiple types of cover - e.g. bushes hiding the player, but not providing protection
Enemy AI
Enemies should be smarter and less predictable - Fighting shouldn’t get boring before the game ends - UW isn’t a short game
They should be able to use tanks effectively - Right now they just drive at you and run into each other
Different enemy types should behave differently
Environment
There should be more types - Not just visual, but also affecting gameplay
Combat environment should feel less static - Tanks running over trees - Setting foliage on fire (yes, there will be flamethrowers)
There should be varying weather - Add variety even on the same type of map - Affect combat in big ways
Other Aspects
These are still in very early stage of planning. Please take these with a grain of salt. As we move forward with development, we’ll gradually refine these. Once their designs are sufficiently developed, they’ll get their own dedicated posts.
Character Progression/Class System
The character progression and class system needs to be worked on. The 0.6 one was merely a placeholder and felt tacked on. The primary design goal is to make choices more meaningful.
Characters should become hyper-specialized - No class can do everything - No character is good at everything - The longer you play, the more your characters diverge from one another
There should be more choices - Improve replay value
Players should have to commit to their choices - No more switching classes or abilities to fit the situation - Can’t have everything at once - Make choices more meaningful
(Maybe everything should be a sidegrade?) - Everything would come at a cost - Not sure about that one yet
Questing/Random Events
The main goal of revamping the events and quests is to give you more things to do besides the main story line.
There should be more variety - Longer, with multiple-objectives - Quests within quests - More types of rewards & penalties
You should be able to accept and work on multiple quests at once - Switching from the UI
There should be side quests you can pick and choose - e.g. blackboard in towns
Misc
Besides all the aforementioned part of the game, there are also others that deserve some love.
New UI - More intuitive - Support all aspect ratios from 5:4 to 32:9
Upgrade 3D character models - Add cute
Replace item code - Item management and stores are full of bugs right now
Progress on character models
We've been improving the visuals of UW gradually since the beginning, but this is probably the biggest upgrade in character models.
We are moving away from the chibi (big head & small body) style we've had up until now in favor of more realistic body proportions.
Our 3D artist SquareAnon has been working on researching and developing this style. We're very pleased with the result and excited to work the new upgraded characters into UW.
When?
In short: We don’t know yet. The long version is that we’re going to have internal discussions regarding the release schedule very soon. We would prefer to roll out fewer, incremental updates as opposed to disappearing for months and releasing a huge update (like we did with 0.6). We’ll let you know as soon as they're decided.
Thank you for being such an awesome community. Your ideas, feedback and bug reports are more helpful than you know. Please continue to tell us all about them and ask any questions you might have!
Sincerely, The Unconventional Warfare Development Team
Update 0.6.3
The third patch for v0.6. With this, we'll start focusing on v0.7.x unless there's more game breaking bugs found. Please let us know if you run into any issues.
Thank you for all the bug reports helping us greatly in fixing them.
Fixes
#550 Sometimes characters eat at a campfire with their weapon equipped
#603 Ironclad ability not removing movement debuff
#618 the capture mode key functions are not locked in the menu, so when you use the search field in the field manual and write 'p' you hide the hud and when you write 'o' you switch the camera mode.
#619 crouch causing error during combat(on Isin, aka Thieves' landing)
#601 During tankette event, opting to use AP ammo to disable them seems to not do anything in the encounter
#602 If you save and load into a camp, some trenches seem to lose both side coverage.
#605 mines and sandbag construction / deconstruction during combat casuing errors
#604 if one (or more) "destroyed" enemy tank is present while an encounter happen in camping it spawns another identical one (same damage)(In addition, tank spawn position was spread out to 4 corners of the spawn area first so there's no tank clipping each other if player has multiple tanks and one or more are MV.)
#606 weapon proficiency, stats and skills won't open.
#620 Imon Mine units hiding behind / inside colliders unable to be targeted
Our two programmers will split up now. One will move on to working on 0.7 whereas the other will continue to support 0.6.x for now.
Demo 0.6 & Kickstarter are now live
Kickstarter now live!
After delaying it before, we're excited to announce that our Kickstarter campaign is now live. This game is quite the ambitious project, so we'll need all the support we can get. Support us if you can and if you can't, please share it on social media.
Demo 0.6
After many months of work, the 0.6 update brings many big changes. First off: The changes were so substantial that old saves will no longer work.
Changelog:
Merged story and dynamic mode. Yes, UW now has a story.
Added VN gameplay aspects
Added quests to world map
Added new world map UI
Completely revamped unit health system
Completely revamped tank damage system
Added hunger, fatigue & rationing to world map
New random events
Added new enemy tankette
Added new maps
Added new characters
Added new weapons
New classes & abilities
Added weapon proficiency system
New deferred cel shading
Added preliminary CC soundtrack
Many more tweaks, fixes and additions
This release has been an incredibly wild ride. Thank you for all your support!
Your sincerely, The Unconventional Warfare Development Team
[previewyoutube="J1cq35PlaXU;full"] It's time to announce our Kickstarter campaign. Unconventional Warfare is coming to Kickstarter next Friday, February 28th at 3pm PDT.
The extra time was much needed and we're now in a much better position than when we last announced the campaign. The 0.6 demo has received countless bug fixes, improvements, tweaks and even additional pieces of content.
We're a small team who worked hard and sacrificed a lot of time (and some of us even health) to get to this point. We would love to continue working on this project in our current capacity, so with less than a week left, we would humbly ask you to share this information on social media. We will need all the shares, likes and tweets we can get.
Thank you for all your support thus far.
Your sincerely, The Unconventional Warfare Development Team
Since posting our last update, much progress has been made. The first big milestone is that the 0.6 demo is now stable enough for us to play it start to finish without any obvious game breaking bugs. This does not mean that we’re done working on it though. We’re hard at work polishing the demo, tweaking the balancing, adding some additional content and fixing small bugs as we find them.
The second milestone is that we decided on the launch date for the Kickstarter campaign. We’re going to reveal the exact date tomorrow, together with our brand new trailer. Our narrative designer PMar did an outstanding job on the trailer and we’re looking forward to sharing it with you.
The new tank damage system in UW 0.6
Today’s post will cover changes to how tanks work in the new 0.6 demo. If you read Devblog #1, which covered the unit health system changes, you’re going to notice some similarities.
The old system
Not unlike the unit health system, the old tank damage system was about as simple as such a system could have been. Tanks were considered a single unit with a health value attached to them. Every attack would reduce the health by some amount and once the health reached 0, the tank would explode and all units inside would die with it.
In order to keep up with the advancements in other parts of the game, the tank system was rewritten entirely from scratch.
The new system
Localized damage
The first major change is that tanks are no longer a single unit with a single HP value. Damage is now split up between parts. Hull, engine, left and right track and every turret can now be damaged individually. The screenshot below shows the tank management UI where you can see the state of your squad’s tanks.
As you can see, the hull’s health has been completely depleted and it’s now marked as “vulnerable”. The way the damage system works is that destroying different parts of a tank causes different problems.
Destroying the hull means that the crew of the tank will no longer be protected from incoming fire. Even non-armor piercing ammunition is going to damage the crew.
Destroying a turret puts it out of service. You will no longer be able to control it and fire using that particular turret.
Destroying the engine fully immobilizes the tank. The tank will come to a complete halt and you’ll see black smoke coming out of the engine bay. Turrets remain operational.
Destroying a track causes it to lock up. The tank will no longer be drivable and only spin slowly in one direction or the other, depending on which track has been destroyed.
Tanks can be damaged by explosives, tank shells and armor piercing ammunition. If an enemy tank is no longer able to defend itself properly, the crew will disembark and fight on foot.
Abandoning and retrieving tanks
None of the parts mentioned above cause the tank to simply explode when destroyed and the tank doesn’t explode when all of them are destroyed either. Instead, immobile tanks are abandoned.
When you return to the world map, you’ll see that the nodes on which tanks were abandoned are marked as such. Broken tanks do not despawn. If you have a unit of the mechanic class and the necessary tools, you can return to such a node, go camp, repair and retrieve the tank.
This system is still in an early stage of development and 0.6 won’t use it to its fullest extent quite yet.
Repairing tanks
Tanks can be repaired during camping. To do so you need a unit with the mechanic skill, disposable spare parts and maintenance tools, which can be constructed like tents and campfires.
In the above screenshot you can see an example of placing the maintenance tools. The tank needs to be within a certain distance of the tools in order to be repaired. (The maintenance tools can also be used by non-mechanics to repair their weapons.)
Beyond 0.6
As mentioned earlier, abandoning and retrieving tanks isn’t quite ready for 0.6 yet. Being able to take every tank you defeated with you would cause major balancing issues. We also need to add a system that allows you to choose which tank to use during combat.
Your tank ammo (and maybe fuel) will get limited as tanks are too powerful right now. The enemy AI also needs to get better at dealing with your tanks. Their current behavior is made to deal with infantry. They search cover and stay put, which puts your tank at a massive advantage.
Look forward to tomorrow’s devblog and the reveal of our Kickstarter trailer.
Your sincerely, The Unconventional Warfare Development Team
