This release has a mix of new features and bug fixes to include a new Allied ATG 3D model, new tank audio, RDP changes and a few new towns.
World War II Online Version 1.37.10.0 - August 2024
Features
The M3 37mm ATG has had its 3D model updated
New Tank Audio
Churchill tanks
Stuart Sherman third-person audio
Infantry colliders have been updated to allow for better access to certain areas, like riverbanks and stairs
Off-road vehicle travel will now be a bit slower and more bumpy
A new artillery emplacement pad PPO (Player Place Object) as been added to the game
The "Tower" has been made into its own PPO
FBs (FireBases) have been added to numerous towns that did not have them before
When spawned, you can now click a mission member's name to show their location on the map tab
RDP now affects supply trickle starting and total completion times when moving Brigades or capturing towns (can be slowed up to 100% of the current times, 60mins can become 120mins)
Zeebrugge now has a new pier
Some river towns have updated docks
Some new trees have been added and others have their placement adjusted
Small airfields have been added to Haamstede and Vouzier
Depots and FBs have been added to link Mechelen and Leuven
New Towns
Nieuw-Namen
Sankt Goar
Doel
Bug Fixes
The Mac client's launcher no longer opens a browser window
The M key will now close the Popup Keymapper (P key)
Gaps in more airfields have been repaired
Bruhl has been renamed to Bruehl
The DD (Destroyer) list indicator is now fixed
The M45 and Polsten Quad AA guns now show a vehicle-type icon name
Map icons were not scaling properly when zoomed way out on the map
S! Cornered Rat Software
Copyright 1999-2024 Playnet, Inc.
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Since we introduced Proximity AOs (or Attack Objectives), players have requested that we consider a Hybrid AO system that allows for both player placed (Proximity) AOs and High Command placed AOs. We're here to let you know that we have a first-pass implementation ready to try on the live campaign server and will incorporate it sometime this week before the weekend.
WHAT ARE PROXIMITY AO's?
In short, proximity AOs allow for the placement of objectives simply by being in the range of a target, leveraging the "Infantry EWS" (or Early Warning System) mechanic, so any player group consistent of at least 4 (infantry, trucks, guns, etc) can receive their AO without High Command involvement.
WHAT ARE HIGH COMMAND AO's?
High Command is a player-driven organization consisting of volunteer officers who help with the overall strategic planning and execution of the campaign in WWII Online. They help facilitate organized gameplay and rally players, squads, and officers to either attack, defend, or maneuver supply that is in the best interest of their community.
They are equipped with tools that allow them to initiate an Attack Objective without the requirements of players triggering EWS as mentioned in Proximity AOs. This allows for greater planning, organization, and preparation to maintain the element of surprise.
BOTH OF THESE SYSTEMS = HYBRID AO'S
The terminology of "Hybrid AO's" is synonymous with "Hybrid Supply" within the WWII Online community. In short, it is the combination of these two systems (Prox AO's and HC AO's) being utilized simultaneously with each other, giving everyone the best of both worlds.
HOW WILL IT WORK?
Both systems will be activated and running in parallel together, with the number of Attack Objectives still being decided by the lower population thresholds. This also means that any combination can be made based on the number of AOs available.
For example: If you have 2 AOs available, you can achieve any combination:
1 Proximity AO, 1 HC AO
2 Proximity AOs, 0 HC AO
2 HC AOs, 0 Proximity
We do not plan to make a minimum of 2 AOs available at any given time, as we want to avoid destabilizing time zone 3. 1 AO minimum will remain, and +more after thresholds met.
Proximity AOs are placed by players meeting the Heavy Infantry EWS criteria that you are familiar with, and withdrawn either by the threshold(s) of heavy infantry EWS not being met -or- a High Command officer withdrawing the AO.
High Command placed AOs are placed by HC officers (and Lt. Colonels with HC rights), and will remain until either the objective is taken or an HC officer withdraws the AO via their toolset (.clear).
FALLBACK PLAN (UNFORSEEN ISSUES)
CRS reserves the right at anytime to withdraw the Hybrid AO system if unforseen issues arise and we need to stabilize game play. We will then make modifications on the server, restart it, and revert back to HC placed AOs.
We would then analyze any issues and work to resolve them for another test run at an undetermined date. This is a fail-safe disclaimer, not a desired result.
DATA COLLECTION
As we recently reintroduced HC AOs we wanted to re-evaluate the pro's and con's of both Proximity and HC placed AOs to try and find the best of both world's. CRS is continuing to keep our ears to the ground and listen to the community and also observe where we can make improvements.
Our key goals / hopeful outcomes include:
Increased server population.
Decrease downtime transitioning between battles.
Enabling better coordination between squads, HC and players.
Giving HC a viable purpose to improve the strategic game.
Giving the players the dynamic ability to produce their own outcome(s).
Providing a fail-safe if no HC is online to continue game operations smoothly.
We'd like to thank all of our community members for their support and feedback to help us to get this point. The community team(s) unanimously have approved that this is the best route forward and the next step to getting key data that gets us closer to the finish line.
Fyi: The Training Server is configured right now with these abilities however their times are accelerated and do not accurately reflect what the campaign settings will be.
Let us know if you have any additional questions or thoughts! S!
ALL-ACCESS / NO RANK RESTRICTION WEEKEND, May 3rd - 5th! PLUS OP REBEL EMPIRE
We want EVERYONE to have a good time this weekend so join the fun!
OP NAME: REBEL EMPIRE WHEN: May 5th at 12PM Server Time / GMT-8 WHERE: Campaign Server for large-scale battles DURATION: 3 hours UNLOCKS: All-Access Weekend
Join us to participate and witness: • Ground units using the Bailey Bridge • Dogfights and level bombers dropping payloads • Massed infantry assaults • Tank columns storming through expansive terrain • Scores of paratroopers dropping over the objective • Artillery bombardment and smoke
All of the above are accompanied by the "soundtrack" of WWII Online's gunners firing anti-aircraft, light machine guns, and the whistling of artillery. Experience YOUR immersive "WWII Online Moment."
Every soldier is requested to RSVP right away. Doing so encourages more players to participate. Spread the word, let's go! Here is the Discord link to the event . . . https://discord.gg/wwiionline
Thanks! Cornered Rat Software
Community Rat Chat - Sneak Peeks Included!
You are invited to attend a Community RAT CHAT. Join our WWII Online Discord at https://discord.gg/sPPDkc3D
DATE: Sunday, April 14 WHERE: Xoom's Office on Discord TIME: 12PM PST (2PM Central, 3PM Eastern, GMT-8). DURATION: 90 MINUTES
TOPICS:
Discussing WWII Online 1.0 roadmap progress
Discussing Chokepoint progress
Sneak Peeks
Community Questions
Mark your calendars and make a point to be there. Not many development studios spend this kind of “live” time with its community. Join us!
See you on Sunday! Cornered Rat Software
NO rank / ALL-access weekend, April 5 - 7: OP SPRING CLEANING
REMEMBER: Our Training Server is available 24/7 to train and experiment with equipment. You can also use the OFF-LINE mode or TRAINING SERVER to work on key maps and how equipment and vehicles operate.
OP: Spring Cleaning WHEN: April 7th at 12PM Server Time / GMT-8 WHERE: Campaign Server for combined arms battles DURATION: 3 hours UNLOCKS: All-Access Weekend
If you have not participated in one of these events, we also turn on notifications for killing members of CRS, called "KILL-A-RAT". This notification is a big hit with our players so enjoy this feature during the all-access weekend.
Join us to participate and witness: • Ground units assaulting across a Bailey Bridge • Dogfights and level bombers dropping payloads • Amphibious infantry assaults • Tank columns storming through expansive terrain • Scores of paratroopers dropping over the objective • Artillery bombardment and smoke
All of the above are accompanied by the "soundtrack" of WWII Online's gunners firing anti-aircraft, light machine guns, and the whistling of artillery. Experience YOUR immersive "WWII Online Moment."
Every soldier is requested to RSVP right away. Doing so encourages more players to participate. Spread the word, let's go! Here is the Discord link to the event . . . https://discord.gg/wwiionline
See you at the Front! Cornered Rat Software
PATCH UPDATE: 1.37.7.0 - March 2024
========================================= World War II Online Version 1.37.7.0 - March 2024 ========================================= This release brings in PPO changes, bug fixes and a bunch of terrain updates, to include 17 new towns. ========================================= Features =========================================
Town altitudes will now show up in the tooltip when hovering your mouse over a town
When a Firebase (FB) is selected as either the Mission Origin or Target, players will now see .own information on spawn in
The Trench Corner Player Placed Object (PPO) now has a tower added to it
The Fortified Mobile Spawn (FMS) has been updated to be less obvious at a distance
The Ammo Cache PPO is now placeable by all trucks
The Mobile Airfield PPO can now be placed behind the front lines
The Higgins multicrew positions have been updated
The StuH 42 now has an updated loadout (12 HE, 10 AP, 10 HEAT, and 4 SMOKE)
Updated 3D models:
Pak 38 ATG
ROQF 17 ATG
New engine, gun and foley audio has been updated for these tanks:
Char B1
M4A2 Sherman
M4A3 Sherman
Sherman Firefly
Somua S35
Lorraine37
Lorraine37AC
Panzer VIE (Tiger)
Panzer III H
Terrain Updates:
A new water tower has been added to the Antwerp Airfield and Formerie
Added new links to Hornchurch and Gerbeviller
Hastings now has a deepwater port
All coastal towns can now allow for Higgins Boat MSPs
The Aircraft Carriers at Ramsgate, Folkstone, Calais, Vlissengen and Charlois are now capable locations
Aircraft Carriers now have AI AAA guns
The Citadel has had updates to make gameplay better
Taller bushes have been added to certain terrain tiles
The tree Level of Details (LODs) have been adjusted for better performance
Ramsgate and Sandwich now have an updated church
Most roads with a curve now have less blocky curves in the road
Fixed the issue that allowed a single bomb to destroy MSP PPOs
Corrected a Universal Carrier graphics bug
Removed trees and berms from Estrees-Saint-Denis buildings
Hitmap errors within the Lorraine have been fixed
Fixed third person disappearing parts on the Pz3L and Pz3H
Corrected a clipping issue with some Firebase (FB) tents
Fixed a broken gauge in the updated Laffly S-20
Fixed the drive and idler sprockets not spinning for the Char and S35
Found and fixed the issue causing both Allied and Axis to be on the same IVC channel
S! Cornered Rat Software Copyright 1999-2024 Playnet, Inc.
Early Additions: How to get your hands on a Panther, Hellcat, or Valentine
WWII Online Community,
You can observe and interact with multiple iterations of alphas, upcoming features, new/improved equipment, and maybe even see some behind the scenes 2.0 stuff. Did I mention some cool tools to help you and others test and implement assets and features into WWII Online? This is an important year for WWII Online as we are working hard at Rat HQ but to match this productivity, we need more manpower on our QA Team to meet our 2024 goals and beyond. We must expand our QA capacity to verify upcoming and future updates as we deliver them to the gaming community.
Do you want to accelerate growth in WWII Online? Your efforts as a QA team member have a DIRECT correlation in what our community gets to experience in 2024 and beyond. What is QA? At the start of a projected release, it is experimental testing and as the team progresses toward a release client, the role changes to one of independent validation and verification. In the words of OLDZEKE, QA Team Lead, “we are far more involved (than just testing) in that we need to often be the first step in a bug fix by finding a reliable replication method.”
Are you internationally based? We have an international player base and that is reflected in our QA Team as we have US and European based testers, but we could always use more.
Are you thinking of volunteering? You can experience it firsthand, but it all depends upon you and a little electronic sweat equity. You don’t have to be uber-smart, uber-skilled, or even own a super-computer. We will train you from scratch if needed.
So, what do you have to do to get all these goodies?
Ask yourself this question . . . do you have the desire, aptitude (attention to detail), willingness to test, and follow testing directions plus time throughout the week to do testing? General expectations:
Able to communicate in English verbally and in writing (you do not have to be fluent, but it helps)
You have to show-up and help your team. Sometimes you’ll work alone, other times in a group.
Basic knowledge of WWII Online game play and the various types of equipment
Joystick/Game controller to test drive/pilot all sorts of equipment
Ability to capture short clips of testing footage using free capture software (OBS?)
Specific expectations:
Basic knowledge of finding files on your computer.
QA testing can involve a week or more of nothing to test followed by a week where availability to test is critical.
Being a part of our team means we need you to be able to put in needed time during an alpha test cycle. (EX: AVERAGE size new town takes 1 hour minimum to check depots, AI, ABs and FBs.
Interested? Send an email to jobs@corneredrats.com, subject line: VOLUNTEER.
We need your game nick and would like to know a little about you, your history in the community (if any) and your present interest in WWII Online and why you would be a good candidate to join our team.
Thank you! Cornered Rat Software
2024 Roadmap: WWII Online
WWII Online’s 2024 Roadmap This year’s roadmap is a continuation of efforts initiated in 2023. We currently have three major projects going on simultaneously:
Continue to improve/optimize WWII Online 1.0
Re-design WWII Online in Unreal Engine 5
Continue the conversion of WWII Online: Chokepoint from UE4 —> UE5
It’s going to be a jam-packed year for CRS, and great progress is being made on all fronts for WWII Online. Keep reading to learn more about how your support is turning into action!
QUAD ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS COMING TO WWII ONLINE As the years of the war progressed, innovation for anti-aircraft gunners enabled some pretty uber stuff to shoot enemy aircraft down. All of these guns will be made available in the Army branch as towable ground units. You will be able to spawn these from depots, army bases, and forward bases.
Flakvierling 38 (Germany)
Polsten 20mm (England)
M45 4x.50 (United States & France)
And if you wanted to get an idea of how much fun these can be, enjoy this clip from Waterworld where it shows the M45 going to town: https://youtu.be/3nNJ4v-k_Ng?t=35
NEW TANKS COMING TO WWII ONLINE For a long time we’ve had players requesting that we add completely new tanks to WWII Online, and we agree - it’s time. FYI: It’s important to note that the resources working on these do not include developers currently working on our conversion to WWII Online 2.0 or Chokepoint.
We’re pleased to let you know that we intend to add the following tanks this year:
Panther Ausf.A (Germany)
Valentine Mk X (England)
M18 Hellcat (United States & France)
REVAMPING OLDER MODELS FOR WWII ONLINE We completely revolutionized our approach to modeling during 2023 and had some fantastic results. We’re going to continue this effort and we have several items not only in progress, but planned. We are not only creating NEW artwork and improving the visual appeal of the game, but we are also cleaning up technical debt by addressing known issues with each vehicle as it goes through the pipeline. This creates a future proofing opportunity and optimizes gaming experiences now found in WWII Online 1.0. Keep your eye out for more vehicles being improved, and be sure to use the official bug tracker to report any known issues which is located at http://www.wwiionline.com/bugs. (Include vehicle types, descriptions of the issues, and any relevant picture or video and it will get prioritized).
TANK CREW - TRACK REPAIR We now have a working concept of tank crews being able to repair their tracks, development continues and is approaching testing. WWII Online tankers are about to have the ability to fix their own tracks and get mobile again (up to a certain amount of times) if this occurs. We had this on our roadmap last year, and while work did occur we didn’t quite get it where we wanted. We intend to move this forward and get it available to tankers this year.
BETTER EWS REPORTING Particularly for our underpopulated forces, we’re looking at adding some helpful - yet somewhat vague - information on where enemy infantry forces (only) are at via system/chat. For example, “Enemy infantry spotted northeast.” So again purely designed to help increase situational awareness and support the side with less people online.
AFK PLAYERS & BALANCING MECHANISMS Some players go AFK and are still considered part of the balancing mechanisms that determine the number of attack objectives, capture speeds, and so on. We’re planning to remove AFK players from this consideration in fairness to the rest of the active players, and we plan to go a little deeper than just someone who types .afk or nudges their player every so often. This is a problem with someone who has multiple accounts and is distorting real numbers.
SHOW FB DAMAGE ON SPAWN We want to simplify things a bit here. Long story short, when someone spawns into their forward base, we want to report the percentage of damage instantly and easily to the player. Normally you’d have to click on your forward base on the map and type .own to see the percentage (Infantry: 20%, Vehicle: 80%, Other: 22%) etc. Basically this will just automatically happen as you spawn in to give you immediate situational awareness and help all players, new and veteran alike.
TOWN ALTITUDE ON MAP For bombers, indirect fire weapons and paratrooper aircraft, it is critical to know the specific town altitude in game so you can range your sight or drop paras at a safe altitude. Our goal is to get the specific town height of the town marker (statue/obelisk) to be displayed on the in-game map. For example, when you hover your mouse over a town you can see the available brigades, garrisons, and town owner in a small pop-up window. In this case we’ll expand that window to include town altitude information.
SATCHELS CLIPPING INTO VEHICLES Players have identified several reports of satchels clipping into vehicles. We have some working theories on this and will be prioritizing some effort here as this should not be happening. Using the bug tracker you can help our team find out (faster) where these specific hot spots might be by tank type. We ask your support on this because you’re experiencing it daily and it will help us figure out those issues faster and turn around a result at a faster pace. When creating a ticket include: 1) Tank type, 2) picture of tank / satchel placement, 3) identify with some annotation via picture where it’s happening, 4) a video works too, all of that = a sure fire way to identify what needs cleaning up.
INFANTRY DYING TO STOPPED VEHICLES This is one of those important quality of life things. Let’s say we have a sapper hunting down an enemy tank, and the vehicle stops. Sometimes infantry die simply by touching their character model with the vehicle, even though it’s “stationary”. We’re planning to clean this up for a more appropriate experience.
WWII ONLINE 2.0 Other than the continued technical debt cleanup you’re seeing on the Production side through our new vehicles and Chokepoint’s infantry system/animations being worked on (as seen below), 2.0 is continuing to receive under the hood, technical treatments. A lot of what we have to report on this is very technical and isn’t something we can show as it would expose IP or trade secrets.
The majority of our internal development resources have been deployed to this re-design of WWII Online within Unreal Engine (currently running on UE 5.3). As stated before, this will be a multi-year effort and we’re seeing positive movement internally. It’s very important that we allow our developers the time and breathing room (grace) they need to get the hard lifting done, by far the most difficult and time-consuming part of this process.
WWII ONLINE: CHOKEPOINT ROADMAP As we announced in mid-2023, we had to completely rebuild our Chokepoint team. Given all of the other moving parts of our organization here at CRS, and the high-demand to press updates for 1.0 and 2.0, things were a bit slower than desired to get things going. So we appreciate your grace as we’ve had to navigate the recruitment and training of personnel, and picking the project up from the original development team. By no means, is that a simple thing to do.
Our commitment to Chokepoint remains because it is acting as a training tool for our Production team and as we’ve described all along, it is being sought out to replace the current infantry system for WWII Online 1.0 for many reasons. UPGRADE TO UNREAL ENGINE 5.3 Chokepoint is currently running within UE 5.1, it’s important for us to pursue the latest and greatest capabilities and stay on top of our game (pardon the pun). As much as we can help it, we do not want to fall behind. Initial conversion steps from 5.1 → 5.3 are underway.
REBUILDING INVENTORY SYSTEM This has been identified as a key hurdle we need to get past. UE4 utilized a custom-built inventory system which has been totally deprecated as part of the conversion over to UE5. We plan to leverage UE5’s new inventory system called, “Lyra.” Efforts were made to see what could be transferred over from UE4 → UE5 but have mostly fallen flat. This is part of the exploration process of our new team picking up the pieces and recognizing that we need to build anew.
The inventory system manages character inventory, which weapons are assigned to whom, loadouts, etc. Rebuilding it actually gives us native compatibility with UE5 which in turn makes it better long-term for support for not just in Chokepoint, but anything WWII Online 2.0 intends to use from these systems. It also means that the general knowledge of how this works will be better documented (as it is provided by Epic Games itself) and our new team will be more capable of sustaining it.
To do this, we intend to strip out the current system entirely and start small by adding a single weapon to be shared across all classes and building from there.
Fortunately, we have lots of data still intact and weapons, animations, sounds, etc which should make that process start to pick up speed once we get base functionality working. We’ll keep you posted on progress, this a very difficult task and touches many areas of the code/blueprints.
CODE CLEAN UP We’re at a much better point now to isolate deprecated elements of our code base and blueprint(s) post-conversion. So things that are hanging around from UE4 will be jettisoned that are no longer in use by our programming team, to reduce technical debt and ensure optimal workflows going forward.
CLEANING UP EXISTING MAPS & MODELS Our environment artists have been steadily repairing Carentan & La Fiere, and have made some strong progress. Our next goal is to unlock a technical issue preventing artists from being able to work on Eglise (the night time map), so we can get that game ready as well.
Several models have received UVs, textures, placement adjustments, and so on. These were mostly post-conversion issues that demanded attention.
CLEANING UP ANIMATIONS There are several animations requiring attention, and our animator has already been addressing the more obvious animations in third person. As soon as the inventory system is online, we’ll be able to do more thorough first-person animation improvements as well, as we can properly test results.
BUILDING, DEPLOYMENT & PLAYTESTS Once we have our inventory system functioning again, our next step is to clean up our application building process for PC and work on deploying those binaries to our dedicated host. This will effectively get us back into the routine development swing of things.
Then we can get updates deployed via Steam and all key holders of Chokepoint will be able to dive back into playtests and get the ball rolling. Then it will all be about players reporting issues, our team prioritizing them, cleaning things up and deploying new builds, and so on. This will be the ultimate sign that we’re on the right path and we can be more certain about release timelines.
TRANSPARENCY & EXPECTATIONS This stuff isn’t easy. We’re a mostly volunteer team with three major projects going on simultaneously. We’ve laid out what’s happened, our commitment to rebuild and get things back online and that we’re staying the course as best we can to get Chokepoint to be operational. But it’s got some challenges that we’re currently navigating through.
Keep your expectations reasonable and know that until otherwise stated, we’re continuing to move forward on all fronts.
We are exceedingly grateful to our community for the continued support of the CRS 2.0 Team over the years by your subscriptions and annual fundraiser donations. We are 100% self-funded organization remains committed to bringing the unique strategic and tactical gaming experience of WWII Online into the Unreal Engine.
Sincerely, Cornered Rat Software
All-access weekend, Feb 16-18: OP BLUE BALLS - Campaign Server
REMEMBER: Our Training Server is available 24/7 to train and experiment with equipment. You can also use the OFF-LINE mode to work on key maps and how equipment and vehicles work.
OP: Blue Balls WHEN: February 18th at 12PM Server Time / GMT-8 WHERE: Campaign Server for combined arms battles DURATION: 3 hours UNLOCKS: All-Access Weekend
Join us to participate and witness: • Ground units assaulting • Dogfights and level bombers dropping payloads • Massed infantry assaults • Tank columns storming through expansive terrain • Scores of paratroopers dropping over the objective • Artillery bombardment and smoke
All of the above are accompanied by the "soundtrack" of WWII Online's gunners firing anti-aircraft, light machine guns, and the whistling of artillery. Experience YOUR immersive "WWII Online Moment."
Every soldier is requested to RSVP right away. Doing so encourages more players to participate. Spread the word, let's go! Here is the Discord link to the event . . . https://discord.gg/wwiionline
See you at the Front! Cornered Rat Software
ALL-ACCESS WEEKEND: OP BROKEN RESOLUTIONS, Jan 19th - 21st! Times listed below!
We want EVERYONE to have a good time this weekend so join the fun and remember to RANK-UP so you can access the late-war equipment that is in historic CAMPAIGN 200!
OPERATION NAME: Broken Resolutions WHEN: January 21st at 12PM Server Time / GMT-8 WHERE: Campaign Server DURATION: 3 hours UNLOCKS: All-Access Weekend
Join us to participate and witness: • Ground units using the newest PPO – the Bailey Bridge • Dogfights and level bombers dropping payloads • Massed infantry assaults (maybe an amphibious assault?) • Tank columns storming through expansive terrain • Scores of paratroopers dropping over the objective • Artillery bombardment and smoke
All of the above are accompanied by the "soundtrack" of WWII Online's gunners firing anti-aircraft, light machine guns, and the whistling of artillery. Experience YOUR immersive "WWII Online Moment."
Every soldier is requested to RSVP right away. Doing so encourages more players to participate. Spread the word, let's go! Here is the Discord link to the event . . . https://discord.gg/wwiionline
