BlackMatter has rolled out Hell Let Loose update 1.039 and this is for the big 15.3 content drop! This brings the Purple Heart Lane map refresh, new cosmetics, the new console admin camera that now has full controller support and more. Read on for everything that got added and tweaked in the official patch notes.
Elsenborn Ridge PTE
We will be hosting a Public Testing Environment on Steam for Elsenborn Ridge, starting tomorrow! This will run throughout the weekend. Please stay tuned for more information.
Purple Heart Lane - Map Refresh
Last year, we asked you what map you'd like to see refreshed. After casting your votes, the majority of you decided the map to receive a refresh treatment was Purple Heart Lane.
After analysing the map and sifting through player reports regarding its most frustrating parts, we have addressed the following issues on a wider map scale:
The purpose of this refresh was not to take anything away from the legacy map, but to enhance and refine what already exists to respect the tone. Based on community feedback, we have made the following adjustments to the following Capture Points:
With the map refresh of Purple Heart Lane the Technical art team looked at introducing an update to the rain. Initially, this was to address some visual bugs that occurred on Xbox. This allowed us to add some variation to the original effect, allowing us to have some scenarios with no rain or some with a full-on storm.
We have been investigating this as part of an expansion to the levels of snowfall planned for Elsenborn Ridge and adapting the technology to include rain. The system's flexibility has allowed us to add VFX scenarios ranging from light rain to a heavy downpour, coupled with lightning and thunder. The system had to be expanded to include audio level changes that would synchronize with the rain intensity and to also have a delayed trigger to each lightning strike.
Each VFX scenario was broken down into a preset;
This meant we could tune each scenario easily in isolation. Each scenario includes parameters referenced from the VFX, lighting and audio files to allow us to easily tune rain intensity, atmospherics and audio. In addition, there are also controls for the frequency and occurrence of lightning for the extreme rain setting.
Each of these presets was made into a Data Asset that could then be accessed by the Blueprint to blend between over a set amount of time, all of which can be tuned in terms of frequency, probability and transition length. We added the probability of when the transition between each stage would occur for us to add a certain amount of randomness to it. Along with this the lightning that occurs in the extreme level of rain also has a probability factor of when and where it occurs adding to the immersion of the overall effect.
Console Admin Camera
Admins on console servers can now utilize the power of the admin camera with full controller support!
If you're an admin on a server (For Console or PC) you will now find that you can enter / exit the admin camera menu via the pause menu