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Hey everyone,

Last week we caught a glimpse of the new winter map, Kharkov, and the first iteration on the base for our future winter uniforms. With just enough time to take a quick breath, the programmers and artists have been able to share some more on the content for our next update.

In today’s brief, we’re heating things up with flamethrowers for the US and Axis, Molotovs for the Soviets, jeeps for all factions and a peek at the new cosmetic loadout preset options. Let's take a look at these latest items, starting with Flames and Fastmovers!

Flamethrowers
Feeling the chill on the frontline? Here’s something you can warm up to!
The team are excited for the addition of Flamethrowers and Molotovs for use on the frontlines, which will surely bring out some great action and visuals to the fields of combat.

... Read more

Hey Everyone,

The team is still hard at work on all sides, with both update 13 and the Commonwealth update, making some great progress.

In today's brief, we look at keeping your cool on the frontline in U13 as we take a deep dive into the frosty fields of the new snow map Kharkov and Winter Uniforms to suit. We are also pleased to announce some exciting changes to the existing Winter Warfare Free DLC pack. Without further ado, let's dig in.

New Map: Kharkov (Winter)
As mentioned above, we have been working hard on the new winter map Kharkov. This map is polishing up great and we are excited to implement another snow map into the game.

Kharkov combines a hybrid of the armour oriented gameplay of Kursk, featuring wide open fields, hills and Stalingrad’s industrial gameplay; including railroads, bridges and Soviet urbanization complimented with deeper valleys, foliage and marshlands all set in a deep winter environment to make this map ... Read more

Hi everyone,

We want to thank the community for your patience as we spent the last couple of months prioritizing & finalizing console content so that it’s inline with the PC. Now this parity work is almost complete, it will make general HLL development much smoother moving forward.

Although this work has taken longer than we’d have liked, it has been a huge technical achievement for the team that enables us to deliver PC & Console updates at the same time in the future - or with minimal time between. It was also critical for us to do this work in order to streamline and best use the team’s time as effectively as possible moving into the years ahead.

After releasing a major update like Falling Dark, we take time to continue internal testing and QA. We wish to assure the community that Update 13 will bring another level of polish and improvement to all areas of the game. This means that U13 will be the last major update for the year. We feel it’ll be sure to... Read more

Hey everyone,


At last it's here. The team is excited to announce that Update 12 ‘Falling Dark’ is upon us. As we have mentioned in our developer briefings this update brings to all the ‘Low Light’/‘Night’ mood settings for some popular and new maps, Vehicle Updates, New Commander Abilities, Flare Guns and so much more.

We have all been working hard over the last few months to ensure that this update has been well worth the wait. Without further ado let's crunch the info on Update 12 via the full changelog.

Update 12 Changelog

Vehicles Added new US “M4A3 75w” medium tank
Added Machine guns to Half-tracks (M2 Browning, MG42)
Reimplemented the German “Panther” as a heavy tank with updated Smart Materials
Updated Tiger with new camo pattern
Updated Panzer IV with new camo pattern
Updated Luchs with new camo pattern

Weapons Added Flare Guns (LP-42, SPSh-42, AN-M8)

Loadouts Added Flare Gun to Spotter ... Read more

Hey everyone,

At last, the team is excited to announce that all going well, Update 12 ‘Falling Dark’ will release tomorrow Tuesday July 19th 11am BST. We are all very eager to see the community enjoying the New Maps Remagen, Low light/night variants of popular maps and Omaha Beach with new Modes.

Additional items including new Vehicles (Panther and M4A3 Sherman), Flare Guns and a host of other new content are also crammed in with this update. In our brief today we also will take the time to feature new DLC for U12, VOIP improvements, Changes to how primary weapons are shown on players, Sorting out those pesky vehicle wrecks, improved lighting effects on night maps and more.

If you haven't seen information for the Update 12 items not mentioned in this brief, you can check it out in previous dev briefs here:
... Read more

Hi everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing 170, today we thought it time to have a look at how not every day in WW2 was sunny and bright, likewise not every battle waged between morning and evening hours. In the interest of additional realism to the frontline we have been working on Night Maps for Update 12 and they are looking very promising. Our timeline focus for the “night/low light moodset” is between 6pm and 6am. Initially our thoughts were to trial the early and later ends of the aforementioned spectrum. Some maps will definitely ‘feel lighter’ than others as the timeline we have allocated may be closer to the morning or early evening. Other maps definitely will feel like the dead of night. We believe it important to spread the mood of the lighting variations across the maps involved for greater variety and in some cases enhanced playability and atmosphere.

Night Maps The inclusion of new and existing maps with a ‘night’ or low light mood variation wil... Read more

Hey everyone,

As announced last week, we have been planning on releasing a hotfix to address a number of key issues that were identified after the Patch 17 update. Over the last couple of days the team have been hard at work at identifying, replicating and resolving these issues with the wonderful help of your community feedback. Please see below for a list of issues that have been addressed in this hotfix.

Collision
[Fixed] Oversized player collision boxes found on new hedge assets
[Fixed] Missing textures found a specific hedge asset
[Fixed] Missing bullet collision found on specific hedge asset
[Fixed] Ability to climb into and hide in hedges on multiple maps
[Fixed] Building asset with broken attic has inaccurate bullet collision
[Fixed] Supply Drops can land on top of the collision boxes of blocked areas in Carentan, SMDM and SME
[Fixed] Satchel can be placed on an invisible collider of German Medium Tank

Bug Fixes... Read more

Patch 17 is now Live!
Hey Everyone,

At last Patch 17 is upon us. Over the next few days we look forward to seeing many players new and old alike enjoying the new additions of the Patch. You can check out the full Changelog with all the information below.

With Patch 17 set and sailed the team are now all hands on deck with work on the next big update already well under way.



Chrysallia Van Cheems - Rolling Out


Patch 17 Changelog
Vehicles

• Improved mobility of the US M4A1 Sherman Tank
  
• Decreased the rate at which trucks decelerate allowing drivers more control over their speed
  
• Increased the reload duration of the US Jumbo 75mm Sherman and Jumbo 76mm Sherman to 8 seconds

Gameplay/Features

...

Read more

Hi Everyone,
Patch 17 Update
This week we have finalized work on Patch 17, a few issues that cropped up close to the sign-off period have now been addressed. Work is now progressing on the final sign off for patch 17. We are anticipating all going well and we look forward to officially rolling Patch 17 out early next week. We appreciate all your patience in awaiting this release and help with the testing for the patch during the PTE sessions we held.

World War Ways (Community App Feature)
We always like to take a moment to appreciate in as many ways that we can, the efforts by various community members in making Hell Let Loose content. Today we have a special shoutout to Steam user HeyItsPatrick who has taken the time to create a handy little website.
He has spent several months developing a HLL navigation assistant called World War Ways, which can be found on mobile and pc web browsers at:
... Read more

Hey everyone,

Thanks to all who participated in last week’s PTE we held for Patch 17. We are thankful for all the feedback and have been applying this to our internal testing to ensure we have the update primed and smooth as possible for release.

A quick reminder of some of what’s included for Patch 17:
Adjusted US M4A1 Sherman Tank handling
Speculative fix for MDC (mass player disconnect bug)
Speculative fix for players sometimes spawning in with the level 1 loadout of the role regardless of their selected loadout
Various QOL items
Removed weapon sway when using binoculars
Smoother Tactical Map zooming
And a host of other gameplay improvements and fixes
Full Patch 17 PTE Changelog is here {LINK REMOVED}https://bi... Read more

Hey Everyone!

PTE For Patch 17 This Thursday!
With progress coming along nicely we’re excited to announce the beginning of PTE testing for Patch 17, with the first session kicking off on Thursday the 3rd of February 11am GMT.

As always we greatly appreciate all who participate, whether it’s to provide valuable feedback and bug reports, or simply help out with the numbers to test server loads and other items. We’ll also be jumping into battle amongst the ranks on the day so if you have the time or are just curious, we would love to hear from you!

If this is your first time wanting to participate in a PTE you’ll need to head over to the Discord[discord.gg] where you can find information on how to join and get notifications on when a testing period is live. A full changelog can be v... Read more

Patch 17 Progress Update
With all hands on deck the team are steaming towards the completion of Patch 17. Once completed, the team will then be shifting focus on to the next leg of HLLs journey - Update 12. We look forward to sharing more on that front in the coming weeks as we wrap up Patch 17.

Some of the newer members to the HLL community may want an insight into what P17 is and what it means moving forward. So we will do our best to describe it here.

After releasing a major game update the team takes time to continue internal testing and QA on it. We also read a lot of community feedback to look for areas of potential improvement. Some of the areas of improvement that we focus on are: Fixing Bugs, Optimisation, Gameplay Improvements, UI improvements, NetCode, Animations, Sound FX and Lighting just to name a few. After the release of update 11 we have been undertaking these tasks and are now in the final stages of testing a viable client for Patch 1... Read more

Hi everyone,

As you’ll have seen, Hell Let Loose has become a permanent part of the Team17 family.

This is a huge moment for Hell Let Loose. Here at Black Matter we’ve worked extremely closely over the years with our colleagues at Team17 - to the degree where we work as one single team - regardless of company.

We at Black Matter feel that this is an amazing opportunity to give Hell Let Loose the ultimate boost when it comes to the future - with a much larger, dedicated team striving to continue to push the quality and quantity of content in the game. It’s important to understand that while Team17 have always given us full creative and development control over Hell Let Loose, they have been working with us on a day-to-day basis for the entire time since release. They know the game as well as we do, and have worked with us to take the game from the three-map title of our Early Access launch to the game Hell Let Loose is today. Because of this, we feel extremel... Read more

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

This week's dev brief is a chance for the team to say thank you to you - the ever expanding community behind Hell Let Loose.

We are grateful for the continued support from our playerbase and are even more encouraged to continue our journey moving forward to make Hell Let Loose an even better game in the years to come.

We hope you have a very safe and happy Christmas holiday with friends and family. For all those travelling, please do so with care as we cannot wait to see you all back in the new year for all the exciting things that we have planned for Hell Let Loose.

The team will be taking a small break through the festive season returning in the New Year to wind back into the hectic production schedule we all know and enjoy for HLL. We hope that everyone in the community can also have a chance to enjoy some rest and recreation (also a few rounds of HLL) over the next few weeks and we look forward to launc... Read more

Hey Everyone,

At last Update 11 ‘Outflank’ is upon us. Over the past few days we have enjoyed seeing many players jumping in and experiencing new assets such as the Panzer IV, Half Tracks, Trench Gun and FG-42.

You can check out the full changelog with all the information here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/686810/view/3139568705206001184
Known Issues
Overall we are happy with the release of the update and are excited to continue development as we look towards what future updates have in store.

Though before we are able to fully begin work on U12, a number of issues have arisen that we would like to investigate and look to add... Read more

Hey everyone,

Time is almost upon us, as many have noticed over the last few months we have been highlighting and in some cases sneak peeking into the upcoming ‘Outflank’ update for Hell Let Loose. This week we are excited to confirm that the update will be going live on Tuesday the 7th of December!

We thought to bring this interim update to you all as ‘Outflank’ has some great features which we think players new and old alike will enjoy. We feel that providing a brief summary of some of the items in the update might be worthwhile for you all to get a glimpse of what is coming before Tuesday.

Some of the items to watch out for in the new ‘Outflank’ update include:

New Vehicles:

• Panzer IV
  
• Half-tracks for all factions USA, Germany and Soviet

New Weapons:

• FG42 Automatic Rifle
  
• 1897 Winchester Trench Gun (shotgun)

New Map V... Read more

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #154!

Another week has passed and another dev brief has arrived. It seems we are edging closer and closer to the end of the year! Not only does this bring many celebrations on a festive level but it also brings us closer to the launch of Update 11!

In this week's brief we are taking a moment to reflect on what we've learnt from the recent PTEs.

PTE Reflection
So far we’ve held 3 PTEs for players to jump in and test the new content that’ll be coming in Update 11. Along with all the bug reports and feedback submitted, the team has been having an absolute blast jumping in-game with you all and hearing first hand your initial reactions. With the feedback you submitted we’ve been able to iterate on a number of both new and pre-existing aspects of the game.


... Read more

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #152!

This week we take a dive into the first U11 PTE, the Soviet Plash Palatka Animated Poncho and some great community content and videos to boot.

PTE #1 for Update 11

If you weren’t around earlier this week, we held the first Open Public Test Environment for the upcoming Update 11. Overall we had a great turnout and were satisfied by the positive reception it received. It’s always awesome to see players jumping in and enjoying all the new additions for the first time. New weapons, vehicles, gameplay mechanics and audio were amongst the highlights for this week's PTE.

The Panzer IV and Half-tracks got a decent workout during the PTE and aside from some (at times humorous) roadkill incidents, they performed great. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the Half-track’s impact to the meta as we host further PTEs and get a better understanding on how they affect the game in a live environment.
... Read more

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #151!

This week we’re spilling the beans on an incoming PTE next week as well as a first look at a new class of vehicles coming to the game.

No time to waste, let's give it a go!


PTE Tuesday Next Week!
After months of steady progress we’re excited to finally announce the beginning of PTE testing for Update 11, with the first session kicking off on Tuesday the 2nd of November.

As always we greatly appreciate all who participate, whether it’s to provide valuable feedback and bug reports, or simply to play with some of the shiny new toys on display. We’ll also be jumping into battle amongst the ranks on the day so if you have the time or are just curious, we would love to hear from you!

If this is your first time wanting to participate in a PTE you’ll need to head over to the ... Read more

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #150!

This week we've got an extensive Dev Brief that allows us to showcase some upcoming items in the U11 patch.

Then, as a couple of cherries on the cake we've got some great community events and media to showcase to you all. So without any delay, let’s begin.

VOIP Mic Check

We have been busy working on ways to improve the HLL VOIP experience. This new feature will allow players to do a self check after loading into a server to ensure the mic is working and the correct volume is set, without it being either too quiet, or loud and distorted.

This is one of a few different fixes we are looking at to improve the overall in-game comms, to make sure there is open and clear communication between all players. We are investigating seperate channel volumes too, which we will look to roll out in a future update. As with every aspect of HLL, we will continue to enhance and improve this crucial aspe... Read more