Situation Map

At long last, Darkest Hour now has a zoomable map!

• Players can now zoom in on the deployment map with the mouse scroll wheel
• Players can now pan on the zoomed map by holding left mouse and dragging
• Players can now ‘activate’ the interactive map from the pop-up situation map by hitting their jump button (default: space bar) when viewing
• Players can now change spawn points from the pop-up situation map in interactive mode

[img=https://i.imgur.com/26sLGEy.gif]

Maps Galore

Darkest Hour boasts a map selection that would make the vast majority of other games blush. Typically, we go through a strong QA (quality assurance) process for every map included in the game. Our QA process ensures that the player experience is as smooth as possible (performance, optimization, visual enhancements, fixing collision problems etc.). However, the demand for more levels has always long outpaced our ability to individually QA levels for inclusion as “official” maps. There have also been an impressive number of custom levels that have been created or ported by the community recently. Sadly, the big downside to these being custom maps is that users often must endure lengthy download times in order to play them, which can be especially harsh on those with slow internet speeds. So, after much deliberation, we have decided to add large number of popular custom maps to DH. These custom maps will be marked as “WIP” (work in progress) so that players will know that the map is not necessarily in a finished state and there may be some issues. Doing this vastly expands the map selection, allows players to play the levels without needing to download them from the servers, and will ensure these levels will receive necessary changes needed to stay compliant with the live game as we continue to make changes and improvements to the codebase. Here is a list of the maps added to the WIP roster:

• Arad_Advance
• Arnhem_Bridge_Push
• Benouville_Advance
• Berezina_Advance
• BridgeAssault_Cutoff
• Chambois_Push
• Champs_Advance
• Cholm_Advance
• Dom-Pavlova_Advance
• Kasserine_Pass_Advance
• Leningrad_Push
• Leszinow_Advance
• Maupertus_Push
• Odessa_Push
• Ogledow_Clash
• Pegasus_Bridge_Push
• Pointe_Du_Hoc_Push
• Port-En-Bessin_Push
• Poteau_Ambush_Advance
• Prussia_Push
• Ramelle_Push
• Remagen_Push
• San_Valentino_Advance
• Schijndel_Advance
• Smolensk_Stalemate
• Turqueville_Push
• Winter_Stalemate_Clash
• Donner_Stalemate
• Radar_Advance

Bridgehead Updates

• Added new objective between First Bridge and Bridge Defenses
• Expanded boundaries near new objective
• Expanded boundaries West of Fortified Hill
• Added Schu mines to help reduce direct assaults on Fortified Hill
• Added pre-placed dragon’s teeth to funnel tanks
• Increased Axis reinforcements

New Map Vote System

Darkest Hour now has an new map voting system which replaces the previous system. The system is similar to the score based vote system, but with a few caveats:

• Each player always gets 1 vote, regardless of their score
• Players are rewarded an additional vote for each additional 1000 score to a maximum of 15 (eg. 11550 score is 11 votes, 18000 score is 15 votes)

Game Types

• Added a gametype “Clash” which is is the meeting engagement version of “Advance”. Advance maps that were meeting engagement style such as Hedgerow Hell have been renamed.
• “Advance” maps will no longer allow defenders to completely recapture the map’s objectives.
• Added a gametype “Stalemate” to indicate the map has all objectives open. These maps are notoriously hard to win on and thus are labeled Stalemate.

Weapons

PTRD

• Ammo loadout is no longer affected by the team’s munition percentage

Gewehr 43

• Now has a faster firing animation which makes the weapon feel less “floaty”
• Slightly decreased accuracy
• Increased recoil

Fallschirmgewehr 42

• Adjusted recoil values
• Changed FOV on the sights so the sights are larger
• Can now be resupplied by friendly players

Quality of Life

• Reduced the amount of reinforcements lost when vehicles are destroyed.
• Added a player threshold at which ‘all chat’ is disabled (default: 50) to cut down on noisy chatter when server has a lot of players
• Added ability for admin to gag specific players
• Removed the vote kick system, as it was completely ineffective
• Added 32 new victory songs
• Added VSync option in the display settings

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where Axis Assault Roles had STG44s when they shouldn’t have
• Fixed a bug where players on the same server could hear different victory songs

See you on the battlefield, Darklight Games