Game Version 0.4X

0.40

Major Update. Cavalry! Ride To Glory

Gallop away gentleman as tides of glory await! Ride into battle with your trusty steed and engage the enemy from horseback with the new Hussar, Cuirassier and Dragoon classes. Come have a read of our blog post as there’s plenty more to look forward to in this much-anticipated major update release.

Before you do so, as is well deserved of all this mounted goodness, there’s a new trailer for your viewing pleasure.

Cavalry Units! The Hussar

Have your pick at one of these well-dressed cavalrymen. Sporting a rather flamboyant uniform won’t come of much use in the field of battle but their increased damage with swords while riding on horseback and increased speed will certainly come in handy while playing this class.

Discharge your pistol at the general direction of the enemy, equip your sword and charge away.

Hussar Role: Cavalry - Branch: The Army

Well-dressed. Great showmanship with swords on horseback.

British Hussar – 15th (The King’s) Hussars

French Hussar – 7e Regiment de Hussards

Prussian Hussar – Leib-Husaren-Regiment

Abilities Horseback Riding - Trained in the art of horseback riding. You are able to mount and ride glorious steeds of war.

Traits Skilful Rider - Well-versed in the art of horseback riding. Your speed while riding a horse is increased by 10%. Mounted Sword Specialisation - Drilled in various sword combat techniques while on horseback. Your damage when wielding a sword while on horseback is increased significantly.

Cavalry Units! The Cuirassier & Dragoon

Carbineers on horseback. These units excel at the use of this firearm while mounted and combined with the versatile mobility their steed provides, they can quickly traverse the battlefield, take careful pickings of the enemy and retreat back in support of your lines.

Well trained Carabineers can excel just as much as a hussar in melee combat albeit the advantages traits provide.

Cuirassier & Dragoon Role: Cavalry - Branch: The Army

Mounted infantryman. Carbineers on horseback.

British Dragoon – 1st Royal Regiment of Dragoons

French Cuirassier – 4e Regiment de Cuirassiers

Prussian Cuirassier – Brandenburg Kurassier-Regiment Nr. 3

Abilities Horseback Riding - Trained in the art of horseback riding. You are able to mount and ride glorious steeds of war.

Traits Mounted Firearm Specialisation – Experienced with the use of firearms while on horseback. Your damage when firing pistols and carbines from horseback is increased by 10% and accuracy by 10%.

Horseback Riding. Cavalrymen & Combat

Master the art of horseback riding as those brave gentlemen once did. You’ll have a much easier time doing so should you give a quick read to what’s going to follow. Mounting, dismounting, putting your steed on the gallop, firing from horseback and various other aspects related to combat.

Riding On Horseback

Let’s get to the riding now, shall we? Hussars, Cuirassier and Dragoons all spawn readily mounted. Once you’ve had your pick at one of these classes, you’ll find yourself on horseback. Holding the ‘W’ key will take the horse from one gait to the other gradually building up its momentum. An indicator to the left of your steed’s health bar will reflect the pace at which the horse is moving.

Pressing the ‘Shift’ key once your steed reaches a full gallop, will take it into a sprint further increasing the speed at which it travels. While the horse is at a sprint, your movement on horseback will be limited as you grab tightly of its reins. Tread carefully as this can place you at a disadvantage when engaged in battle since you can only strike forward and cannot make use of your firearm.

Should you need to make a turn, press the ‘A’ key to go left and the ‘D’ key to head right.

Horses travelling at a slower gait can alternatively toggle and go into strafe mode by hitting the ‘Z’ key. Your steed will consequently move to the left or to the right at the press of the ‘A’ or ‘D’ keys. You’ll find no excuse to neatly dress the gaps and keep in formation. A regiment must uphold its reputation.

Slowing down is at times key to ensure your survival. You can do so by pressing the ‘S’ key. Should this key be held long enough, your steed will start moving backwards at a slow pace.

Holding the ‘Ctrl’ key will similarly reduce the horse’s speed. There’s one key difference however, your horse will not go backwards after it reaches its lowest speed and instead come to a halt.

Make your way over smaller defensive emplacements and fences by jumping with your steed while on horseback. Carefully time your jump and press the ‘Space’ key at the right moment.

It is not a simple feat to handle these beasts but you’ll get used to their ins and outs as you go by. Practice makes perfect.

Swimming While On Horseback

Go for a swim all the while remaining mounted. Controls here remain as usual but you are unable to engage in combat.

Halting The Horse

Spotting a Chevaux De Frise reaching ever closely? Should you find yourself in a pickle, firmly hold the ‘F’ key and pull on your horse’s reins. This will rear the horse and bring it to a complete halt.

Hitting this defensive emplacement will kill your mount and diminish your health points as you fall from horseback.

Dismounting From Horseback

Instructed to fall in line? You can dismount from horseback by pressing the ‘E’ key while your horse is going at the slower gaits.

Mounting Back On Horseback

Keep your steed at a safe distance as you never know when the need arises to climb on horseback once more. Press the ‘E’ key while looking at your horse, mount and get going. Riders that have met an unfortunate end will leave their horse ownerless. Should you find yourself dismounted, try to mount another.

Mounted Swordsmanship

If you favour the Hussar class, you’ll find yourself engaged in combat up close and personal more so than often. Equip your Sword by scrolling to the relevant weapon or pressing the ‘3’ key, move your mouse to your desired strike direction and stab or slash away at the enemy.

If you have yet to release your strike, you can cancel and switch to another by holding the ‘Right Click’ mouse button.

Mounted Marksmanship

Carbineers make use of their firearm on horseback as you would whilst playing an infantryman. Hold ‘Right Click’ to aim, press ‘Left Click’ to fire then ‘R’ to reload.

The speed at which you travel on horseback will be restricted to the slower gaits whilst reloading.

Trampling Infantryman

Horses are mighty beasts! Blocking their path is of little to no use and you’ll find yourself injured or killed in the process. Horses travelling at a faster gait will deal greater damage to those unfortunate infantrymen.

Should you be enough in good favour to remain alive after the fact, you will no longer have your weapon equipped. Wait a short while to come to your senses after the knockback and equip your weapon using the scroll wheel or number keys.

Community. Join The Discord!

Looking for a good bunch of fellows to play the game with? Do join our Discord! Linebattle events where players are encouraged to play in formations relevant to the Napoleonic era are hosted by the community through the week. Discord is also a great place to be to stay in touch with the game’s development. Feedback is always greatly welcomed.

If you’re a fellow in the ranks of a regiment, go declare your enlistment. Through this, you can gather access to the ‘Field Camp’ where regimental specific discussion ensues. We look forward to seeing you there!

https://discordapp.com/invite/holdfastgame

There’s more to look out for in this major update! Additions focused towards gameplay balance, quality of life improvements, performance optimisations, administrative tools, plenty of bug fixes and more.

Take a look at the changelog for all the details.

Game Features

• New Cavalry Unit! The Hussar. Have your pick at one of these well-dressed cavalrymen. Great showmanship with swords on horseback.

• New Cavalry Units! The Cuirassier & Dragoon. Carbineers on horseback. These units excel at the use of this firearm while mounted and combined with the versatile mobility their steed provides, they can quickly traverse the battlefield.

• Horseback Riding! Ride glorious steeds of war. Mount, put your steed on the gallop and charge into battle.

» Hussars, Cuirassier and Dragoons spawn readily mounted.

» Line Infantry Officers are able to mount and issue commands all the while remaining on horseback.

» Press ‘Shift’ to sprint when at full gallop and the ‘F’ key to instantly halt a horse.

• Horseback Combat! Engage the enemy on horseback with swords, pistols and carbines.

• Trampling Infantryman. Horses are mighty beasts! Blocking their path is of little to no use and you’ll find yourself injured or killed in the process.

• Chevauxs De Frise. Riders that find their way into these player-built defensive emplacements will find themselves dismounted. Make sure to make good use of these anti-cavalry defences.

• Cavalry Leaderboards. Rise to the top in the new leader boards.

• Small Shell Rockets. New shell rockets to be mounted atop launchers and fired away! They have less range than their larger variant and can, therefore, more easily target those making their way near the launcher.

• Scrollable Scoreboard. Players can now scroll through the scoreboard should they wish to view themselves at the very bottom of the list. It won’t be a great sight to behold but it stood as one of the most player-requested quality of life additions so we delivered.

• 1st Person Field Of View. Players can now adjust their field of view while in 1st person from the game options.

• Dedicated chat channel for Infantry Officers, Hussars, Dragoons and Cuirassiers. Co-ordinate in the field of battle.

• Carpenter Axes. Carpenters are now able to destroy wooden emplacements with their 2H Axe. This also includes palisades that make up for defences on some of the game’s fortifications.

Game Polish

• Players are no longer able to destroy moveable field guns and rocket launchers being operated by their own faction with explosive barrels or other artillery pieces. Should an artillery piece be captured by the enemy, this can still be destroyed.

» Setting ‘friendly_fire’ to true will once again allow players to destroy friendly moveable field guns and rocket launchers.

• You are no longer required to ram swivel guns and mortars. Instead, a short cool-down timer is applied between shots.

• You can now adjust the VoIP volume of each and every individual through the Round Players ‘P’ menu.

» Adjusting a player’s volume will persist through rounds.

» You’re now also able to ramp up and boost the volume of those low-sounding players.

• Players can now enact defences in more locations when playing the Sapper class.

» The fortification present on Fort Christina.

» The fortification present on Fort Schwarz.

» The elevated grounds near the church on Training Grounds.

» Multiple areas within Fort Salettes.

• Players can no longer capture flags from underneath the bridge whilst playing the Army Conquest game mode on Highlands.

• Players will now find themselves killed if they jump in the fire present atop the lighthouse on King George.

• Players are no longer able to angle the Infantry Spikes and Chevaux De Frise (S) player-built defences.

• Carbines now come animated with a ramrod when reloading.

• You are now able to change the default Windows audio device without restarting the game.

• Renamed the ‘Weapon Fire’ audio slider to ‘Weapon’ as players can now adjust the firearm reload sounds through the same slider.

• You can now adjust audio related to destructibility through the ‘Ambience’ slider.

• Players that die during the match then select the ‘Freeflight Mode’ will now remain able to type in chat.

Gameplay Balance

• Flag Bearers and Musicians now only gather assist score from kills done by others through firearms of which they provide bonuses to.

• Similarly, Infantry Officers only gather assist score respective to the buff they are providing. For instance, if the ‘Fire At Will’ command is issued, the Infantry Officer will gather assist score for kills by the ‘Rank & File’ using firearms.

• Spikes situated around the Highlands and Fort Christina fortifications damage cavalry if an attempt is made to traverse the walls with them.

• Slightly reduced the damage dealt by sword and muskets against player-built defences.

• Increased the damage dealt by axes that the Carpenter class wields against player-built defences.

• Light infantryman now moves at a greater speed while on foot. They also had their accuracy when firing whilst crouching slightly increased.

» Light Footed trait increased from 5% to 7%.

» Skirmisher trait crouching accuracy increased from 13% to 15%.

• Destroying objects with the Carpenter Axe now gathers you a total of 5 score instead of 2.

• You can no longer switch from 1st to 3rd person view to shoot from behind hills while remaining in better cover whilst playing the hardcore game type.

• Slowed down the rate at which players can feint from one strike to another.

• Increased the speed at which the ladder can be carried.

Gameplay Balance - Naval Combat

• Carpenter axes can now deal damage to wooden structures aboard naval vessels.

• Rowers assisting the fellow steering the rowboat now properly contribute to its increased in speed. Rowboats are now able to travel at a faster speed due to this.

• Coastal and naval artillery pieces had their effective range reduced to promote closer-range engagements.

• Reduced the maximum aim of naval guns present aboard ships by a few degrees.

• Opposing naval vessels now spawn slightly closer to one another on Harouti Islands and Open Waters to make up for what was mentioned above.

• Increased the maximum speed of the 1-Gun Gunboat and Rocketboat.

• Decreased the maximum ship speed of the 13-Gun Brig-Sloop when in favour of the wind.

• Decreased the maximum ship speed of the 50-Gun Frigate when in favour of the wind.

Game Optimisations

• Undergone an upgrade to the game engine Holdfast: Nations At War runs on.

• Player models received optimisations to ease some burden off the CPU.

• Optimised the main menu scene. It will no longer ramp up your CPU usage. Locked to 60 FPS.

Server Administration

• Input the following command per map rotation for the Infantry Officer class to spawn readily mounted. We’re sure you’ll be able to find a use for this during events!

» officers_spawn_mounted true or false

• Input the following command per map rotation to limit the number of lives for the defenders on the Army Siege game mode.

» max_player_respawn <No. Of Lives>

• Server administrators are now able to define an introductory message which displays itself when the player joins the server or a new round starts. This can be used to define rules during linebattle events amongst others.

» You can make use of rich text to customise the message. Input the following in the server configuration to display the message.

» server_intro_title Welcome To My Server!

» server_intro_body Greetings to everyone. You will see this message every time you join the server.

• Server administrators are now able to log in-game chat messages. The messages will be saved to a file you predefine through the command below after the round ends.

» --chatLogFilePath "FilePathchatlog_server1.txt"

• Server administrators are now able to log the in-game scoreboard. Player score and other relevant round details will be saved to a file you predefine through the command below after the round ends.

» Information is exported in CSV format for easier accessibility.

» --scoreboardLogFilePath "FilePathscorelog_server1.txt"

• Server administrators can spawn horses by issuing the following command. Horses will spawn on the defined faction’s spawn location.

» rc vehiclesSpawn <No. Of Horses.> <Faction> <Cavalry Class>

• Input the following command to allow all classes to ride on horseback.

» rc set vehicleHorseForAll true or false

• Gather a thousand blessings by spawning the holiest of horses. Blessed be thy cavalrymen.

» rc set useSpecialHorseVariants true or false

• Server administrators can adjust the conditions for when and how an idle horse is despawned after its rider meets their end.

» A cavalryman's horse is immediately despawned if the cavalryman respawns. The horse timers only kick-off when the horse's original owner dies. Once the original owner dies, if the horse is no longer mounted by another player, the below conditions will kick in.

» rc set secondsToPassAfterDismounted - Defines the required time for when a horse gets despawned after a cavalryman dismounts or is killed.

» rc set secondsSpawnedBeforeDespawn - Defines the time a horse needs to have been alive before it gets despawned.

» rc set secondsToPassAfterHealthUpdated - Defines the time required to pass before a horse is despawned after it has been damaged. If the timer was at 5 seconds, it will reset back to the defined time.

• Server administrators are now able to disallow blocking with melee weapons.

» rc set allowBlocking true or false.

• Server administrators are now able to allow players to change to another weapon direction while blocking is disabled. The command mentioned above must be set to true.

» rc set allowWeaponHoldSwapOverride true or false.

Bug Fixes

• Solved an issue which allowed players to go through the base of the windmill present on Spanish Farm amongst others.

• Solved an issue which caused the outhouse doors to produce incorrect SFX when destroyed.

• Solved multiple issues with invisible objects on Camp Salamanca.

• Solved an issue with stairs being difficult to climb on Fort Salettes.

• Solved an issue where other players could appear sliding when healing others using the Surgeon class.

• Solved an issue which caused players to get stuck on map load.

• Solved an issue with the Custom Naval Map missing a loading screen.

• Solved an issue where a notification message informing the player that they were unable to authenticate to Steam was overlaid by the leader boards user interface when launching the game.

• Solved an issue where the player’s nameplate and voice chat indicator kept on showing while spectating.

• Solved multiple issues with user interface elements not scaling correctly on different aspect ratios.

• Solved an issue where the ‘Lantern Box’ was incorrectly shown as a ‘Spyglass Box’

• Solved an instance which allowed players to go outside the gate before the round starts on the Melee Arena game mode by utilising benches.

• Solved an issue which sometimes caused an exception to occur when a player damaged another.

• Solved an issue which sometimes caused moveable field guns and rocket launchers to not respawn.

• Solved an error that was sometimes outputted when a player received a buff.

• Solved an issue where sometimes non-fully built explosive barrels could still be chain exploded.

• Solved an issue with text sometimes being offset for administrative functionality in the Round Players ‘P’ panel.

Changelog 46 - Game Version 0.40.7292.26678

Optimisations

• Performed several optimisations on both the scoreboard and cavalry units to improve client-side and server-side framerate.

• Reduced the time idle horses remain alive on the field of battle.

New Features

• Should you not be feeling the holiday spirit, you now have the option to toggle off the ‘Festive Event’ through your ‘Game’ options. It will take effect after the next map loads.

Gameplay Balance

• Increased the cooldown timer after firing swivel guns and mortars by a few seconds.

• Slightly increased the time it takes to go from crouching to standing and standing to crouching.

• Slightly reduced the range and angle of the shoves and kicks.

Bug Fixes

• Solved an instance which caused the server to crash unexpectedly.

• Solved multiple exceptions on both the server and client.

• Solved an issue where trampling someone with a horse would grant you the ‘Pub Brawler’ achievement.

• Solved an issue where players could get stuck on the wooden bridge present near Arendan River while riding on horseback.

• Solved an issue where the Field of View setting slider reverted back to default values on game launch.

• Solved an issue which caused players to sometimes be unable to join a server.

• Solved an issue where the ‘K, D, S and Latency’ indicators on the scoreboard appeared to be miss-aligned.

• Solved an issue where cannonballs didn’t their correct festive addition.

• Solved an issue where antlers for the ongoing Christmas Event were at times not showing.

It has been an utmost pleasure developing this update, delivering on yet another promise prior to our release on Early Access. Months of hard work were had leading to the glorious introduction of cavalry units in Holdfast: Nations At War.

We would like to extend a heartfelt and personal thanks to all of those good chaps that joined us in our testing and shared with us their feedback. The same goes for all those members within the Holdfast community that patiently partook in the filming of the trailer.

Once again, we thank you for your support and until next time may good health be yours.

Go forth now and ride you beauties, ride!