Squad

Hello Squaddies,


We’d like to take a moment to address an issue with the server browser that many of you saw over the weekend.

We've been monitoring this spoofing issue for some time. While our original plan was to address it after the release of 9.0, recent events made it clear that we need to act sooner. Work on 9.0 continues, but we've also shifted resources to work closely with the community to deliver a fix for this problem in the next update.

We will also be posting August’s Letter from the Squad Leader later this week giving some more general updates.

See you in the next one!


Thanks, Squaddies!


\[O] Howitzer

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“Attention Squadies, announcement incoming!”

Listen up, Squaddies. Offworld's hit the big 1-0 and is celebrating with a publisher sale from July 31st to August 3rd. Get Squad, Squad 44, Starship Troopers: Extermination, and Beyond the Wire for 50% off. That's right, all of Offworld's titles are 50% off to celebrate our 10th Anniversary!

This is a big year for Squad, as we are working towards moving the game into Unreal Engine 5. Read the latest Letter From The Squad Leader HERE, and join the Squad Discord to discuss all things Squad.

Offworld Out.

───

https://store.steampowered.com/app/393380/Squad/

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Hello Squaddies,


July is almost over! This time around, I have a SITREP and a Battlefield Briefing. We’ll cover a lot, and I’m excited to expand these letters over time.

SQ-SITREP.

Following feedback from the "final" 9.0 Unreal Engine 5 playtest, I released an update last week outlining our plan to revise release timelines. In this Letter from the Squad Leader (LFTSL), I will cover where we are at with that and the general plan.

Including v9.0, we had 4+ releases planned for this year, yet we have only released one hotfix. July is almost over, and as always, the end of the year will be upon us sooner than we think. Now that we are rethinking the 9.0 timeline, what does this mean for the releases later this year? We have merged some of the smaller updates we had planned after 9.0, leaving us with two major releases before the end of the year, with v9.0 and v10.0. Each contains large pieces of content, features, and improvements. This new plan gives the team two solid releases to focus on and allows some room between v9.0 and v10.0 if we need to hotfix.

All this shifting around will give us a few more opportunities for Public Tests with Unreal Engine 5, allowing us time to iron out the creases with this engine update. We will keep everyone updated on timelines in the next LFTSL in August.

SQ-BATTLEFIELD BRIEFING.

So… In the last Letter, I mentioned I’d touch a bit more on other things we have in development outside Unreal Engine 5 and v9.0. There have been several public-facing roadmaps in Squads' history, and we’d like to try something like this again, with a few changes.

External factors change roadmaps all the time (like what just happened with v9.0), so rather than a concrete roadmap with dates and months, we will be presenting more of a “development showcase” (shoutout to Discord member IBIS for the suggestion). The “Next Update” section, believe it or not, will cover things coming in the next update! These are things we are more certain of showing up in the next update. The middle section, “In Progress”, will cover things we are actively working on, but we will not cover what release they are planned for, as that might change over time. The final section, "Planning," outlines concepts, with most currently in the early planning & testing stage. The items in this section are generally long-term plans and are not slated for the near future.


We will provide periodic updates and discussions regarding the showcase as its contents become more definite or items are added or removed.

With an overview of the showcase complete, let's delve into some specific items. Ukraine's active player base is tied for the third and fourth largest. So, I’d like to announce that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will join Squads' lineup of factions later this year! Our Worlds team has also been working on updating and remastering our Eastern European Biome assets. This includes things like foliage, props, and buildings for that biome.

Another item on the showcase is Commendations. This feature is very close to being finished. The Commendations system is a socially-driven progression system in which players gain the ability to give a 'commendation' to another player, giving them agency to recognize them for being good at playing their role, or being a good leader, teacher, or teammate.

As players receive commendations, they will progress down a track relevant to the type of commendation they've received, allowing them to unlock better versions of the commendation icons.

This icon will appear next to their name on in-game scoreboards, in-game HUDs, and anywhere that a role icon would normally appear. We will harness these icons as part of the first-time user experience and encourage newer players to seek out experienced players who other players have recognized as good leaders or teachers to mitigate the possibility of having a negative first-time experience in the game.

So that wraps up this LFTSL. We’re all excited to start talking more about what we are working on and showing off things when possible. Expect to see more pretty much every month going forward.

See you in the next one!

\[O] Howitzer

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Hello Squaddies,


As some of you may know, we just finished up what we initially believed would be our final 9.0 Unreal 5 public playtest. Based on earlier results and performance improvements, it felt like a strong candidate for release. However, the transition from 5.3 to 5.5 uncovered new challenges that hadn’t appeared in previous tests. We’ve since taken time to review a lot of valuable feedback from the community, and it’s clear there are still areas to improve. As a result, we have decided to regroup and rethink our plans for the 9.0 release.


So, what happens now? We are actively assessing and planning our next steps for 9.0 and how its release impacts the rest of the year. We will be posting another Letter from the Squad Leader mid next week to give everyone a general update on where we landed and what to expect.


I wanted to thank everyone for giving their honest and open feedback. Your input continues to shape the path forward and is deeply valued by the entire team. Thank you for continuing to support us through this transition to Unreal 5.

Like I mentioned before, expect to see more information about our next steps next week. Closed playtesting will continue to take place (More info here http://discord.gg/testsquad) as well as more “final final” public playtests.

Thanks, Squaddies!

\[O] Howitzer

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Listen up, Squaddies!

Unreal Engine 5 Public Playtest #5 is coming this Friday, July 11th 11:00am PDT!

THIS WILL BE OUR FINAL PUBLIC TEST FOR UNREAL ENGINE 5.

Here’s what to expect:

You will need to download a special Playtesting Branch of Squad, that has already been released, with access to Servers on Friday around 11am PDT. There will be multiple servers being hosted by Community names that you will know and recognize! Feel free to play wherever you like, but servers will open and close to accommodate the population needs! The general public will not be given access to the Server hosting branch for testing. There is a special Squad Testing Discord that is open to the public. Please be aware that all the normal Squad Community server rules apply in this server as well. Please refer to the onboarding channels for help if you need it!

We have included some known issues in this post, but anything that you come up against can be reported in the previously mentioned Discord Server for testing. Testing will run over the weekend and end on Monday July 14th 11:00AM PDT, and then the UE5 Servers will be taken down. We are also hoping you can take the time to fill out a survey for us, answering some questions about your experience during testing. This will be available IN GAME, in the News Box on the main menu. We will send out a reminder of this later on as well, as it will be accessible through Discord too.

The Important Stuff


In place of a change log this week, we have some information to update you on regarding PiP (Picture in Picture) scopes, from \[O] Norby!


"We have a new implementation for the pip scopes. Why is the pip rendering such a big challenge? For high magnification optics like in Squad we need to render two scenes for the different magnification levels. Rendering creates load on the CPU, which is issuing the render commands and on the GPU. In the worst case it cuts the frame rate in half.

Our goal is to have the same frame rate in pip mode as outside of pip. For that we need to address both bottlenecks. For the GPU the most efficient way to gain performance is rendering less pixels. We can do that for the outside scene, since there is a blur effect applied anyway.

For the render thread we have the benefit that we're always looking in the same direction with both views. This allows us to do optimizations similar to VR to reuse resources for both views.

The biggest challenge with this is handling the transition of render states smoothly. We pre-allocate resources when kits are switched and are spreading some of the transitions over multiple frames to reduce hitching."

-Norby


We did add a bunch of fixes that came in since the last playtest, but we will be saving those for the Patch Notes of the 9.0 release, once it arrives. We are aware of a few persisting bugs, including some hitching during ADS animations, some black frames inside PiP scopes, and an issue where a portion of the PiP screen can get duplicated.


Join the discussion in Discord, and we hope to see you over the weekend!


OFFWORLD OUT

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ATTN Squaddies!,


Today we are releasing a Hotfix for both Player facing and Server side. This update is intending on resolving a PING issue that Servers were experiencing that caused servers to seem like they had a ping of 9999! You will need to update your game in order to play. That's all for today! Stay tuned for more news on the UE5 release in the coming weeks!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/393380/Squad/

OFFWORLD OUT!

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“We've intercepted new transmissions. Ready to receive!”

Listen up Squaddies. The Steam Summer Sale is here! From June 26th - 10 AM PT (GMT-7) until July 10th - 10 AM PT (GMT-7), save 60% off on Squad! Now is a great time to join Squad, as we are currently working towards our most significant update yet, moving Squad to Unreal Engine 5!

Check out our upcoming UE5 Update Devblog HERE, and join the Squad Discord to discuss all things Squad.

Offworld Out.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/393380/Squad/

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ATTN Squaddies!

Today we are releasing a small Client side update to our Anti-cheat. This will not affect servers, but you will need to update your game in order to play.


That's all for today! Stay tuned for more news on the UE5 release in the coming weeks!

OFFWORLD OUT!

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Hello Squaddies,


Howtizer here. We released a few “Letter from the Squad Leader” posts last year but I haven’t done one in a while. It’s also something that I did for the newsletter, I will now make this its own blog post the whole community gets access to instead of it trickling out through the newsletter. It will be semi-regular (once a month or two) to keep you, the community, up to date with everything that’s going on on the Squad team.

Usually I’d split things out into 2 segments, the "Sitrep," focusing on short-term plans, and the "Battlefield Briefing," focusing on medium to long-term plans, but for now I will skip the Battlefield Briefing to cover the Sitrep in more detail.

SQ-SITREP.


Where we are at…

We’re still working on UE5. Surprise!! As most of you already know, we are hard at work upgrading Squad to Unreal Engine 5. A lot of the team have been working on this for a long time, some since the last engine upgrade (4.27) we did 2 years ago, but most of the team shifted focus toward the end of last year, which is why you haven’t seen an update in a while. All the sub teams on Squad have had their hands in this Engine upgrade, as well as many people outside the Squad team at Offworld. It’s been a whole company effort.


4 open playtests have taken place over the last 2 months, and countless other closed tests before then and we are reaching that point where we feel confident in releasing it soon to gather feedback from the entire playerbase and move onto other things we have in our plans (more information on that in a future post). We want to make sure we deliver a solid engine update that improves most peoples experiences, and sets up Squad for another 10 years of development and kick ass content. So in the next section, I’ll talk about what to expect over the next month or so.

What to expect in the next few months…

There will be a few more public tests of Unreal 5 to help us test a few more improvements we’d like to make, as well as the release of the Mod SDK leaving modders some time to update their mods to Unreal 5. Some of this work includes more optimization efforts for PiP scopes, server performance improvements, and some serious testing of Unreal Engine 5.5 (5.5 has a lot of refinements from Epic that will help lower end PC Performance).


That’s all for now… In the next letter, we will cover a bit more about some of the challenges we have faced upgrading to Unreal 5 and talk about some future roadmap items… It’s been a long journey, but we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are aiming to release v9.0 Summer 2025. We will not be releasing before the Steam Summer Sale. So expect to see v9.0 at some point after that.


Thanks, Squaddies!


- Howitzer

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Listen up, Squaddies!

Unreal Engine 5 Public Playtest #5 is coming this Friday, June 13, at 11:00 AM PDT! Here’s what to expect:

You will need to download a special Public Playtesting Branch of Squad (View -> Hidden Games -> Right-Click on Squad - Public Playtesting and Install), with access to Servers on Friday opening up at 11AM PDT. There will be multiple servers being hosted by Community names that you will know and recognize! Feel free to play wherever you like, but servers will open and close to accommodate the population needs. The general public will not be given access to the Server hosting branch for testing.

A special Squad Testing Discord that has now been opened to the public. Please be aware that all the normal Squad Community server rules also apply in this server. Please refer to the onboarding channels for help if you need it!

We also want to mention that this is a WORK IN PROGRESS build of Unreal Engine 5, and is still in active development. That means you are likely to come up against bugs, or features that don’t work/feel the same way as the current 8.2 version of Squad. We have included some known issues in this post, but anything that you come up against can be reported in the previously mentioned Discord Server for testing.

Testing will run over the weekend from June 13 to June 16, and then the UE5 Servers will be taken down.

The Important Stuff

This time the build will be based on Unreal 5.5 in combination with a large amount of bug fixes that was intended for the 9.0 UE5 release:

• 
  Large amount of medium/high priority bugfixes and improvements.
  
  
• 
  Unreal Engine version 5.5 upgrade.
  
  
• 
  Crash fixes.
  

How will this affect the game?

• 
  Better and more stable performance for low end CPU/GPU hardware (and all other hardware).
  
  
• 
  Improved stability for the game.
  
  
• 
  Less bugs that would negatively affect how enjoyable the gameplay would be.
  

Known issues:

• 
  Double suppression effect when being shot at might still occur. A fix is being worked on but not ready for this weekend.
  
  
• 
  "1 FPS" bug might still be present, causing extreme performance drop for an extended period of time in specific conditions (work has been made to prevent this).
  
  
• 
  Sun glare in certain lighting conditions might become unrealistically bright.
  
  
• 
  Certain UI issues relating to vehicle weapons might still be present.
  
  
• 
  Possible performance issues using PIP Scopes while using FSR. We are aware of the issue and have a fix in place, but it did not make it into this playtest build.
  

We hope you can all help spread the word about this playtest, especially to friends who have had issues with performance in previous playtests, as we are eager to receive feedback on how old and low-end hardware is performing on this updated engine version of the game.

Please join us this weekend on testing out UE5.5, and as always, we want to hear from you so please submit your feedback!

OFFWORLD OUT

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Welcome back to The Wrench! Here we show off the latest in Squad modding.

What follows are updates sent to us by the people behind the mods themselves: their words, images, and amazing work!

(some entries have been edited for length and clarity)

---

BAF (Brazilian Armed Forces) Mod by Smoking Snakes

The BAF mod team aims to bring the Brazilian Army to squad in form of multiple unique vehicles, weapons and playable maps. Been under development since 2021 it is set for release in late 2025.

Featuring 5 unique vehicles, 11 unique weapons, 4 unique deployables, and 2 Unique Commander Assets.

Links:
Discord link: https://discord.gg/mgpqE3SxEY

---

Rassvet by Steez & Ruben

A complete re-imagining of OPFL (Operation First Light) featuring new biomes, reworked POI's, expanded and improved terrain, enhanced realtime lighting and dynamic time of day support, set in Eastern Europe.

Rassvet has seen a lot of progress this year with large central POI's like the Lumber Yard being added as well as older POI's like Storage Depot and Nilrem Village getting additional detail passes to bring the up to parity with newer work on the map and art.

The playable area is now bigger than the original OPFL and has been playtested extensively. While still not complete, it's perfectly playable with a variety of layers, including SuperMod layers.

Links:
Discord: https://discord.gg/XCbb7bmDQY
Steam workshop:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995310287

---

Southeast Asian Rebels by Rookheim

The Southeast Asian Rebels mod is a modest faction and map mod aiming to add an unconventional force to the East Asia theatre. This includes Sanxian Islands, but also the modded map Liareng Islands as well as other future projects.
Originally a coalition of a number of different ethnic militias, popular defence forces and political groups, SEAR forces have now accrued decades of combat experience and grown into almost a pseudo-conventional force. Now, as great powers turn their gaze to the larger asia-pacific front, SEAR take up arms once more in defence of their homeland.

My experience is rather limited so I'm doing what I can with what I got
If you would like help out in any manner feel free to reach out to me (Rookheim) on Discord!

---

Hrodna Border by rell0776

Located south of the strategic Suwalki Gap along the cross border route between Bialystok and Grodno/Hrodna, Hrodna Border features a fictionalized vision of the border crossing and its surroundings. This map brings new flavor to the Eastern European collection of maps in Squad, featuring many small villages, a large town, a rail line, a border crossing, a LNG terminal, dilapidated abandoned bunkers from the old Soviet WW2 era Molotov Line, and much much more.

Hrodna intends to be a throwback to what made Squad maps so great and is a love letter to my favorite game. The map strives to strike a balance between Armor and Infantry gameplay, balanced RAAS lanes that aren't predictable but still funnel the match into concise areas of the map, and in other iterations of Squad plenty of terrain to play around providing a balance between long and close range combat and facilitating larger scale maneuvers.

Links:
Workshop Link:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3436010829

---

King Of The Hill by Carnage
(Author disclaimer: this mod was made by one of Squad’s developers, Carnage!)

King Of The Hill is the first ever persistent economy mod in Squad. In this game mode (inspired by ARMA 3) You fight as military contractors from around the world over a highly contested zone for $$$ and XP Rewards. Players can level up, purchase and unlock new weaponry, vehicles, skins, and perks, and your progress carries over between matches.

We have linked our mod with our KOTH servers to other communities, so your saves not only persist from match to match, but between Linked Economy Servers too!

The mod is very early but there is a bright vision ahead to bring seasonal content and events with our partnering communities. We are hoping to hear from more communities looking to play and run the mod!

Links:
KOTH Discord: https://discord.gg/kingofthehill
Workshop Link:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3443779816

---

Trinca Ferro/Arena Brasil

A representation of Brazilian crime, police and criminal factions, with more than 6 new factions and 6 maps focused on Brazil and its favelas. In addition to dozens of new weapons and vehicles.

Links:
Workshop Link:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3159021895

---

Steel Division

Steel Division is a Special Forces mod with reduced ICO with custom features like NVG's, Thermals, Cross VOIP, FPV Drones, Attack Helicopters, MANPADS, C-130 Para-drops and more. With 8 fully fledged custom factions the mod is jam packed with content.

Links:
Discord: https://discord.gg/steeldivision
Workshop Link:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2432926361

---

Swiss Armed Faction

The Swiss Armed Forces mod is not yet finished, but it will represent a wide range of elements from our alpine nation's army.

The Swiss army employs a militia system. Many men and women have fond memories of serving. Squad offers us the perfect canvas, rekindling the passion and comradery that make the Swiss Army great.

The Swiss army has changed a lot through the years, just like any other military. However, many aspects are rigid. Roughly 60% of Swiss territory is mountainous, placing infantry at a distinct advantage in conflict. On the other hand, it is clear that the other 40% of terrain is relatively flat, which means that heavier equipment like (*APCs, Tanks, IFVs, etc.*) has an increased workload in these areas.
Switzerland is also known for its abundance of man-made bunkers, creating never-before-seen combat scenarios for Squad.

Our membership stands at 4. We're making progress, but it's slow because we're developing this modification in our spare time. We know we piqued your interest in this mod. If you want to check out our progress or talk to us, join our Discord!

Links:
Discord Link: https://discord.gg/cQVhxSW9am

---

Bundeswehr Mod

The team is focused on bringing the German Armed Forces "Bundeswehr" to Squad, including unique weapons, vehicles, character models, new game mechanics, custom-recorded weapons sounds, custom-made level props and the German Map "Fulda Gap". In addition to what you can see in their last Blog, you get to see a sneak peak into the new Puma IFV model and the also new "Auto Zeroing" mechanic for German combat vehicles, such as the Leopard 2A6M and the Boxer IFV. A new series of Blog updates is due to be published soon, as well another round of Beta playtests! (We say thank you to everyone who was part of our previous B1 Playtest event with over 5.000 downloads of our Beta phase mod in 6 days). The Bundeswehr Mod for SQUAD is currently looking for experienced UE4/UE5 level designers and level prop artists for their Fulda Gap project. Check out the recruitment channel in their Discord if you bring what they need!

Links:
Blog: https://bwmod.com/2024/08/19/progress-update-no-9/
Discord Link https://discord.gg/y9pQvr7e

---

Thanks to everyone who submitted!
What mod are you excited to try? Let us know in the comments!

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Listen up, Squaddies!

Unreal Engine 5 Public Playtest #4 is coming this Friday, May 30, 2025 11:00 AM PDT!
Here’s what to expect:

You will need to download a special Playtesting Branch of Squad, that will be released ASAP, with access to Servers on Friday around 11am PDT.

There will be multiple servers being hosted by Community names that you will know and recognize! Feel free to play wherever you like, but servers will open and close to accommodate the population needs! The general public will not be given access to the Server hosting branch for testing.

There is a special Squad Testing Discord that has now been opened to the public. Please be aware that all the normal Squad Community server rules apply in this server as well. Please refer to the onboarding channels for help if you need it!

We want to also mention that this is a WORK IN PROGRESS build of Unreal Engine 5, and is still in active development. That means you are likely to come up against bugs, or features that don’t work/feel the same way as the current 8.2 version of Squad. We have included some known issues in this post, but anything that you come up against can be reported in the previously mentioned Discord Server for testing.

Testing will run over the weekend from May 30th to June 2nd, and then the UE5 Servers will be taken down.

We are also hoping you can take the time to fill out a survey for us, answering some questions about your experience during testing. This will be available IN GAME, in the News Box on the main menu. We will send out a reminder of this later on as well.

The Important Stuff

In place of a change log this week, I would simply like to let you know what exactly we are looking for in our test results!

• There is currently an issue where a massive freeze happens during a match, that can seem to affect just one person, or multiple people at the same time. We are calling it the 1FPS issue. We have created a build that has better tracking specifically for this issue, so that we can try to pin down the problem and resolve it.
  
• We have added more Server performance optimizations that we would like to test, including an interesting tool for Server Hosters that should allow them to Multi-Thread Vehicle animations, significantly reducing the impact that vehicles have on server side performance.
  
• We have implemented an introductory option for replacing Picture in Picture (PiP) scopes for players with lower end computers, or anyone that feels the significant drop in FPS when using a PiP scope. This setting will be available for anyone to enable in the settings menu.

We did add a bunch of fixes that came in since the last playtest, but the above information is what we would love to focus on for this weekend. So if you have time, please come join us and submit your feedback! We will have a working Feedback Form (confirmed working this time, sorry about last week), and the Testing Discord is still active for those of you wanting to join the discussion over there!

OFFWORLD OUT

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Listen up, Squaddies!

Unreal Engine 5 Public Playtest 3 is coming this Friday, May 23, 2025 11:00 AM!
Here’s what to expect:

The build for this playtest is AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD NOW!

There will be multiple servers being hosted by Community names that you will know and recognize! Feel free to play wherever you like, but servers will open and close to accommodate the population needs! The general public will not be given access to the Server hosting branch for testing.

We want to also mention that this is a WORK IN PROGRESS build of Unreal Engine 5, and is still in active development. That means you are likely to come up against bugs, or features that don’t work/feel the same way as the current 8.2 version of Squad. We have included some known issues in this post, but anything that you come up against can be reported in the previously mentioned Discord Server for testing.

Testing will run over the weekend from May 23rd to May 26th, and then the UE5 Servers will be taken down.

We are also hoping you can take the time to fill out a survey for us, answering some questions about your experience during testing. This will be available IN GAME, in the News Box on the main menu. We will send out a reminder of this later on as well.

CHANGELOG

• New southern Basrah mainbase level artbox pass (will benefit from this test).
  
• Various maps landscapes reworked to resolve nanite landscape visibility issues.

Scalability

• Added DLSS Preset K for all quality levels except UltraPerformance.
  
• This should improve the visual clarity for everyone using DLSS.
  
• Separated Frame Generation options so that you can run your preferred Upscaling solution without needing to use the same provider for frame generation.

Factions

• Bolt action rifles do damage again (as long as you hit your shots).
  
• Ironsights and optics on RPK and PKM work correctly again when bipodded.
  
• Deploying bipods should work correctly again.
  
• Smoke grenades no longer send vehicles flying.
  
• BMP2 no longer invisible when tracks are destroyed.
  
• PLA ATGM's are guided again.

Known issues:

• Loach still randomly loses its tail rotor sometimes, still being investigated.
  
• Some USMC desert vehicles have bugged textures. (Or state-of-the-art dynamic camouflage, depending on how you look at it),

OFFWORLD OUT

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Listen up, Squaddies!

Unreal Engine 5 Public Playtest 2 is coming this Friday, May 02, 2025 11:00 AM PDT! Here’s what to expect:

You will need to download a special Playtesting Branch of Squad, that will be released later this week, with access on Friday.

There will be multiple servers being hosted by Community names that you will know and recognize! Feel free to play wherever you like, but servers will open and close to accommodate the population needs! The general public will not be given access to the Server hosting branch for testing.

There is a special Squad Testing Discord that has now been opened to the public. Please be aware that all the normal Squad Community server rules apply in this server as well. Please refer to the onboarding channels for help if you need it! Join the Discord HERE!

We want to also mention that this is a WORK IN PROGRESS build of Unreal Engine 5, and is still in active development. That means you are likely to come up against bugs, or features that don’t work/feel the same way as the current 8.2 version of Squad. We have included some known issues in this post, but anything that you come up against can be reported in the previously mentioned Discord Server for testing.

Testing will run over the weekend from May 2nd to May 5th, and then the UE5 Servers will be taken down.

We are also hoping you can take the time to fill out a survey for us, answering some questions about your experience during testing. This will be available IN GAME, in the News Box on the main menu. We will send out a reminder of this later on as well.

Here is the changelog from last playtest!

Changelog:

• Significant changes were included that should increase Server Performance overall. We identified a couple of things that were causing issues, including excess animations, that have been adjusted!
  
• Smoke grenades no longer continuously exploding when walked over
  
• Hands no longer disappear when vaulting
  
• Scout drones are no longer infinite in quantity
  
• Vehicles no longer instantly reload when near Repair Stations
  
• Buildings no longer have bullet-proof glass
  
• Technicals are no longer aggressively loud
  
• Weapons (general) several LOD issues have been fixed with infantry weapons

Some more changes:

Scalability:

• Updated to latest version of DLSS, offering greatly improved clarity in most scenes using the new Preset
  
• Tweaks to volumetric clouds settings, giving better performance for low presets

Worlds:

• Fixed landscape materials being broken on Tallil and Mestia
  
• Further attempts at optimization across our worst performing maps, still more to come
  
• Work is being done to the southeast corner of Al Basrah to address feedback from the first playtest, still WIP

These are just some of the changes made, that were the most popular bugs and feedback from the last playtest. We have resolved many more smaller issues.

Known Issues:

• We have yet to add the final pass on many of the Vehicles across the Factions. Paired with the new Vehicle physics, many of the vehicles may feel foreign or behave differently than you expect. Some Vehicles can get stuck on objects easier than in UE4 as well. Please leave us feedback on this in Discord. There has been an initial pass on the vehicles since the first playtest.
  
• There are some issues with PiP scopes that we are still working on.
  
• Some areas of the map may be too dark or too light when looking into or out of buildings.
  
• There are some known client crashes. Using the Unreal Engine crash report tool that pops up once Squad crashes, is a good way for us to receive a client crash. If you crash WITHOUT seeing the crash reporter, please let us know through the Testing Discord Server.
  
• There are some texture streaming related issues, which can cause microstutters especially when a VFX is starting to play.
  
• There are some visual artifacts relating to lighting and upscalers. There may be reduced sharpness, smearing, shadows or water surface shimmering or flickering may occur. This is something we are working to adjust for the next public playtest.
  
• For other issues, please report bugs in a bug report channel with as much information as possible.

OFFWORLD OUT

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“We've intercepted new transmissions. Ready to receive!”

Listen up Squaddies. We're taking part in the Wargames Festfrom April 28 - May 5, and you can get your friends and soon-to-be fellow squaddies in for 70% off. You heard right. The game's on sale from now until the Wargames Fest ends in our largest discount yet.

Check out our upcoming UE5 update Devblog HERE, and join the Squad Discord to discuss all things Squad.

Offworld Out.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/393380/Squad/

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Hello Squaddies!

The time has come! Open playtesting for Unreal Engine 5 is arriving this Friday!

Here’s what to expect:

• You will need to download a special Playtesting Branch of Squad, that will be released later this week, with access on Friday Apr 11, 2025, around 11am PDT.
  
  
• There will be multiple servers being hosted by Community names that you will know and recognise! Feel free to play wherever you like, but servers will open and close to accommodate the population needs! The general public will not be given access to the Server hosting branch for testing.
  
  
• There is a special Squad Testing Discord that has now been opened to the public. Please be aware that all the normal Squad Community server rules apply in this server as well. Please refer to the onboarding channels for help if you need it! https://discord.gg/testsquad

We want to also mention that this is a WORK IN PROGRESS build of Unreal Engine 5, and is still in active development. That means you are likely to come up against bugs, or features that don’t work/feel the same way as the current 8.2 version of Squad. We have included some known issues in this post, but anything that you come up against can be reported in the previously mentioned Discord Server for testing.

Testing will run over the weekend from April 11th to April 14th, and then the UE5 builds will be taken down. Our goal is to run these tests every 2 weeks, with iterations to try each weekend of Public playtesting!

We are also hoping you can take the time to fill out a survey for us, answering some questions about your experience during testing. This will be available IN GAME, in the News Box on the main menu. We will send out a reminder of this later on as well.


Known Issues:[/h3]

• We are aware of an issue that causes the player's FPS to drop to 1 for an amount of time. We are tracking this issue and would appreciate any and all reports of this.
  
• We have yet to add the final pass on many of the Vehicles across the Factions. Paired with the new Vehicle physics, many of the vehicles may feel foreign or behave differently than you expect. Some Vehicles can get stuck on objects easier than in UE4 as well. Please leave us feedback on this in Discord.
  
• There are some issues with PiP scopes that we are still working on.
  
• Some areas of the map may be too dark or too light when looking into or out of buildings.
  
• There are some known client crashes. Using the Unreal Engine crash report tool that pops up once Squad crashes, is a good way for us to receive a client crash.If you crash WITHOUT seeing the crash reporter, please let us know through the Testing Discord Server.
  
• There are some texture streaming related issues, which can cause microstutters especially when a VFX is starting to play.
  
• There are some visual artifacts relating to lighting and upscalers. There may be reduced sharpness, smearing, shadows or water surface shimmering or flickering may occur. This is something we are working to adjust for the next public playtest.
  
• For other issues, please report bugs in a bug report channel with as much information as possible.

Stay tuned for more information in the coming days!

OFFWORLD OUT!

Continue reading...

 

Hello Squaddies!

Today, we have something a little different for you all! Squad Partner Slay3Kilo came to us with the idea of presenting some of the more technical aspects of the Unreal Engine 5 update to help the community better understand some of the work that our team is putting in behind the scenes!

Slay3Kilo and Norby, our Director of Technology (and a Founder of Offworld), get into the nitty gritty of a whole slew of topics, including:

• UE5 as a Toolkit.
  
• Key focus areas.
  
• High-level goals for the transition.
  
• Nanite technology.
  
• Lighting improvements, including our custom Global Illumination system.
  
• Anti-Aliasing.

Stick around throughout the video to also get some first looks at UE5 gameplay, recorded during some of our most recent closed testing!

You can find the video on Slay3Kilos channel, or watch here:

We hope you enjoy the video! Let us know in the comments on Slay's channel if you would like to see more Dev Blogs in this format!

PS - News on Open Playtesting is around the corner. Stay frosty, Squaddies.

OFFWORLD, OUT!

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Save big during the Steam Spring Sale

From now until March 20th, save big on all our games during the Steam Spring Sale. Save up to 60% off on all Offworld games. Read more about each game below, and we'll see you on the battlefield soldiers!

Squad - 60% Off
https://store.steampowered.com/app/393380/Squad/
Squad is a tactical FPS that provides authentic combat experiences through teamwork, communication, and realistic combat. It bridges the gap between arcade shooter and military realism with 100-player battles, combined-arms warfare, and base building.

Squad 44 - 50% Off
https://store.steampowered.com/app/736220/Squad_44/
Team up and join the frontline in Squad 44, the most authentic tactical WW2 shooter. Experience ruthless realism with an immense arsenal of faithfully recreated weapons and vehicles across massive WW2 battlefields.

Starship Troopers: Extermination - 60% off
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268750/Starship_Troopers_Extermination/
Starship Troopers: Extermination is a 16-player co-op FPS that puts you on the far-off frontlines of an all-out battle against the Bugs! Squad up, grab your rifle, and do your part as an elite Deep Space Vanguard Trooper to take back planets from the Arachnid threat!

Offworld out.

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“We've intercepted new transmissions. Ready to receive!”

Listen up Squaddies. We're taking part in the Steam Spring Sale from March 13 - March 20, and you can get your friends and soon-to-be fellow squaddies in for 60% off. You heard right. The game's on sale from now until the Steam Spring Sale ends.

Offworld Out.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/393380/Squad/

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LISTEN UP SQUADDIES!

For the last transmission of the year, we at Offworld wanted to thank you for being the best community we could ask for. This year has truly been incredible and we are excited to show what we have planned for next year!

But for now, eat well, spend time with loved ones, and we will see back in the studio, January 6th!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

OFFWORLD OUT!

Pick up Squad for 60% off during the Steam Winter Sale until January 2, 2025:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/393380/Squad/

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