Dear Tankers!
Welcome to our 84th Development Status.
New KV – work status
As mentioned in previous Development Status #83 we were working on new cast turret for KV and while working on the new KV versions, we are also preparing the versions that were captured by the Germans. Until now, there has been no converted version of the KV-1S because this tank was not used in our campaign. That is about to change. With patch 1.1.8, both the KV-1S and the KV-1 mod. 1942 will feature in the campaign — we will share more information on this soon.
New names
To help you make sense of it all, we have made some cosmetic changes to the names of the tanks. Below is a table with a list of changes and descriptions.
Following the release of patch 1.1.8, the current KV-1 in the game will be renamed KV-1 mod 1941 on the Soviet side. The KV-1S will remain the KV-1S. Another version of the KV with a cast turret will be added to the game as the KV-1 mod 1942.
Versions captured by the Germans will appear as the KW-1B 755(r). The KV-1S will be known as the KW-1S(r). The KV-1 1942, on the other hand, will have two convertible versions. The first will feature the ZiS-5 gun and be known as the KW-1B 756(r), while the second will feature a 7.5 cm KwK gun and be known as the KW-1C 756(r).
There will be a new UI interface for conversion/upgrading.
We are adding a repair scene to the game, restoring the functionality of an NPC called Mechanic. You will be able to select a converted tank in the upgrade tab and upgrade it if the option is available. These upgrades will, of course, be more costly in terms of resources.
We would like to thank @RideR2 for helping us by digging deep into Russian and German references to figure out the names and what was used/changed for these versions.
We are currently implementing and thoroughly testing the new tanks to identify and resolve as many bugs as possible.
List of KV tanks that will be included in the patch
KV-1 mod 1941
- main gun 76 mm ZiS-5
- old KV-1
KV-1 mod 1942
- main gun 76 mm ZiS-5
- new cast turret
- new hull
KV-1S
- main gun 76 mm ZiS-5
- same as before
PzKpfw KW-1B 756(r)
- main gun 76 mm ZiS-5
- new cast turret
- new hull
- repainted in German colours and markings
PzKpfw KW-1C 756(r)
- main gun 7.5 cm KwK
- new cast turret
- new hull
- repainted in German colours and markings
PzKpfw KW-1B 755(r)
- main gun 76 mm ZiS-5
- same turret and hull ad KV-1
- repainted in German colours and markings
PzKpfw KW-1S (r)
- main gun 76 mm ZiS-5
- same turret and hull as KV-1S
- repainted in German colours and markings
Optimization progress
We have been busy with detecting the origin of low frame rates after recent patches and we found out the issue. The drop happened mostly when the player zoomed in on any scene and the issue was increased tessellation settings. We are looking for a way to have the player control the quality of tessellation.
The decision would be for players to either have better visuals with tessellation on and bigger CPU usage or worse visuals but less CPU usage.
Another big issue we found is the need to drastically decrease the amount of RAM we use. Some GPUs that we use are struggling on few maps where visuals overflow the GPU VRAM. When this happens the frames tend to drop from 100-120 fps to 15 fps.
We still have few places from where we can drop the usage by 1-2 gb so we are rather optimistic here that we can increase FPS even further.
Thank you and have a good weekend!
DeGenerals