In addition to the new maps, Tripwire released an update to the game engine that enables high end servers to increase the player counts far beyond the current 32 player limit – up to 64 players for the most capable servers. The release also includes new artwork and music, several features requested by the clan/ladder/league community to enhance competitive play, and a heap of smaller enhancements and fixes. Read the full changelog for the update at www.redorchestragame.com.

To give gamers a chance to try the updated version of one of the best sellers on Steam, Tripwire is using the extensibility of Steam to offer both retail and Steam customers two free Steam Guest Passes. All owners of Red Orchestra can invite two friends to try the game with no obligation to purchase. Upon receiving and activating the Steam Guest Pass, the invited friend has 10 days of Red Orchestra play available for free.

Additions

• 10 of the best community made maps added for distribution with the game over Steam. Tripwire has worked with the developers of each of these maps to ensure the maps have been optimized, polished, and gameplay balanced.
  • “Smolensk Stalemate”: the contest winner featuring perfectly balanced to-and-fro infantry combat for ruined villages and trenches in August 1943. The map features German troops attempting numerous attacks against well-prepared Russian defense positions, supported by APCs and the fire of heavy artillery.
  • “Leningrad”: Includes an amazingly complex few blocks of the city reproduced on a 1 to 1 scale. The map features close-quarters infantry fighting in the ruined streets of the city, above them in the bombed-out buildings and deep beneath them in the sewers, all with close-in armor support. Look forward to lots of intense close quarters combat mixed with street fighting and lethal sniping.
  • “Berezina”: the After-Hourz team surpass themselves on this massive rural/village combined arms battle. German armor and infantry have to punch through a series of defensive positions. The map introduces not just a new vehicle (the Russian BT-7 light tank), but also the first player controllable anti-tank gun in the game. To cap it off, the BT-7 even carries tank-riders.
  • “BlackDayJuly”: On the 12th day of July, 1943 the Battle of Prokhorovka would become the largest Tank Battle in all of human History. This pivotal battle in Operation Zitadelle and of the Battle of Kursk would be a huge turning point in the war and the beginning of the end for The Third Reich. This map even adds the Soviet Panzerkampfwagen T-34(r) to the Red Orchestra arsenal. Able to hold a maximum 32 players, this map can provide adrenline-soaked tank combat you won't soon forget.
  • “Mannikala”: On the 8th of June 1944 the red army launched a massive attack against Finnish defends in The Karelian Isthmus. The purpose of the attack was to break the Finnish defenses. The red army succeeded to break the Finnish main defense line and a second line called the vt-line. After the capture of the city of Vyborg, only one line of defense remained in Karelia: the poorly fortified vkt-line. Join the war at the vkt-line in his forest assault map including tank, artillery and infantry combat.
  • “Tcherkassy”: The second Russian winter offensive of 1943-44 launched early in January 1944. The Soviet offensive falling short of accomplishing its purpose after twelve days of fighting drove a deep wedge southwestward across the Dnepr and captured the town of Kirovograd. Stuka dive bombers scream overhead as the Russians attempt to assault the entrenched German defenders at the top of the hill - The battle of the Tcherkassy pocket has begun.
  • “Zhitomir1941”: Operation Barbarossa is in its third week and German forces are penetrating the center of Zhitomir. Stubborn Soviet resistance has slown down the German rage and small infantry groups have dug into Zhitomir defending the city at all costs. Soviet defenses are situated in appartmets and along streets with a warehouse being their HQ. Axis forces however are ready to crush the soviets.
  • “Kryukovo”: As the German offensive on Moscow has stalled in the snows of the Russian winter, a battered German force digs in to resist the Soviet counter-attacks. The Germans have had time to prepare basic defensive positions and have some armor support. The Russians are well-equipped and pushing forward hard with their own armor and infantry across the shelled-out snowy terrain. The Germans have to dig in and resist the Soviet counter-attack or face annihilation in the biting cold outside Moscow.
  • “KurlandKessel”: 1944 December, the Germans were cut off from the rest of the German army and encircled. To the east and the south was the Soviet army, to the north and the west -- the Baltic Sea. The Latvians called it Kurzemes katls, the Kurland kettle; the Germans called it Festung Kurland, Fortress Kurland. The level features infantry combat through thick forests culminating in a final battle for the German trench line.
  • “TulaOutskirts”: Guderian reached the outskirts of Tula on October 26, 1941. The German plan initially called for an instant capture of Tula and for a pincer move around Moscow. However, the first attempt to capture the city failed, as German panzers were stopped by the 50th Army and civilian volunteers in a desperate fight. Guderian's army had to stop within sight of the city on October 29, 1941. For its actions Tula was named a Hero City. This battle features the Germans assaulting across an open valley, through a snowy forest, on to a final battle for the Russian’s bunker.
• Higher player count per server support – we have added support to the engine to allow for 50+ players per server (up from the previous limit of 32). As a reminder, it takes a very powerful server to handle 50 players on all maps so these high player count servers will likely be a few “jewels” in the community, rather than the norm. High player counts can also push a user’s machine harder as well, so if you have issues on high player count servers you may need to reduce your detail settings to increase your frame rate.
• Player controllable anti tank cannons been added by the After-Hourz mod team for their custom level Berezina.
• BT7 Light tank with infantry tank riders has been added by the After-Hourz mod team for their custom level Berezina.
• Added music to the game – the game now features a complete soundtrack from composer Matthew Burns. There is now main menu music and per-map music for all officially distributed levels. (Check your music volume in the audio settings if you have it turned it down so you can hear it).
• Added new player death sounds and slightly increased their volume and radius.
• Added new striped camouflaged versions of German vehicles (not in any official Tripwire levels yet).
• Added support for properly handling higher player counts in the scoreboard. This system will show "your" score no matter what place you are in, and then displays a max of 17 players per side on the scoreboard.
• Added support to the server Web administration tool to properly handle player counts higher than 32.
• Minor server side CPU optimizations.
• Added additional spectating options primarily for use in clan matches and competitive play. These should allow server admins to stop using the HUD blackout mutator.
  • Spectating Blackout When Dead And Not Viewing Players: This option will force the player to have a blacked out view whenever they are dead and NOT spectating another live player on their team. This option used in conjunction with the SpectateFirstPersonOnly option will allow the player to still view the action when they are dead without ever seeing more than a live player would see. It is recommended over the full blackout when dead. This value can be set in the RedOrchestra.ini by setting the bSpectateBlackoutWhenNotViewingPlayers value, by setting SpectateBlackoutWhenNotViewingPlayers as a commandline parameter, or by changing the bSpectateBlackoutWhenNotViewingPlayers checkbox in the webadmin page.
  • Dead Spectating Blackout: Similar to the "hud blackout mutator" that many servers currently use for matches. Will force a blacked out view whenever the player is not alive. This value can be set in the RedOrchestra.ini by setting the bSpectateBlackoutWhenDead value, by setting SpectateBlackoutWhenDead as a commandline parameter, or by changing the bSpectateBlackoutWhenDead checkbox in the webadmin page.
  • Dead Spectating Blackout: Similar to the "hud blackout mutator" that many servers currently use for matches. Will force a blacked out view whenever the player is not alive. This value can be set in the RedOrchestra.ini by setting the bSpectateBlackoutWhenDead value, by setting SpectateBlackoutWhenDead as a commandline parameter, or by changing the bSpectateBlackoutWhenDead checkbox in the webadmin page.
  • bSpectateAllowDeadRoaming/SpectateAllowDeadRoaming now actually does something With this option, you can force players NOT to be able to roam/fly around freely when they are dead during the round, while still enabling them to roam/fly around the map before the round starts if they are spectating (if bAllowRoamWhileSpectating is true).
• Added new role settings to support higher player count servers that allow the limits for roles to be increased when the MaxPlayers setting on the server is higher than 32, and higher than 44.
• Added code to the engine to support hit detection on vehicle riders (used right now for the AHZ BT7).
• Added support to the game for displaying the locations of your team’s AT cannons on the overhead map.
• Long view distance settings for maps (out to 4000 meters) are now officially supported and fully functional. (No Tripwire maps take advantage of these settings … yet J ).

Changes

• Updated all official maps and the new custom maps distributed with the game to support higher player counts. This includes adding additional spawning points and additional available roles when the max players are set higher on the server.
• Adjusted the leaning first person camera views to more closely match the third person head location. This prevents players from appearing to be hidden behind an object or heavily clipping behind an object to other players while their first person perspective view was unobstructed.
• Modified bayonet stab animations to more closely match where the bayonet damage is occurring (should make it easier to do bayonet strikes).
• Dialed in the tank and AT cannon sight ranges for all of the tanks out to 4000 meters (if the tank sight is capable of setting that range) for all round types. Previously tanks were only properly ranged in out to 1000 meters (since that was the largest official map). This change was added to support the longer view distance capabilities added in the last patch, which are now officially supported and fully functional.
• ResetGame command has been modified to be more useful. Admins can use this command to completely restart the game resetting everything to its starting state, zeroing out all scores, rounds won, etc without having to reload the level.
• Cleaned up vehicle spawning. There was some redundant spawning and destroying of vehicles that didn't need to be done which might have caused slightly higher memory/CPU usage in some cases.
• Updated cannon scope texture for the SU-76 to make it easier to aim with.
• Added longer range settings for the Stug III and SU-76 (out to 4000 meters) to support maps with longer range view distances.
• Reinforcement count is now adjusted based on the MaxPlayers server setting. This will fix the problem with reinforcements running out too soon on higher player count servers, and will allow reinforcements to run out properly on lower player count server.
• Changed "reinforcements low" message to show up when reinforcements reach a certain percentage (15%). The system before was hard coded to display the message when the reinforcements hit 25 spawns left which didn't scale properly for different amounts of max players.
• Cleaned up some spectating issues. When spectating in first person the spectating info is now displayed (before it only showed the name of the person you were spectating).
• New main menu background.
• Tweaked up the physics for the M1937 AT cannon to fix some jittering issues.

Fixes

• Engine enhanced to better support very large terrains in levels. Added code that fixes the "stutter" problem which occurs during actor cleanup on maps with large terrain. This optimization should actually help any map with a terrain, but will be most helpful for large terrain maps. With this change much larger maps are possible than were possible before.
• Fixed the long range view distance setting not working properly sometimes in multiplayer.
• Fixing network relevancy bugs with the vehicle weapons that would cause the tank cannon not to fire if the player got out of the tank and was out of direct line of site of the tank for a short time. This would also cause the view shake not to happen when firing the coax or hull MG.
• Fixed tank shells destroying themselves in midair after a very long distance (over 1500 meters) before even hitting the ground or the intended target.
• Fixed the capture bar not showing the correct force ratio on the lower cap bar when in the driver position of the vehicle.
• Fixed a bug where players would under certain circumstances be able to still roam/fly around the map when they were dead when bAllowRoamWhileSpectating or bSpectateAllowDeadRoaming were false. This means ladders/leagues/clan matches should now be able to be played with less restrictive options than a full blackout when dead.
• Fixed an issue where certain static mesh objects (ones using alpha blended textures) would disappear under certain circumstances when viewed through the 3d sniper scope. This was usually seen in things like certain static vehicles in the map Odessa, as well as several other maps.
• Fixed some view clipping exploits in Kaukasus.
• Fixed vehicles exploding on match end on maps with mine fields.
• Implemented a fix for players getting disconnected on map change on servers with high player counts.
• Fixed an issue with role settings that were causing the role selection screen to not "grey out" when a role was full and not to display the number of available role slots.
• Turning off the HUD will no longer disable the blackout effect when dieing, or the alternate "blur" effect of blackout when explosions, etc happen.
• Fixed exploit in Baksan Valley that allowed the player to get up on the outer ring of hills and walk around the map to the other teams spawn location.
• Fixed two death sounds being played when the player died.
• Fixed the network relevancy issues with the M1937 AT Cannon that would cause actors to disappear online when viewing through the AT Cannon.
• Fixed the "jittering view" bug with the AT Cannon.
• Fixed players inside of APCs being killed by grenades when they weren't exposed (hatch open etc) to the explosion.
• Fixed a problem where players inside of tanks could only take damage from explosions if the driver of the vehicle was exposed, regardless of if they were exposed.
• Fixed the default port being set incorrectly when adding a favorite server in the server browser window.
• Fixed certain vehicle voice commands being sent to the whole team when they should have just been sent to players riding in the same vehicle.
• Fixed bulletproof trees on Lyes Krovy
• Fixed being able to see players and other weird rendering artifacts through a certain hill in Odessa.
• Removed uncapturable objectives from the Voice Commands' Attack menu (Before you could order people to attack objectives that weren't enabled or captureable).

[Update]

• Fixed the Stug and SU76 not firing where aimed when the turret was aimed far left/right

**SDK Changes**

• Added new settings to the RoleInfo actors for higher player count servers that allow the limits for roles to be increased when the MaxPlayers setting on the server is higher than 32, and higher than 44. This is how they work:

• The new settings are named Limit32to44 and LimitOver44. A server with MaxPlayers set to 32 or less will use the same old Limit setting. A server with MaxPlayers set over 32, but less than or equal to 44 will use Limit32to44. Finally, a server with MaxPlayers set over 44 will use LimitOver44. (NOTE: If Limit is higher than Limit32to44 and LimitOver44, then the new settings will be ignored and Limit will still be used. This allows older maps to function like they always have with no additional changes.)

• View distance settings now affect the 3d view in the editor so that longer view distance settings will be rendered in the editor just like in game. NOTE: You must save and reload the editor for changes to take effect.
• Added code to support ROSpawnarea logic using neutral objectives to determine which spawn area is active.

Red Orchestra is available via Steam and at retail outlets worldwide.