Dev Diary #12 - Bold Guard
Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2026 2:53 pm
Greetings, Commanders!
It’s been a long summer, and it’s good to be back with another update. Version 1.612 is one of the bigger updates we’ve put together in a while, with improvements to visuals and sound, a new campaign, and plenty of smaller changes. Let’s take a look at what’s new.
Trees
One of the biggest visual changes comes from the new tree system. Until now, trees were drawn as tile-based blocks, which looked fine from a distance but never quite sat right on hillsides. With the new individual tree system, every tree is its own object. Trees now stand naturally on slopes, vary in size and colour, and react to the battle around them. Explosions and passing tanks can knock them down, they can catch fire individually, and you’ll hear it too, with new sounds for trees cracking and falling.
This is only a transitional step, however. We’re already working on an entirely new set of tree models to replace the current ones. Once they’re ready, forests will look far more detailed, especially when zoomed in, while keeping performance a top priority.
New skyboxes, new crater, scorch and ice impact textures, and a new water particle texture round out the visual improvements.
Radio chatter
Some units now talk. Each unit has radio chatter in three moods: calm, combat and panic. A platoon waiting in a treeline sounds very different from one under fire, and a unit that is breaking sounds like it. Radio chatter is both an immersion feature and a gameplay aid, as it tells you a lot about your force without opening a single panel.
With more than a dozen nations represented in the game, recording authentic voice packs for every unit would have been prohibitively expensive for a small studio like ours, while AI-generated voices weren’t a direction we wanted to take. Instead, the chatter consists of stylised radio noise and short, indistinct speech that conveys urgency, fear or confidence without being tied to a specific language. It captures the emotion and atmosphere of battlefield radio traffic while avoiding repetitive “Reporting for duty!”-style voice lines. If you want it quieter or off, there is a new radio chatter volume slider in the audio settings.
A battlefield that sounds alive
Radio chatter is part of a larger sound pass. When you lock on to a unit, you'll now hear the world around it more accurately: birds, insects, wind, and running water near rivers, shores and the sea. Amphibious vehicles have water movement sounds, turrets splash when they land in water, and fences crack when vehicles drive through them. Doppler is now always on for all ground and air vehicles and their weapons, and the jet sound has been reworked to be more realistic. Infantry casualties have new, longer screams, and we narrowed their pitch range so the extreme highs and lows are gone.
Bold Guard
On the content side, while you wait for the Rhine Shield DLC, you’ll get a new linear campaign, Bold Guard. Set in the aftermath of the October 1973 flare-up, it follows the United Kingdom Mobile Force (UKMF), Britain’s contribution to LANDJUT, NATO’s command responsible for the defence of Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland.
Unlike the British Army of the Rhine, the UKMF was based in the United Kingdom. Its role was to cross the North Sea in times of crisis and reinforce the Danish and West German forces defending the narrow corridor between the Baltic and the North Sea. During the campaign’s timeframe, this mission fell to the 3rd (UK) Division. The campaign takes its name from the Bold Guard exercises, where the force regularly rehearsed exactly this deployment.
In Bold Guard, that deployment is no longer an exercise. You’ll fight far from NATO’s central front, commanding a limited reinforcement force where every unit counts.
And More to Come
A few more changes will make a difference on the battlefield. Shrapnel penetration from heavy artillery and mortars has been doubled, making lighter vehicles caught in a barrage more vulnerable. The Leopard 1A4 and Leopard 2 now have Excellent visibility, reflecting their stabilised panoramic sights, while the T-80U and T-80UD are rated Good, based on their PNK-4S and TKN-4S sights. As always, there is a long list of smaller fixes and adjustments, all detailed in the full changelog.
We’re also working on several major features, including re-supply and further developments to the AI stances system. These are still in development, so we’ll share more when they’re ready.
Thank you for playing, and for all your feedback.
Back to the front.
It’s been a long summer, and it’s good to be back with another update. Version 1.612 is one of the bigger updates we’ve put together in a while, with improvements to visuals and sound, a new campaign, and plenty of smaller changes. Let’s take a look at what’s new.
Trees
One of the biggest visual changes comes from the new tree system. Until now, trees were drawn as tile-based blocks, which looked fine from a distance but never quite sat right on hillsides. With the new individual tree system, every tree is its own object. Trees now stand naturally on slopes, vary in size and colour, and react to the battle around them. Explosions and passing tanks can knock them down, they can catch fire individually, and you’ll hear it too, with new sounds for trees cracking and falling.
This is only a transitional step, however. We’re already working on an entirely new set of tree models to replace the current ones. Once they’re ready, forests will look far more detailed, especially when zoomed in, while keeping performance a top priority.
New skyboxes, new crater, scorch and ice impact textures, and a new water particle texture round out the visual improvements.
Radio chatter
Some units now talk. Each unit has radio chatter in three moods: calm, combat and panic. A platoon waiting in a treeline sounds very different from one under fire, and a unit that is breaking sounds like it. Radio chatter is both an immersion feature and a gameplay aid, as it tells you a lot about your force without opening a single panel.
With more than a dozen nations represented in the game, recording authentic voice packs for every unit would have been prohibitively expensive for a small studio like ours, while AI-generated voices weren’t a direction we wanted to take. Instead, the chatter consists of stylised radio noise and short, indistinct speech that conveys urgency, fear or confidence without being tied to a specific language. It captures the emotion and atmosphere of battlefield radio traffic while avoiding repetitive “Reporting for duty!”-style voice lines. If you want it quieter or off, there is a new radio chatter volume slider in the audio settings.
A battlefield that sounds alive
Radio chatter is part of a larger sound pass. When you lock on to a unit, you'll now hear the world around it more accurately: birds, insects, wind, and running water near rivers, shores and the sea. Amphibious vehicles have water movement sounds, turrets splash when they land in water, and fences crack when vehicles drive through them. Doppler is now always on for all ground and air vehicles and their weapons, and the jet sound has been reworked to be more realistic. Infantry casualties have new, longer screams, and we narrowed their pitch range so the extreme highs and lows are gone.
Bold Guard
On the content side, while you wait for the Rhine Shield DLC, you’ll get a new linear campaign, Bold Guard. Set in the aftermath of the October 1973 flare-up, it follows the United Kingdom Mobile Force (UKMF), Britain’s contribution to LANDJUT, NATO’s command responsible for the defence of Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland.
Unlike the British Army of the Rhine, the UKMF was based in the United Kingdom. Its role was to cross the North Sea in times of crisis and reinforce the Danish and West German forces defending the narrow corridor between the Baltic and the North Sea. During the campaign’s timeframe, this mission fell to the 3rd (UK) Division. The campaign takes its name from the Bold Guard exercises, where the force regularly rehearsed exactly this deployment.
In Bold Guard, that deployment is no longer an exercise. You’ll fight far from NATO’s central front, commanding a limited reinforcement force where every unit counts.
And More to Come
A few more changes will make a difference on the battlefield. Shrapnel penetration from heavy artillery and mortars has been doubled, making lighter vehicles caught in a barrage more vulnerable. The Leopard 1A4 and Leopard 2 now have Excellent visibility, reflecting their stabilised panoramic sights, while the T-80U and T-80UD are rated Good, based on their PNK-4S and TKN-4S sights. As always, there is a long list of smaller fixes and adjustments, all detailed in the full changelog.
We’re also working on several major features, including re-supply and further developments to the AI stances system. These are still in development, so we’ll share more when they’re ready.
Thank you for playing, and for all your feedback.
Back to the front.