Tank Squad Tactical WW II Realtime.

[Asid]

Development Status #85
Fri, 16 January 2026



Dear Tankers!
Welcome to our 85th Development Status.

new year, new development status and new goals. We set some plans already with the team for this year but to make it possible we have to make some changes in the project itself.

For example switching to the new multiplayer system Fusion 2 that will enable better stability and more possibilities or making some overhauls in UI like in the main menu.


UI overhaul
Let me tell you what we have been doing during the last days and nights.




Info: Button sounds click/hover are just placeholders, we are testing them so they are about to be changed.

Why "new" UI. We would not call it new but rather improved. We have to make some adjustments here and there to be able to add features like matchmaking, workshop support or in future better organised battle maps with the whole map on a screen like in other tactical games that could include adding waypoints, orders on a map essentially more tactical tools - but that is melody for next months. Let's go back to the main menu?





On a matchmaking screen you will be able to find desired sessions playing specifying campaigns or skirmishes. Also you will be able to find sessions playing arcade or simulation modes enabled.



Rest of the menus are also here, like Session Browser, options to host sessions or play campaign / skirmishes alone as a ?single player?.



Another UI that needs to be improved is Battle Summary. Currently its a bit of a mess. Imagine having a mission with like 20 objectives and having to see every objective summary progress one after another during the mission summary. We have to change and actually we have a plan for it.



To summarize the new Battle Summary - it will be more simplified. It will show of course all important information, score, statistics but on a single page/single animation. More user friendly - at least we hope so.



Also having a new UI in the game gives some more freedom to create things in different ways. That should do the trick for next QoL improvements in the game.


Optimization progress

We are rewriting our networking system to be more optimized as we?ve upgraded from Fusion 1 to Fusion 2. This brings us new options to implement, such as host migration, match making etc. but we?re still very busy with making all of the game work as it was + work better/load faster etc.

Another part we wanted to overhaul was vehicle physics as this was the biggest CPU drain during battles. We tried two new approaches, both failed, they did not bring any optimization. In the end, we?ve switched and tracked down other optimization problems and we have good results here, with stress test scene set up for 30 tanks, 200 infantry and 30 static guns (so totally 440 infantry as 150 tank crewman (30 tigers, each 5 crewman) and 90 static guns crewman (each 3).

With very simple optimizations we managed to decrease the animator cpu requirement from around 6-8 ms to manage idle soldiers to about 2 ms. There?s still room for more but these are very recent changes.

The same goes for vehicle physics, we managed to find different and this time working optimization methods that help the situation - but do not yet totally solve it. We still have a lot to do here.



Thank you and have a good weekend!
DeGenerals

[Asid]

Development Status #86
Fri, 30 January 2026



Dear Tankers!
Welcome to our 86th Development Status.
Another development status update this month. We would like to share with you what has been happening with us recently.


Optimization and bug fixes progress
We've nailed down a few more areas of the game where optimization is possible. Some of following have been already done, some still to do:

  - infantry animations when more than 100-200 can take 5-10 ms. We already have an asset that should help us here and we will optimize it
  - VFXs - it turned out each burning tank or tank shot or tank dust from exhaust was staying forever on the scene - taking up precious CPU computations where it was no longer needed
  - dead infantry - the same, some calculations were still active long after infantry was dead
  - vehicles displaying maximum tracks details even very far away if we had max zoom on
  - various memory issues that caused the game to use more RAM than needed


There were a lot of other small improvements and in the end the game runs better and is more stable. The last big issue standing is netcode optimization, as the amount of stuff each player sends and receives still uses too much CPU. We need to take care of it before the next patch.

Watch YouTube Video


Overall we're fixing and progressing everywhere, especially we want the enemy AI and our AI to work better. To react accordingly to the situation, use less CPU when static and guarding etc. We're reaching an optimization wall here so AI must be correctly utilized and not just be there standing and watching as they can't move.


Further UI overhaul
Let me tell you what we have been doing during the last, weeks, days and nights.



As for the interface, work is continuing to improve the appearance, clarity and functionality of the panels and their elements. After completing work on the main menu, the idea arose to try to redesign the Battle Map.

The first idea was to make the mission map full-screen so that you could have a better overview of the scenario and plan your troops' tactical movements, especially since we will be adding the ability to issue orders on the map in the future. In the previous form, when the map was a small square in the middle of the screen, this would not have been convenient.

Additional aspects, small details that make a difference, are that the margins at the edges of the screen have been reduced, so that the panels can be made slightly smaller and the information displayed is not so overwhelming. The idea is to apply the principle of 'less is more' to try to remedy the chaos in the UI - this applies to changes in the game's UI in general, not just in this panel.



I started by redesigning the left side of the screen, hiding the panels with the legend and mission description. They can be closed and opened at any time, allowing you to see the map unobstructed. In the photo above, the right panel has not been touched yet. The buttons that correspond to the connections have animations and are interactive. When you hover over the icon, text appears with information about what the panel is - we don't need to see the panel name all the time. Similarly, on the left side, we have information typically related to the mission, the name of the game mode or the name of the scenario, and on the right, we have information typically related to the battle, i.e. what tactical unit we are operating, what forces and units we have, and what troops we have at our disposal.

Watch YouTube Video



The plan is to make the icons on the map, e.g. respawn markers, interactive. For example, clicking on the Abel point on the map rather than in the list will mark it as a respawn point. Similarly, clicking on a vehicle that operates in Multi Crew mode, for example, will open a small menu next to it with a selection of slots in the tank, allowing you to respawn inside it.

These are, of course, plans, but they are slowly becoming a reality. Perhaps further development of this topic will be included in the new roadmap as soon as we finish the current one. At the moment, we have a lot of work to do on optimisation, with the new campaign in Ponyri, and I myself have to continue working on Ferdinand.



Let's go back to the changes and what has been happening in the UI over the last few days. The next step was to tackle the right panel. I started by adapting it to the new style, making it interactive and allowing the panels to be hidden separately. That is, the respawn points and available units.



The next experiment was to create new tank icons and replace the white ones. The white icons worked well on smaller UI elements. Since the new ones look better on a larger scale, the idea arose to try something new, and so we are currently testing and playing around with versions where there is a panel at the bottom with a selection of units. There is also a little less information here, the main important information being



  - what kind of unit it is
  - its icon/something that represents its appearance
  - which unit it belongs to, if applicable; here, simplicity is key, there is no unit name, which can be long, we don't need it here
  - the emblem is enough
  - the type of vehicle, whether it is a heavy tank, a light tank or, say, a truck


We won't show the appearance of the unit selection because I don't have a corrected version and the current one looks terrible. The current element also has too much information.

What do you think about this concept? Which is better? Give us your opinion in comments



Thank you and have a good weekend!
DeGenerals

[Asid]

Development Status #87
Fri, 13 February 2026



Dear Tankers!
Welcome to our 87th Development Status.
In this status update, we continue the saga of UI changes, but we also describe new features related to modding. We have enabled and are testing mods on the Steam workshop.

Modding
The last two weeks have also seen the development of tools for the Workshop. We have developed a tool for Tank Squad to support the creation and uploading of mods to Steam. We have also written a PDF with documentation.



As we mentioned earlier, and as stated in the roadmap, we are starting modestly by adding only a few options, including decals/unit/division emblems, camouflage, and side numbers. Over time, we want to add more features, and our dream is to include a mission/scenario editor. Time will tell.






Further UI changes

Battle map changes & map selection

Since the changes to the Battle Map described in the previous Development Status #86 were mostly received with enthusiasm, we have added a few more extras to the Battle Map. A new element for selecting units to spawn, similar to the units at the bottom, but showing larger icons/pictures of the tanks that are in that unit.



We have added a larger range of movement on the map. We noticed that if mission objectives or respawn points are close to the edge of the map, it is difficult to zoom in or move the map so that you can see them clearly. The larger range helps you move the map further, so that you can easily move things on the edges to the center of the screen.



Another thing is that when you click on a task in the list, the map will automatically move to the location of the marker. The same thing happens when you click on a respawn point – the map will move there and gain focus.


Widescreen support

After receiving your reports about the UI not working on widescreen displays, we checked our code and the logic that was supposed to detect the set resolution and switch the UI scale in the game. Unfortunately, it turned out that the methods were not being called—they may have worked in the editor, but not in the game.




UI scale match option in game settings

We restored their functionality in the game, and this week was marked by UI fixes to prevent the interface from stretching on large widescreen resolutions. It takes a bit of gymnastics to get everything to work together, but we are well on our way to preventing menu and in-game elements from stretching.

In addition, we also support resolutions on Steam Deck devices, because we want to finally add support and pass verification. Thanks to continuous optimization changes, we managed to reduce the game's RAM consumption even further.

We have added a slider to the game options that allows you to scale or, more accurately, adjust the aspect ratio of the interface. For example, the default value in the editor is 0.5 for a resolution of 1920x1080. With UI sizes such as 5120x1440, this value must be 1.0 so that the UI elements are not proportionally large. Setting the value to 0.0 for a resolution of 1280x800 (Steam Deck) will ensure that the interface is displayed correctly.




Main menu

At the time of writing this status update, the "scaling" modifications and corrections already cover the main menu, including the Settings screen. The settings screen in our game is common to both the main menu UI and the game itself, which are two different "ecosystems" in our case.



Headquarters
Yesterday, I started reworking the in-game elements, including the HQ panel.



The next panels are waiting in line, and I hope that we won't see any more dramas like the one in the picture below in the game. And if, by some miracle, it still happens, let me know and I'll fix it.




Optimization and bug fixes progress
We've found another few places where the game could run better and already fixed them. They were connected to how the game handled physics and terrain shaders.

We still have infantry animators to optimize and some netcode bandwidth to fix but we won't make it on time next week - it will be optimized and added in a patch after 20.02.

The game runs much better than it had a few weeks ago and after fixing the topics above we are coming to a wall - to optimize the game further we are going to need much more time and probably a new engine version - which must wait.

Unstable branch update
We've uploaded the current build to an unstable branch, check the link above for instructions on how to access it and what is the changelog

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1498130/discussions/0/601910715107996635/


When we can expect new patch 1.2.0?

•     We plan to release the update 1.2.0 on February 20th. This will be the sixth anniversary of the release of our first game on Steam. But to do that we still need to make a finalization of the 2025 roadmap.
•     One last big thing left is to add Steam Workshop support and give you tools as a "starter pack". Starter pack will include possibilities to add mods like decals, camos + damage taken in battle (visuals) visible in the repair section.
•     Next big thing is solid optimization step up. We removed some unused meshes from memory there should be again less RAM usage.
•     And at the end mentioned mentioned above - UI overhaul for main menu and few other menus like Battle Summary.
•     UI fixes and changes, especially support for widescreen displays
•     QoL fixes to Battle Maps

Thank you and have a good weekend!
DeGenerals