Happy New Year to all Hog lovers out there! We've been busy over Hogmas revamping several pages (and adding new ones along the way!) here on the site.
As 2024 steams towards us, it seemed like the right time to make the weaker pages better for everyone, with the overall goal of making the site much easier to navigate, understand and gain access to. With that in mind, here are the patch notes!
Although nothing was entirely wrong about how the Workshop was structured, it had become a little confusing for some users to navigate and understand where the download links were for certain mods. So, you can now find all community mods neatly organised together. All future mods will be added & updated here!
Lets be honest, the previous Rankup page was... a bit of an eye sore. This page was in desperate need of some healing hands, so we kindly obliged. You'll now find a slick and simple page design with tidy information get to the point of what Rankup is and how you can ultimately get involved! Its also worth noting here that Hogs of War Rankup will be returning in 2024, the dates for which will be released in due course!
The page with perhaps the biggest reshuffle of content, the League page has been fully redesigned, with an entirely new Esports Jersey page to get your 2024 campaigns off to the flying start! All previously displayed information is now available via download, including the rules and maps currently in rotation. For those players look to have quick and easy access to the ELO rankings & league standings for any currently on-going event - you can find them here too!
The community have got big plans for 2024, and we hope it can be yet another successful year where our beloved game continues to grow and thrive. Wishing you all the very best for the new year, see you on the battlefield once again my dear hogs!
Defeat can be a bitter pill to swallow, but for Hogs of War Lardcore this does not mean the end of development, if anything we are just getting started.
Now at this point, its obvious where our mistakes lay within this campaign, but at the time our thinking was to bring Lardcore up to scratch first, before then porting that work over with all its fancy bells and whistles included. Our costing and price-tags were steep, but they followed the same idea. What we should have done was led with the PC port from the get-go, rather than shooting ourselves in the foot by not having potential PC backers involved from the beginning. Ultimately, you live and you learn, and that's exactly what we intend to do moving forward with development!
So what exactly is the plan for Lardcore going forward? How can the project still continue without funding from the Kickstarter? And do those who backed the project still receive some kind of reward for such dedication to the cause?
For us as a team - its effectively business as usual. The ultimate goal of running a Kickstarter campaign was for it to help raise funding for the bigger parts of the project and to hire additional staff, but with that mission ending in defeat, it now falls onto our existing team to continue such work going forward. We are aware of & are looking into other methods of raising funds for the project, but the details on that information is strictly top secret soldier! Hogs of War Lardcore is still planned to release on PlayStation, but that doesn't rule out future workings for PC. If anything, this past campaign has proven that such a market cannot be ignored, so rest assured - we're keeping PC players in mind moving forward! When the new year roles around we'll also be looking to share a development timeline with the wider community, which will provide a breakdown of how development will flow going into 2024.
As a final thank you to everyone who previously backed, commented and generally got involved in our campaign, we'd like to gift you all a First-Aid Leaflet to help patch yourself up and soldier on, just as we are doing with Lardcore! (Printable version here). We still have a long way to go with this project, but we intend, as always, to keep the community fully involved every step of the way!
Calling all recruits! This is it! High Command have finally given the go ahead for a new offensive - the Lardcore Kickstarter Campaign is a Go!
So what can we expect from this Kickstarter? Well for starters, a ton of new and updated content via the incoming stretch goals! Remastered music, new cheat codes, an achievement system, rebalancing singleplayer with additional hard and 'IronHam' Modes - there is almost too much to unpack here! As you'd expect, the further down the stretch goal list you go, the bigger the rewards become. Unlocking the Italian Team for all releases of Lardcore, alongside the PC port & much bigger Online Multiplayer rewards (including an Online Competitive Hogs mode!) are some of the real juicy ones, but I'm sure your probably asking why Online Multiplayer is split between a 'basic' and 'advanced' stretch goal. Well if you take a look at where the PC port currently sits in the stretch goal list (£550K), the basic version of Online Multiplayer only takes us up to £300K, so this would only be for PS4 & PS5. Advanced Online Multiplayer at £600K would then see that work ported to PC, with additional bells and whistles for Multiplayer mode taking us past that point.
Of course it wouldn't be a real fight without some extra ammunition, and that's where our Pledge Tiers come in! Here you'll be finding an absolute bucket load of digital content, including Kickstarter Exclusive in game rewards! Up to 10 in game hats, 6 in game Backpacks and 3 different types of weapon skins are just some of the things you can find amount the 13 tiers on offer, not to mention a giant selection of additional non in-game digital rewards!
Alright, 'thats pretty cool' I hear you say as you gaze once more upon the exclusive 'Born to Grill' Helmet, but where's the physical merchandise? The answer to that requires a little more explanation. You see, a physical bundle reward is included, but only within our two highest pledge tiers. The reason for this is simply down to production costs - if we included physical rewards in any of the lower tiers then a much larger chunk of the total raised funds from this campaign would be needed specifically for that, and right now we'd prefer to priorities Lardcore's gameplay development over merchandise. However, we fully intend to launch an official Hogs of War Lardcore Store in future (Kickstarter success permitting!).
['Dev Corps' Physical merch bundle is comprised of a Lardcore t-shirt, mug and x2 posters!]
Don't forget, even if we manage to reach the highest listed stretch goal - we still have the Classified section to look forward to! These goals will encompass the much higher valued community requests, including new multiplayer game modes, class reworks, team creation & customisation to name just a few!
We are super excited to get the ball rolling on this next phase of development, this is our time to show the world that Hogs of War is still very much alive and kicking! You can find the campaign page right here, take a look for yourself at all the awesome rewards and get involved in the community discussions happening right now over on the campaign page! Week by week we'll be releasing War Report videos over on the Lardcore YouTube channel as we keep up with the campaign's progress, noting the stretch goals hit and ones still to come. As always a huge thank you to the community for the support they have shown us in the build up to this campaign, lets make history with this Kickstarter!
