January 2026 Devlog

Welcome to the first devlog for Panzer Vor! I am happy to say that the game is now playable and contains almost all the basic mechanics. In these devlogs, I will be diving into the details of the current state of development to demonstrate how the mechanics are evolving. I will also share technical details regarding the implementation process.

Today, I’ll cover all the updates from January, and I hope to continue providing monthly updates like this moving forward.

Weather System

The main feature I worked in January is implementing the Weather System. It is one of the essential mechanics that impacts gameplay and forces players of both teams to adapt to the changing environment.

Each map has a set of certain weather conditions that can apply. The starting condition is always mild - either a clear sunny weather, light snow or rain. When one of the teams reaches 500 points, it is considered a midpoint of the match, after which the weather has a 30%, 60% or 90% chance of switching. And don't worry - your commander will notify you if the change is happening.

Please note, that the particle effects in this image are exaggerated for effect. The priority is always a visible field!

There are 7 different weather conditions, each one has its own debuffs:

• Clear - the standard conditions without any debuffs. This is the most common starting condition for any map.

• Overcast - slightly reduced visibility, but also has a higher chance to transition to rain or thunderstorm halfway though the match.

• Rain - a slight debuff to visibility, but also makes grass and ground harder to traverse, depending on the tank's weight. This will definitely remove superheavy tanks and tank destroyers out of your roster, unless they are already in position.

• Thunderstorm - this is like rain, but with much worse visibility. This environment becomes a battleground for sneak attacks from light and medium tanks!

• Snow - the replacement for rain on cold maps. This condition, however, also adds slight debuff to critical damage repair times.

• Snow storm - extremely reduced visibility and drastically increased repair times. Don't forget to equip your units with repair kits!

• Fog - impacts tank visibility as much as snow storm, but in a much calmer environment.

The weather information and the chance of weather change is always available before commander is chosen. Certain weather conditions can be mitigated by commander abilities (e.g. Suzume is a perfect choice for low visibility matches with her beacon passive).

Visibility/fog of war in Panzer Vor

Contrary to common fog of war in strategy games, Panzer Vor uses unit-based spotting just like World of Tanks does. Each unit constantly checks for visibility against the enemy team and can spot an enemy very far away. That's why it is one of the most important mechanics in the game, and buffs or debuffs to visibility are crucial.

The spotting is handled by Unity's Raycast Job which efficiently spreads out raycasts into several jobs that are executed independently of the main thread.

In January, I focused on optimizing this system; however, it remains the biggest performance bottleneck as the number of tanks increases. There will be a complete overhaul with a full switch to Unity's Job System later!

Viktoria is back!

After being excluded from the initial screenshots, Viktoria is back with her cup of tea. She was previously not included since her assets were not fully ready. She can deploy a smoke screen on the field and significantly buff all allied tanks (especially heavy ones).

I will make sure to introduce all the commanders and their abilities later.

Projectile system rewrite

Projectile system handles all the projectiles spawned in the world - from tanks, fortifications or abilities. Previously, each entity handled its own projectiles (including network synchronization). While convenient to manage, it introduced several issues:

1. If an entity gets despawned, all projectiles will get despawned as well.

2. Due to how the network sync works in the game, projectiles would not show up if the entity is 'unspotted'. This is because no data for that entity is sent over the network until it is spotted to prevent cheating.

These issues required a different approach where a more global projectile container visible to everyone would sync all projectiles at all times. This way, there are no more 'ghost shots' that would just appear as random damage to your units without any trace. Now you can see where the shot came from, even if that tank is not spotted.

If there is no more space for the projectile, the new container is spawned across all the clients. This way we can fit theoretically unlimited number of projectiles.

Other updates

• Added Steamworks support for upcoming steam deployments for closed alpha tests.

• Improved bot so it can actually buy proper tanks and capture points. Before that it was rolling over points and sometimes capturing them by accident.

• Added support for multiple players (3v3) which also included support of multiple spawn points.

• Added animation for barrel when tank is shooting.

• Added wheel effect that changes depending on the surface that the tank is on.

• Better input handling using ReactiveInputSystem package with R3.

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You can now follow Panzer Vor on Twitter! https://x.com/playpanzervor Feel free to also follow me https://x.com/madebynoxc Panzer Vor Discord: https://discord.gg/gyjSbBD Wishlist the game is you still haven't! -noxc