Development Status #96

Dear Tankers!

Welcome to our 96th Development Status.

Status report

This week, more updates from the front lines of the Ponyri project. We’re continuing to develop various aspects, including new objects for the map, and we’re working with Ferdinand.

Ponyri DLC

The Ponyri operational campaign is entering the testing phase. We’re running internal playthroughs to catch most obvious bugs and implement first suggestions and tweaks.

Having such big maps (for example 3x6 km) brings us the problem of distances and waiting time in combat. Example is this:

A platoon of SU-152 and T-34 spawns in on an entry point, located 3-4 km away from the DEFEND objective. The problem is that we need to wait for them like 7 minutes before any contact is reported - and this is not fun.

That’s why we’re thinking about some additional mission types or different objective types, for example meeting engagement or just some simple mass tank battle in the middle of the map, where both sides start 1,5 km away from that center and meet there in some death match (Commander, enemy tank company sighted! Destroy them before they overrun our positions at: XXX. Good luck!). Destroying a few waves of attackers or mounting up kills up to like 40-50 tanks will force the enemy battalion to retreat.

Panzerjäger Tiger (P) Ferdinand - work in progress

For the past two weeks, I’ve been continuing my work on Ferdinand. Since the high-poly work is complete, I’ve started preparing the low-poly version and creating UV meshes for texture mapping.

I began with my standard workflow, starting from the back end—the suspension, then the wheels, and finally the “turret.”

Next, I tackled the hull and the entire superstructure. I spent the most time on the details - there are quite a few here. I want the vehicle to feel substantial. The next steps are preparing the model for texture baking and painting. In the next Dev Status update, we’ll likely show Ferdinand driving in the game.

[carousel] [/carousel] Do you have any suggestions for what the default paint job should look like?

Environment Assets - Shukhov Water Tower - Work in progress

Using fragmentary references and information contained in official photographs, we have managed to reconstruct the original Shukhov water tower at Ponyri railway station.

[carousel] [/carousel] There are only a few towers of this type left in the world, and none of them are complete. Thanks to our efforts, we have managed to restore its probable appearance from the mists of history.

The next item on our list is less realistic – but it also touches on history, this time the history of gaming. As a bit of a light-hearted reference ;)

Can you guess which game this is from? In our next dev status update, we’ll be presenting our modernised recreation of this item.

Objective area zones on UI and 3D

Last week, straight after the dev status release, I added a system to the game – for testing and fun – which, based on defined collisions (e.g. spheres or other primitive objects such as boxes), which we use to define zones to capture or defend in Conquer or Defend missions – to draw these zones on the battle map and the battle minimap in order to define their range.

Battle minimap (default key M, added with 1.3.8)

Based on these collisions, the game draws, on a single occasion, e.g. circles on the battle map, the minimap and the battle minimap, in colours corresponding to the status of the main objective, be it ‘Conquer’ or ‘Defend’. Below is an example from Outskirts of Morton :

Shelter282 reminded us that we had discussed whether to add such markings and, if so, how to make the zones visible in 3D using some kind of graphic style. I've accepted the challenge - hold my beer!

I took a quick look at our fantastic test mission, "Morton," for example. The first main objective there is to capture the left flank, and the zone to be captured is a sphere. It looks like the image below. I quickly put together a prototype of the projector that projects a decal with a selected texture, the dimensions of which match those of the zone in question.

It’s time to write the logic and implement it into the project. The visual style is based on the prototype. When a mission is initiated, the logic draws the appropriate shapes on the maps. In this case, a dashed outline and, for testing purposes, diagonal lines in the center. The color scheme is also chosen from colors corresponding to the objective’s status, so everything is consistent.

Since this is a quick project, it’s not perfect. The projector—or rather, its decal—needs a bit of a quality boost so it isn’t so pixelated—which is something that can be done and fixed. That’s actually a minor issue. Bigger problem is that this projector currently projects onto everything, including trees, tanks, and the entire map.

[carousel] [/carousel] On the plus side, you can turn it off yourself in the options. By default, it’s enabled for arcade mode but not for simulation mode. So, the idea is that everyone can set it however they like.

We'll have to wait and see if this makes it into version 1.3.9, but there's a good chance it will - what do you think?

Further work with fake suspension

We are currently working on further improving the fake suspension system to make vehicle movement look as realistic and natural as possible. We are focusing primarily on turning in place, smooth starts and stops, and acceleration. It’s worth noting that this system activates only under specific conditions far away from the player, primarily to reduce CPU usage.

Our goal is to make vehicles behave like heavy machines moving across the terrain, without their movement looking stiff or artificial. Below, you can see a comparison between a vehicle using real suspension physics and one using our fake suspension system. The footage shows the current differences between these approaches, which we will strive to improve as much as possible.

When new patch?

We are currently testing the new changes following the update to the Fusion networking system. We will most likely release the new patch 1.3.9 next week.

Thank you for your support, we are working. See you next time! DeGenerals

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