WWIIOL: Battleground Europe News

Up to date information, news and promotions about WWIIOL: Battleground Europe. www.battlegroundeurope.com

Author: BEMotormouth

Written by Al "RAFTER" Corey
Executive Producer, Cornered Rat Software

I'm sure there are a lot of players out there watching our site and the Twitter feed for signs that open Beta for 1.31 is on the horizon. Nobody wants that to happen more than the dozen or so Rats thrashing away on the last of our TO DO items. There is good news though, the last major code check-in took place earlier this week and we are now trying to build our first open Beta candidate. What does that mean? Keep reading to find out.

While we've had most of the features slated for 1.31 in closed Beta testing for a couple of months, we've been anxiously awaiting some major code which alters the way the terrain is populated when your game client is loading. This code should net some good results in reducing stutters while playing and reduce memory errors we've seen creeping into the game. It has been a long road to get this completed as it touches a lot of the game engine components. It also affects almost all the objects in the terrain and our artists have been scrambling to make changes to the objects so that they work with the new code. All this is a way of saying, we're closing in on the home stretch.

Our plan is to build an open Beta candidate this week and get it into testing as soon as possible next week. While it's tested in closed Beta, the final host support needed for 1.31 features like the new capture changes will be completed. If these both prove out as stable and (mostly) complete, then we'll likely announce a date for open Beta.

We had a meeting on Tuesday to determine our goals and plans for the 1.31 open Beta and have decided that 1.31 will first be available for offline testing prior to opening up a Beta server. Dana "GOPHUR" Baldwin, Goeff "DOC" Evans and Steve "BLOO" Daniels are writing up focus testing requirements that will be made available to all players for the offline client.

So rest assured, we are working hard to get the open Beta started and will post as soon as we can when it's ready. For those of you waiting on system specs for 1.31, GOPHUR and BLOO are putting together a 'budget build' test rig this week for a final check and then we'll publish the specs in time for you to upgrade your rig if necessary for 1.31.

 www.Battlegroundeurope.com

Amy-Lynn "Motormouth" Engelbrecht
Public and Community Relations, Playnet Inc.

I like eye candy. It makes it easier to sink yourself into a game and for a few hours, transport you to a different place and time. Graphics, sounds and special effects are major contributors towards that "suspension of reality" feeling you get from good games. We have long been criticized for neglecting the look of the game in favour of mechanics and so, here comes v1.31 and now there are rumblings that this is nothing but a "lipstick" pass on WWII Online. New buildings, new trees, ragdoll effects, weather & rain... it's all just eye candy, isn't it? Nope.

It is so much more than that. Virtually every feature or upgrade in 1.31 will have some effect on game play. From the addition of more grass fields to rain and clouds, everything effects game play. It's part of the whole experience of playing WWIIOL. When you spawn into 1.31, you will be entering a game world that has more depth and richness than ever before. A world of 3D buildings that offer concealment, shelter, and possibly harbor enemies. A world of shadowy forests with thousands of new trees, grassy fields littered with stone fences, berms and rural buildings. Where rain sometimes falls and clouds cover the sky as your eyes struggle to spot your enemy. When you find him and fire the kill shot, new ragdoll effects kick in and you get a whole new level of feedback from your victory.

Here's review of some of the features coming in 1.31 and how they are expected to have an effect on the game;

Ragdoll, Blood Splatter, Muzzle Flashes

ODE physics will create a virtually endless variety of death animations for infantry. Combined with infantry smoothing, new muzzle flashes and blood splatters on walls and pools on the ground, the results will have you out hunting endlessly for more victims. Even the alterations to the Death Cam will leave you fascinated. In testing, we have found that rag doll is providing more and better feedback about the result of your weapons fire. Seeing your victim crumple to the ground from behind a tree you will no longer have to guess whether he has simply gone prone or has met his end. Game play changers? You bet.

New Infantry Eye Height

The initial infantry model (circa 1999) was created with the eyes closer to the top of the head. The eye height has now been moved to more accurate spot on the head of the character. The infantry model was also updated so that when you aim your weapon, it swings it up level with your eye point from the slightly crouched "combat stance" position. This provides more realistic movement in first person and gives a new level of feedback. Combined with the new combat ready stance, it's looking more natural and makes for a better combat experience.

Dynamic Weather

Beginning with 1.31, we introduce rain into the game world. Rather than impossibly sunny days all year long, a random "weather" cycle will run to add occasional rainfall, reduced lighting and lowered cloud ceiling. A new level of combat will now be played out with rain in your eyes and thunder booming through the sky. Aircraft will swoop in and out of cloud cover with tracer rounds lighting up enemies. New, lower clouds ceilings, reduced lighting and rain sprites are all elements that will change visibility, tactics and the outcome of combat- a major game changer in v1.31.

Upgraded Buildings and Terrain Objects

The last of the 2D (paper walled) terrain objects have been tackled. CRS artists have been chugging away replacing or updating original buildings as well as creating wonderful new ones to play in. Castles, windmills, farmhouses, capture buildings, vineyards, railroad stations, pillboxes, gas stations, petrol tanks, AI towers and pits... they all come together to give you the feel of fighting in a much more realistic and detailed environment. Some changes to buildings and objects should make a significant impact on game play. The new pill-box style infantry pit creates fortified firing positions for defense and berms surrounding towns and cities have been remodelled providing improved staging areas for attacks. New, bush-lined stone walls have replaced many of the generic bush lines providing improved cover for infantry. These are only a few of many changes to terrain objects that will change the way you play.

Persistent Fields, Radial Clutter & Shadows

Not only will persistent, grass fields make their introduction in v1.31, but a new radial clutter system also will be added. Grass fields provide infantry sought-after concealment and radial clutter will improve immersion. No longer will screenshots depict the landscape of WWIIOL as the final 3 holes of Augusta National Golf Course but instead a terrain with fields, short grasses, rocks, stumps and forests. Shadows will add to concealment by providing darker spots amongst berms and tree clumps... again changing tactics for players. While we are providing a way to reduce the impact of some of these features on system performance, some will not have the option to turn off completely. This will ensure a more level playing field for all.

New Capture Mechanics

1.31 will see the end of the infamous "Table Humping" in favor of a new system which transforms the entire building you occupy as the capture "object". We've freed you from having to maintain constant physical contact with a radio table so that infantry can move around inside the buildings designated as "Capture Points". Infantry are also free to move and fire weapons during capture and re-capture, engaging enemies in a frantic battle to gain territory and control the map. New attack and defense tactics will no doubt be perfected as a result of this change.

"No Fire" Zones

In our continued effort to promote fun and fair gameplay, coders and artists at CRS have developed the new "No Fire" zone. This previously unannounced addition to 1.31 means that if a soldier finds himself in an enemy infantry spawn point (FB, Barracks, Spawn Depot) his weapons will be rendered useless. On the multi-story spawn buildings, this will only affect the upper floors where infantry enter the world. Following a warning message on his HUD that he is in an enemy spawn zone, firing of any weapon will be disabled. At best he will have to resort to harsh language and rude hand gestures. Infantry can now feel safe from being ambushed when they spawn inside their own depots.

1.31 is big. Big changes, big gameplay improvements, big visual upgrade, big fun. It also opens the door for a lot of new stuff that will be entering development after it's release. The game play changes highlighted above are only a few of the most obvious we've seen in limited testing. We expect many more to come as a result of one of the biggest upgrades to the game in its history. We also expect some fine tuning to features as more testing is completed. We're excited and we're hopeful that we continue to improve the game for you. We thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm, it's really unparalleled in the gaming world today.

S! 
 

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Written by Amy-lynn "MOTORMOUTH" Engelbrecht
Public and Community Relations Manager, Playnet Inc.

WWIIOL:Battleground Europe boasts thousands of players from all over the world, something we've always been proud of. Our Player Discussion Forums have devoted sections for many different languages: English, French, German, Spanish and many more. In our quest to keep players informed about developments and events, CRS is launching Foreign Language Community Zones. The primary goal of these new zones is to reach a wider range of potential players across Europe, Asia and the Pacific Rim. Another goal is to support and stay connected with our non-english speaking players.

Our first two zones, German and Scandinavian, made their debut last week, with the help of two long-time WWIIOL players and past Public Relations assistants, Frank "GRENI" Tiedemann and Dennis "SMOKEEYE" Moe. As our first two Community Leaders and now official CRS staff members, GRENI and SMOKEEYE have helped us design their pages and work out some of the kinks.

Frank "GRENI" Tiedemann

Dennis "SMOKEEYE" Moe

The new sites feature translations of popular BE articles, dev and production notes, important news and much more. Our Leaders will write their own articles and news updates about their communities as well as hosting events and promotions and generating discussion in the forums. We're hopeful that by providing players from around the world with a landing page in their own region and language, we can grow our communities and bring more and more new players into the game.

Additional zones will be launched over the coming months, appearing under the "Community" menu on the official website.

www.battlegroundeurope.com

Written by Al "RAFTER" Corey
Executive Producer, Cornered Rat Software

The basic capture mechanic in Battleground Europe has remained unchanged since 2001. While there have been additions and changes to rules surrounding captures such as timers and orders, the basic "table humping" action is the same since the game began. That will change with the 1.31 update currently in Beta testing.

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Beginning with v1.31, the action which will trigger a capture event is the presence of enemy infantry inside a capturable building. This method of triggering the event eliminates the need to make physical contact with a capture object such as the crate/radio found in v1.30 but there are no changes to the rules which govern when a building is capturable. Radios will continue to exist in the game world as cultural objects, not capture objects.

A new HUD element has been added to the game which will provide more information about your location and status of any facility.

Within the new element there are icons which represent your location in the world;

Terrain: this icon indicates you are not in proximity of a CP
Flag: this icon indicates you are in proximity of a CP
Building: this icon indicates you are inside a building
Also displayed is information associated with different icons;

Terrain
"No Towns Near" message
Flag
Name of CP
Ownership status display bar (indicates what percentage of the CP is owned by your side versus the enemy)
Building
Name of facility associated with the building you are in
Ownership (ownership progress bar indicates the percentage towards ownership of the facility)
Capture status (eg: "capturable", "not capturable", "enemy capturing" messages)
The colors of the ownership/capture bar are the same as your friendly and enemy icon colors as modified on your Settings tab. The default is blue for friendly and red for enemy.

Example Scenario #1

You are inside a capturable building owned by your own forces. The new HUD element will indicate you are inside a building with the building icon. The ownership of the facility associated with the building will be indicated by seeing the bar filled completely with green. The capture status will indicate that the building is capturable as dictated by the game's rules.

An enemy infantry enters the building. Immediately, the ownership progress bar begins to fill with red. This indicates to you that the enemy has begun a capture of this building. The meter will increase the amount of red and decrease the amount of green as the capture continues. If the meter fills completely with red, a capture by the enemy is complete.

To stop the capture before it is complete, no enemy infantry can be alive in the building. Once all enemy infantry have been killed or forced out of the building, a reversal of the meter's capture progress begins until completely filled with green again.

Example Scenario #2

You enter an enemy capturable building. Your new HUD element indicates that your presence has begun a capture event by filling the red ownership progress bar with green. You take up a defensive position inside the building as the capture progresses. During the capture process, an enemy infantry shoots and kills you. The capture progress made during your time inside the building begins to degrade. A friendly infantry enters the building, and the capture event continues from the current capture progress. It does not start again from the beginning. If the capture event was 50% complete when you were killed but was degraded to 40% between the time you were killed and a friendly entered the building, the capture event would progress from the 40% point.

Capture progress is degraded when there are no capturing infantry present in the building. The rate at which the capture degrades in approximately twice as fast as the rate of capture but this may be modified in testing.

This new mechanic means that to ensure a capture continues without interruption, you must keep at least one friendly alive in the building. As a defender, clearing out and keep building clear of enemies will ensure the capture progress is degraded as soon as possible.

At this time, the number of infantry present will not act as a modifier to the capture or degrade rate. This is something that we may move towards in the future.

This feature is going to require significant play testing and possible adjustments before it is ready for campaign play. We ask for your feedback and questions.

Full Gallery of Images Here

Capture FAQ

Q. Are there any changes to the capture rules?
A. No, the only adjustments that are being made with the new capture feature are the timers for how long a capture takes and how quickly it degrades when a capture event is interrupted.

Q. In the current capture mechanics, you aren't able to fire your weapon during a capture. Any change?
A. Yes. During a capture event you can fire your weapons as you can any other time.

Q. Will radio tables have any function?
A. The tables were replaced with a radio/crate object in 1.30. These will no longer be used for capture. Radios will continue to be placed in the world as cultural objects.

Q. Is the mini-map still going to display our LAT/LONG?
A. No, there are some changes coming to the mini-map. LAT/LONG is now displayed on the new HUD element as seen in the preview screenshots.

Leave a comment or join the discussion on the forums

Just a quick note coming out of production this week ending Oct.2nd, about a couple of changes we have being added to the v1.31 beta. Now of course there are a lot of things happening here as everyone involved with v1.31 is busily working away on their task lists but I specifically wanted to highlight a couple of new features we have added late in the build.

One is work that Martini has done to improve tracers. Studying real world film footage of tracers, taken from the shooters perspective, we have modeled a new effect that removes the "star wars" laser look and models each tracer round more as a blob of light shooting away from you. It looks much more like a real tracer round than before. This also thins out the external 3rd person view to something less laser like.

We'll be adding these new tracers to LMG's during beta since that was a common historical reality for LMG's (to have tracer rounds) and adds more battlefield immersion to the game. Now a position defended by what amounts to an MG nest (the LMGs in the game) will show tracers zipping across the field of fire, which should be cool. You can comment on this if you like since we always read feedback.

The other new effect we just shoehorned into the beta was a new wake effect for the bow wave and the trailing wake of boats. This is a brand new one and I don't want to comment too much on it until we've had some time to play around with it, but it should be cool and better than the old effect we think.

Ok, well we still have a lot to do, so I'm going to sign off and we hope you all have a great week of killing each other in the game.
 

Geoff "DOC" Evans
Producer

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NEW RAILROAD STATION IN PROGRESS

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In the ongoing drive to upgrade Battleground Europe, Cornered Rat Software will be implementing Ragdoll physics with the live release of v1.31. Using a third party physics library called "Open Dynamics Engine" (ODE) players will now have the option of seeing an infinite variety of infantry death animations. Ragdoll is yet one more method the artists and coders at CRS are using to increase the immersion of WWIIOL.

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How Does It Work?

The current version of the game uses a pre-determined library of infantry death animations that are played when your client receives a “kill” message from the host. Creating these animations was time-consuming which is why the library was limited. But ODE has changed that; now when the client receives that "kill" message, a physics loop takes over. The infantry model reacts to gravity and to the force of the impact to direct where and how the lifeless body will fall. Arms and legs work independently and the character drops its weapon as the body crumples to the ground. For concussive effects from grenades and other explosives, infantry models react to the force of the explosion: bodies are thrown up and away from the source, weapons flying away. Characters will also be effected when hit by vehicles. Early beta versions of ODE saw characters reacting in a very exaggerated manner with arms and legs windmilling and bodies flying 50+ feet after an explosion. This was toned down to more realistic parameters during testing. However these early tests did garner some extremely amusing blooper footage. Hysterical laughter became the norm the first week ragdoll went into testing, offices jammed with artists, coders and devs watching infantry slide, twitch, jump, and cartwheel around the game world.

Some have noticed in early video clips of the ragdoll testing that infantry weapons fall independently of the body. These weapons cannot currently be picked up and re-used. Server Tracked Objects (STO) could be used to allow dropped items to be picked up but that is a different system than ODE and the two do not work together at this time.

Click to embiggen!

Perception

Because ragdoll is calculated by the client, what you see on your screen won't be exactly what others see. When you shoot an enemy infantry, the resulting reaction is a random, physics-based sequence that is run by your client. Another player's computer will run its own loop, resulting in a somewhat different animation than your own. For non-concussive effects, (gunfire) your view of the body's reaction to the force of impact will appear very accurate. Other players won't see it quite as spot-on due to limitations on the information being relayed to his client. With concussive effects, however, the physics are more consistently displayed. These issues are limitations of network traffic and lag (delay).

There are several other reactions brought about by the "kill" message and ragdoll; when an infantry is shot near a solid object (wall, tank, tree) a resulting blood splatter may be thrown against it. Blood will also pool slowly from underneath a corpse. There is even a return of an abbreviated version of the "death cam". After your death, the camera pops to an external view that is close in to your body, slowly rotating out for a few seconds. It's a very tight view, pulling out only a foot, so there is no issue with the cam revealing a hidden enemy position. Corpses will also litter the battlefield in the same way they do now; there will just be more variations in the positions of the "hulks". Just as it is now, your client will only display the corpses that were generated in your visual limits. So the first time you spawn into a battle there will be no corpses. After your client detects the triggers of the "kill" on enemies in your visual limit, subsequent re-spawns will display the bodies.

Options

Like water reflections and some shadows, there will be an option to disable the ragdoll physics and resulting blood effects. It is currently an on/off toggle, but there is the possibility that a slider will also be available to choose levels of detail.

Adding the Open Dynamics Engine to WWIIOL:Battleground Europe is something we've all been looking forward to. It adds a whole new level of variety to the ground game. Combined with dynamic weather, new infantry smoothing as well as building and terrain updates, we're very excited to see how much deeper into this virtual war we can take you.

download the high quality .wmv (14Mb)

Ragdoll FAQ:

Q: How will paratroopers react with ragdoll physics? Will they bounce?
A: Paratroopers will react the same way to ragdoll after they've landed on the ground. Some of this needs way more testing and will require changes no doubt. Paratroops for one, falling into water for another. In the current build, the rag doll character hits the water and lands like it is concrete so we think that might need to change :)

Q: I don't expect each body will be the same as what everyone sees just wondering if the game will take into account if they were slumped against a wall?
A: The reaction of the ragdoll characters is determined by the individual's client so it may be slightly different for everyone.

Q: Can we pick up dropped weapons from ragdolls?
A: Not at this time.

Q: Will ragdoll characters fly and bounce away from vehicle impacts?
A: Yes rag doll effects are/can be applied to infantry as enemy vehicles strike them. What we do with the effect needs more testing tweaking. Ideally, the bodies would fly back from the strike and fall to the ground.

Q: Will there be additional sound effects for wounds and death?
A: We have added new sound effects for the ragdoll character as it impacts the ground and objects.

Q. Will there be any new effects to vehicles with this new feature?
A. Not at this time.

Q: Will ragdoll affect sheep?
A. We are sad to report that our flocks of sheep will not be affected by the ODE physics at this time. There is a vocal faction at CRS that are actively trying to get this slated as our next major update. Their doses have been increased by order of the in-house medical staff.

Leave a comment or join the discussion
 

Oh the sights my eyes have seen! Seriously, you guys should be chomping at the bit for 1.31 open test. It is truly breath taking to see how far the look and feel of the game have come. That said I can't wait to get it out and move on to some more game play centric features. So then what do we have to talk about this week...

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Weather

We had a poll out recently asking about some of the features and the weather came back with a lot of positive reviews. I know we've tried this before but we didn't really quite nail it the first time and that was largely because we didn't get it right for the air game. Rest assured pilots, you've been heard. As you all probably already know the rain has a ceiling and a cloud deck that you can climb over. Once there it is blue sky turn and burn time. In addition you guys gave us a lot of feedback on the rain sprites for planes (and other vehicles) travelling at speed and how it looked... well... not right. We know and hey, it's hard. We went back to the drawing board a few times but the effects we really want just aren't going to be possible this pass so we knocked around a few ideas and settled on a more modest but still workable change.

We thought about turning rain off at speed or altitude but it really didn't feel right and it didn't provide the same affect on gameplay that it was giving to all other combatants. Instead Martini added a speed component to the rain that angles it toward the faster moving objects. It's a pretty good sell all in all and one we think you'll be happy with until the time comes we can figure out how to make realistic droplet streaking on the many facets of the He-111 nose glass. Ouch.

Trooper Death

The ragdoll animations continue to improve this week. Watching Troy "Ramp" Lowe set 50 guys on top of the barracks along the edge and slowly mow them down to watch how they slide off of the roof and on to the ground is something that never gets old. He's also added new crawling that actually sticks the players to the ground instead of the old feet floaty thing. Long overdue. I really got some time this week to enjoy the new infantry smoothing and transition animations an the new falling should be working, that's nice. Oh, did any of you notice the new combat idle stances in the video? For me that may be one of the best. So much better than the old at rest animations though those are still there when you have your weapon lowered.

Beta Status

In general a lot of things are coming to a close. Sure we still have a lot of work to do but it is increasingly minor. We've got to rework settings and add abunch of new stuff but the buildings are almost all complete and it looks like we'll have completely redone all of the original set. I've got about 200 tickets in test that need to be reviewed and hopefully closed and we have a bit more performance tuning on our new building instance system (allows us to save a lot of memory off of the new objects) before we are ready to let you guys at it but the light is now visible at tunnel's end.

It's been a while since you guys heard from me on these production updates and I have to say I miss them. Next time you hear from me I'll be having new recommended system specs for you and I'll be following that up with some sytem builds to help those of you who are in need of an upgrade for the new game. We're doing everything we can to both bring the game to a modern graphics standard and still provide performance for mainstream machines. Until then...

See you on the Meuse,
Dana "Gophur" Baldwin
 

Senior Producer

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One feature that CRS devs have long wanted to add to Battleground Europe is changing weather conditions. After a lot of testing and tweaking, v1.31 will see the addition of cloudy and rainy weather to the game. Our goal is to provide more variety to game play while increasing the "fun" factor.

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How it will work

At midnight of each game day cycle, the host will run a process to decide if the upcoming game day is going to be a "bad weather" day. On "bad weather" days, lighting is reduced, and a layer of dark clouds is added to the sky. Limits have been included to ensure that consecutive "bad weather" day selection are minimized. Every game hour of a "bad weather" day, the host runs a secondary process to determine if rain will fall anytime during that hour. If the result is positive, a random selection is made to determine how many minutes rain will fall. This will range from 5 to 60 game minutes. This step is done to avoid having a state of rainy weather for an extended period of play and to create variety. When rain is active, a rain texture within a certain radius of the player is displayed. The rain drop texture is actually composed of dozens of drops applied to a tile or "sprite", giving the appearance of volume. There is an additional sprite that displays splashes of rain hitting the ground. To complete the entire rainy day experience, random claps of thunder will echo throughout the game world. All weather settings and effects are global for the game world.

At midnight, the next cycle begins and if the system determines the next 24 hour game cycle is to be a clear weather day, then the "bad weather" cloud layer will be removed and it will clear skies ahead- at least until the next cycle is set.

Aircraft and weather

One important issue that has been addressed is ensuring that weather didn't negatively affect the air game. When a "bad weather" day is active, there are lighting changes and a layer of storm clouds are added at approximately 800 meters. This elevation has been set by the production team for play testing through Beta and may be adjusted. This layer does have breaks through which bombers can still see the ground below. Above the new cloud layer, the sky lightens and the rain vanishes leaving clear, blue skies for pilots. All changes created by the "bad weather" day are erased once a pilot climbs above new cloud layer. The fog settings do not change on "bad weather" days. Above the "bad weather" cloud layer, pilots will see no differences in air-to-air combat.

"The original implementation of weather, which consisted of fog and cloud changes created severe challenges for air combat that we weren't able to find an effective solution for back then", says Al "RAFTER" Corey. "But with the recent update to game engine, it was decided this would be the best time to try again. Once we figured out a way to have the weather effects capped at the new cloud layer, the new weather system started to take shape".

Other Challenges

While Chris "MARTINI" Fennell was busy coding the new effects and systems, Jeremy "DEKARD" Lindstrom was designing new cloud textures and Rick "GRANIK" Ashby was determining new settings for lighting. Several other factors had to be taken into consideration in making sure the new weather days flow smoothly; collision with vehicles and buildings to avoid anomolies like rain inside, the density of the rain sprites as well their path of travel, cloud density and frequency of thunder. Fog was another difficult challenge. Our current fog system limits what we can do and in order to avoid additional problems, we chose to stick with current fog settings on both clear and "bad weather" days.

"Weather 2.0"

Future developments on this system may include things like flashes of lightning, effects to vehicle speeds to mimic mud/traction changes and localized weather. We would also like to deliver a weather forecast- initially for the global weather effects and later, forecasts for localized weather events.

Closed and, subsequently, open Beta testing will see some of the weather settings and features altered and tweaked to provide the best performance and game play possible before release.

Dynamic weather is an example of a long time feature on our wish list. Implementing it adds another aspect to realism, gives more variety to the game, sets up new challenges for air-to-ground attacks and adds a new options for air combat. The rain and diminished lighting gives tanks and infantry a natural concealment from each other and the new cloud layer provides more cover from enemies in the sky. Pilots will now be able to duck below the cloud ceiling during air combat to try to outmaneuver pursuers. We are excited to add this new feature to increase the excitement and ever-changing experiences available to our players.

download the high quality .wmv (14Mb)

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Weather FAQ

Q. How often will it rain and will it rain at night?
A. At midnight of each game day, the server will randomly choose if the next 24 hour game cycle will have "bad weather" settings with a new cloud layer and diminished lighting below that cloud layer. Each hour of that 24 hour cycle, there is a chance it will rain for some amount of that hour. These random choices will happen every game day and every game hour. Variety is our goal with the weather feature.

Q. What will pilots see above the "bad weather" clouds?
A. Pilots will experience the same conditions above the clouds as on a clear day. Breaks in the cloud layer will provide some visibility of ground targets but fighter pilots should prepare for new wrinkles in air-to-air combat at low altitudes and in air-to-ground attacks.

Q. Does the weather and rain effect cover the entire map?
A. In this first version of our new weather feature, the effects will be map-wide. Later versions may see localized weather events.

Q. Will vehicles have reduced traction? Will infantry slog through mud?
A. No changes to the terrain or effects related to rain are being made to this first version of new weather. We hope to extend the feature in future releases.

Q. Will the altitude of the "bad weather" clouds vary from day to day?
A. Not at this time. Variable altitude could be added in a future version.

Read discussions about this feature in our forums
 

We are excited to finally reveal the details of our latest upgrade to WWII Online: Battleground Europe which will leverage version 1.5 of our proprietary UNITY 3D game engine. Currently in closed Beta testing and expected to be available for public testing this fall, v1.31 will include many visual upgrades, hundreds of new objects and major new features such as variable weather, rag doll physics and a new capture mechanic.

Some of the features, upgrades and new content planned for v1.31 include;

• Game engine performance improvements with upgraded shaders, normals and specular mapping

• SpeedTree Upgrade
- 1,000,000+ trees updated with new models and colliders
- Normal mapping and self-shadowing

• New Capture Mechanics
- Removal of tables and radios with new timers and capture start/stop feature

• Upgraded infantry movement, animation & rag doll physics
- Updated animation blending for smoother third-person movement
- Rag doll physics applied to infantry death animations including force push from explosions
- New idle animations including combat-ready pose

• Upgraded special effects including variable weather
- Updated character and vehicle shadows
- New tree and object shadows
- Updated fire and explosions
- Updated muzzle flashes and effects such as blood splatter
- Updated hit effects on materials
- Dynamic clouds/fog/lighting settings
- Rain effects

• New clutter system
- New clutter system including persistent grass fields
- New radial clutter system with grass/scrub clutter

• New and updated objects
- Ground and object textures
- AA, AT, AP emplacements
- Buildings including urbans, barns, bunkers, docks, railroad stations, windmills and many more
- Tree/bush clumps/berms
- Updated vehicles; Char, Bf109 E4, Spitfire 1a and Spitfire Vb

Along with these features and updates, we are moving to Shader 3.0 support which will require some players to upgrade their video card/processor in order to run the game. We will also be publishing new recommended system requirements in order to give anyone with an older system time to plan an upgrade. Watch for a special article on our website which will feature a PC "budget build" for v1.31.

During the closed Beta process we will be posting new screenshots and publishing several articles on the many new features. These will contain more details and provide an opportunity for player review and feedback. Keep your eyes on the website or subscribe to our news feed.

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Visit this link for a gallery of screenshot and movies on some of the new features:

http://www.battlegroundeurope.com/media131

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Early feedback from past and present players is overwhelmingly positive. We're very excited and looking forward to getting 1.31 released.

"It looks like a brand new game! Amazing job guys.
Any chance of a Welcome back soldier event when you release this beauty?" - Bongo12

"That is so not the game I played almost 2 years ago now!!!
Holy mother of all that's holy this makes me triple my efforts to get a new computer than can run this!" - Figgy

"CRS, you have simply outdone yourselves. This is amazing, the effects, the new terrain, the sky, everything. This is a new game this is the WWIIONLINE we have all been dreaming of a waiting for." Kenney

"i will be resubing ONLY because of this update...i will also get my 10 friends who previously played to resub..thanks rats" - Ratklr

"O MY GOD RATS YOUR ARE AWESOME...

Thats what i dream for ww2 online, you made it, thanks cant wait !!!!!" - Tokkers

"In my opinion this is probably THE SINGLE MOST JAW-DROPPING, EYE-POPPING UPDATE TO THIS GAME'S VISUALS I have seen. Beautiful. I can confidently say after seven years that the quality of this game's visuals finally matches the depth of its gameplay." - Xanthus

Some people love the smell of napalm in the morning. I do too but not as much as I love this time in a dev cycle where we begin to see that we are closing more bugs than we are creating, when we see that our features are almost complete and where we turn to our community to show them what we’ve got and ask them for their feedback on how to make it even better. It’s that time for 1.29 and next week we’ll be opening the doors to the test server and inviting you all to drop in for a look. This time however our focus has been a little different than it has in the past.

"It’s that time for 1.29 and next week we’ll be opening the doors
to the test server and inviting you all to drop in for a look."

Sure, we’ve got some new vehicles and new buildings and even some game play changes but our major focus has been on the future and on the past. We’ve got an opportunity in front of us. An opportunity we haven’t had in seven years- an opportunity to do something great for the future of our game.

CHINA PROJECT

As many of you are probably aware, next year will mark a huge milestone for Battleground Europe as the game launches into China. This is a project that we have been working on for several years and has finally come to fruition with development starting this year. China is a great market for Battleground Europe, offering an enormous player base that has a love of competitive and massively multiplayer games. Our game fits the bill for both of those very nicely.

We’ve partnered with a group founded by a long time player and friend of the company who has brought together several veterans of the China gaming development community to run a premiere service in China.

"As we worked together to prepare for a launch in China
we realized that this is a great opportunity to improve
and add to the gaming experience."

As we worked together to prepare for a launch in China we realized that this is a great opportunity to improve and add to the gaming experience. MMO’s have evolved quite a bit since we started and to be successful in China we need to not only provide the basics like translations but also enhance the new player experience and flatten out the learning curve. We also wanted to take care that every system and feature we develop for the China market has relevance to our players as well.

Training- One of the things that we’ve always been proud of is our core of dedicated trainers and as we looked to having our first major release of the game into a completely fresh market of players we knew that we needed to build on and extend that training experience for our new players. The first phase of that will be in 1.29 as “Basic Training”. This feature takes new players into the game through a series of guided tutorials that focus on everything from teaching basic infantry movement and firing to using the map and chat tools for communication and planning. New players will have to complete these basic training courses to unlock access to their personas. We’ve even built a new training ground with new ranges and a new tutorial scripting language to allow us to build and expand our training.

"Combat training will be next stage of training where players will get
to compete in small directed battles so that they are prepared
for WWIIOL-style combat before they even step foot into the game world."

For v1.30 we’ll continue to build on this training system with Combat Training. Combat training will be next stage of training where players will get to compete in small directed battles so that they are prepared for WWIIOL-style combat before they even step foot into the game world.

Training doesn’t stop there though. We plan to expand training into advanced sections as well. First will be “Advanced Combat Training”. Advanced training will allow players to go to the Training tab in the user interface (UI) and select instances to fight in. The fast action battles will allow players to train outside of the main campaign. In addition to combat we plan to continue to add training for most of the weapons systems in the game over time including everything from mortar practice ranges to pre flight instruction.

The tutorials will also cover every screen of the UI with a new “Quick Help” system. As new players go through the UI for the first time, help screens will point out all of the features of each page. New players should have a much improved experience finding a battle or joining a squad or chatting with others.

Instancing- The instancing and scripting tools that we’ve built for training also give us some very unique opportunities for future development. One of the things that Project China will have is a competitive team fighting system. We plan to morph this technology for our players into things like training instances where trainers can give direct guidance to players and special event scenarios that run in instances on the main server.

Take the Special Events Team as an example. We see instancing as a gate way to building a toolset where a SET member can log in and from the UI create an event plan that recreates an historical battle. He can pick the place the fight will happen, decide on the force makeup and deployment of those forces and set the time for the scenario to run. We could literally have hundreds of these battles from which to pick and choose at any given time. This could make intermissions into a whole new play experience.

"This tool might be just what we need to do some
Eastern Front or Possibly an American landing on foreign soil."

These same tools also work for doing things like squad tournaments. We imagine fighter tournaments with last man standing, maybe even ladder rankings. In the long term we want to see if this can be the tool to create pocket battles. This tool might be just what we need to do some Eastern Front or Possibly an American landing on foreign soil.

This is an amazing core technology to have at our disposal and this is all made possible directly as a result of Project China. This is by far the biggest new tool that we have ever had in our toolbox and the possibilities are literally mind boggling.

Translations- Translating the game is nothing new to us; we’ve had the game supporting English, French, German, Italian and Spanish for some time. Or so we thought! Chinese is a completely new experience and translating the entire game has been a huge undertaking. Not only did we need to translate the UI and the manuals but we also found we needed to translate over 6000 town and facility and vehicle names, something we’ve never had to do before. We also realized that our western translators were really lacking the tools to keep their translations up to date. So we went out and built a new web based translation tool that contains the tens of thousands of translations the game needs. Anyone who plays in a language other than English should find their play experience vastly improved.

Anti-Addiction- Apparently gamers all over the world are the same. They all like to play for hours on end, always wanting “just one more mission”. In China they take this quite seriously. If you are a minor and you’ve played more than a few hours the system starts to warn you that you need to go outside and play and to help you with that it will reduce your score and start buzzing at you! This is probably the one feature in 1.29 that I couldn’t find a way to make useful for our own players. [Anti-Addicition feature will not be available to players outside China -Ed] Though Ollie "KFSONE" Smith has suggested there are a few of you out there we might just switch this on for so watch out!

The Air War- Goeff "DOC" Evans and Rick "GRANIK" Ashby have spent quite a bit of this dev cycle working on improvements for the air game. First up we have a couple new toys for you guys. The Spitfire Mk 1b will be taking a slot in Tier 1 while the Bf 109 E1 will make an appearance in Tier 0. These new planes should even out these early tiers. The other big news is the tail audit. For years we’ve been unhappy with the part of the flight model that produces such dramatic yaw flop when using the rudder. Time and again we’ve fiddled with the flight model or the drag points or the surface areas in an attempt to tame the beast. This work always seemed in vain until now. We realized finally that it wasn’t the flight model at all. It was the input that was causing such dramatic flight characteristics and lo and behold hidden in the thousands of lines of data that make up an airplane’s flight, control and weapons was a fix. And fix it did. The change is dramatic and probably the best change we’ve ever made to our air game. I think BmBm sums it up best when he says, “The yaw fix has made aerobatics and advanced combat maneuvers possible where they were formerly tricky at best and downright lethal at worst.” You can read more of his analysis here.

"The change is dramatic and probably the best change we’ve ever made to our air game. "

There are several other more minor changes that you’ll find in the ReadMe. Among them is a fix to some belt files that fell out of our Unity upgrade. It seems that some planes have been misfiring a few rounds in their belt. It’s not dramatic but for those of you who live and die by the seconds of trigger you have you’ll probably notice a bit more bite in your attack.

Terrain - Our biggest art project of the year has been preparing for the coming Unity upgrade by redoing a lot of our content. We’ve been focused on replacing old buildings and you’ll find several improvements with new urban buildings starting to roll out, a new munitions building, new docks, new AB walls for airfields, new farm ruins, and several older buildings from the Belgian, town and city sets redone or replaced with newer objects. While these all look better in the current game they will really begin to shine when we release the Unity upgrade. Oh and the capture table has made its last appearance. I’m not sure what you’ll call the new capture objects but we have a pool going at the office and if you call them “happy monkey heads” then I’ll win. I think capture radio will probably win out though.

Keymapper- Player, “Sgtspoon” has been a real boon to many of our players by providing alternate keymappers over the years. He’s been after us forever about getting his work into the game and we decided that with our new release now’s the time to finally jump the hurdles that were preventing us from just dropping it in. We’ve modified his work and added some of our own twists but we now have a functional keymapper default for those players who might come to the game without their trusty twisty stick (ahem, no jokes). The game will even auto detect if you have a joystick or not and set itself appropriately. Also now, if you have a joystick detection issue or you plug in a new game pad you can go directly to your “Settings” tab and redetect your input controllers. We’d like a lot of feedback on this during testing so that we can be sure we’ve really nailed this one and offer any future new players the best and most intuitive keymapper we can. Some of you old vets might even switch to the keyboard and mouse to drive your Tigers and Shermans across the Meuse. It could happen!

User Interface- The user interface is going to go through some changes as we roll out for China. Most of these changes will probably take place after 1.29 but for this release we’ve added some new in game name tags with better resolution. The old ones were really getting tired looking and since we needed to support Chinese name tags this was a great upgrade for everyone. We also added the ability to zoom the map with the plus and minus keys. That’s something that always pops up in your emails and rat chats. One thing that we are also testing out is the showing the AI on the map. We’re a little divided on the usefulness verses clutter issue so we’ll be looking for some feedback in open test from you guys. As always we like our players to help steer the ship and participating in open test is about the best way to have your immediate feedback become a part of the game we all love.

Widescreen- Back in the day people would have thought you were crazy if you wanted a widescreen monitor. After all, reading is top to bottom not side to side. Besides, we were making a PvP game and to make it all fair we should lock the field of view so that all players see the same thing. Well, times change and widescreen monitors became all the rage. Still we resisted. That is until Matrox sent me the modern day equivalent of a fire breathing hydra in their new Triple Head Digital Edition. This bad boy let’s you hook up three monitors and treat them as one. Sure it is the best productivity tool since the invention of the window but more important it makes games AWESOMER! That’s right. 3840 x 1024 is the new king. We support it now in the game world though we still have some UI work to do. This is good news for all of you wide screen users as you will now benefit oh so slightly with a wider field of view. However, if you are as hardcore as me and have a Matrox and a Track IR Pro you’ll basically have eyes in the back of your head. Well, ok, I still get owned all the time but you’re probably really leet and this setup might work a whole lot better for those of you with actual skills.

Windows Vista Support- Now that XP is on it’s last leg and with our pending release we’ve decided to nail the last of the Vista issues. Primarily this means that all of you settings and screenshots will be found in your user folder. This goes for XP. With the open test pending we’d really like to hear from any of you Vista users. If you are having any issues we ask you to test them out in open test and tell us what you can so we can lay those bugs to rest.

Other Goodies-

Chat now has some cool shortcuts you can type. Say you type “/1 I'm on $lead's mission in $unit attacking $targ but we haven't left $orig yet”. Everyone on channel 1 will hear that you are on Gophur’s mission in 3rd Infantry attacking Grobbendonk but we haven’t left Jodoinge yet. Well you know what I mean.

Scoring has also gotten a change we’ll be play testing.  KFSONE added a guarding bonus which we may turn on if it is received well. Basically you can get score for the dreaded bunker duty. You can’t get enough that leaving you guy online all night in a deserted town will do much for you but it is a little boost for those who pull sentry while their mates are off chasing the local girls.

You knife wielders will be pleased to know that your walk toggle sneak attacks just got more deadly as the knife has been amped up. Tankers and infantry alike will be pleased to learn that dead men no longer clutch their trigger in their final throes so no more dead men firing their weapons. There is a host of other minor and major gameplay and unit tweaks that you’ll find in the read me once we go into open test.

"The Unity upgrade is that improvement and it will be ready to go into live testing early next year."

Unity Upgrade- The coders are chomping at the bit to get this into test and as soon as we deliver the last of the China project and start working on our 2009 plan we’ll be letting this code loose. But first we need to explain a bit about what you can expect from this code and what the implications are for its release.

First some definition work is in order. Just what is the Unity upgrade? First and foremost it’s a refactoring or modernization of our entire code base. The Unity Game Engine is fundamentally eight years old. Sure we’ve changed a lot over the years but the basic interaction between code modules and the foundations have not undergone major overhaul. This has been a major undertaking over the last three years. Our game has very specific needs. In order to support infantry level combat in an environment where tanks need to be able to fire on targets at 3000m and planes need to cross vast distances at hundreds of miles an hour require some very specific requirements from an engine. When we started WWIIOL we realized that no engine out there could do what we needed so we built our own. Over the years we’ve realized that there still isn’t an engine out there that can meet our requirements (believe me, I’ve looked at them ALL) and so we need to improve what we have. The Unity upgrade is that improvement and it will be ready to go into live testing early next year.

So then, what exactly is in this upgrade? To start, the upgrade is a fundamental rework of the code to improve performance and productivity. We’re not just talking about better FPS we’re also talking about the ability of our dev team to integrate new features with out breaking things. We’re talking about taking disparate parts of code and making them one defined module. We’re talking about rebuilding code bases to get rid of errors. We’re talking about killing the corn flakes bug and we’re talking about rag doll physics. Sure we’re also talking about things looking better with new shader languages and modern rendering techniques but it honestly isn’t all about looks. This hot chick has beauty and more importantly, brains.

"We’re talking about killing the corn flakes bug and we’re talking about rag doll physics."

What’s this mean for the player? First it means better performance and better content (special effects, lighting, shading, trees). But it also means Shader 2.0 as a minimum and it also means SSE2 support as a minimum. Lots of you probably don’t know what that means exactly but or now let’s just say that it means you’ll need a modern computer. Video cards more than 4 generations old aren’t going to work. This is really only a problem if you are running on a 6 year old Radeon 9800 or an nVidia MX400 series. That’s not really asking so much now is it. As for CPUs it basically means you need a Pentium 4 or better. Once again 99% of you are covered and the other 1%, well I don’t think they can probably play too well any way. I bring these up just so you are aware that if you’ve got an older rig, this might be a great time to start thinking about an upgrade. As we get closer to the holidays I’ll probably do a build guide for a few budget levels. You’d be surprised what you can put together on Newegg.com for just a few hundred dollars.

The Future

I’m tempted to assail you with some of our plans for 1.30 and for 2009 but I think there’s enough goodness written above to hold you for a while. Yes, it's been a while since our last major game update and I know some of you may be wishing the features included some long-awaited toys, but the work we've done in 2008 is vitally important. A successful (re)launch into a new territory like China can put CRS into a stronger position and give us the resources we've needed for so long. It's been seven years since we've had an opportunity like this and with your help we will have a hugely successful launch and WWIIOL will have another seven years filled with the world’s greatest virtual war and we’ll get to do all those cool things that we’ve all always dreamed of. Maybe even parachuting dogs…
 

Dana "GOPHUR" Baldwin
Senior Producer
Cornered Rat Software

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