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Battleground Europe - The Weapons of War
The folks over at Battleground Europe are celebrating their astounding seven year anniversary and have been kind enough to provide us with this developer journal talking about what go into creating a new armored vehicle for their game.
As soon as you log into Battleground Europe, you realize that this is a very, very different game than your typical MMO. Players enter a game world that spans thousands of miles of European countryside and is populated with hundreds of cities, villages and hamlets all of which play a very important role in determining the outcome of the virtual war that rages on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
But the most critical factor in the war are the weapons: Tanks, aircraft, rifles, machine guns, destroyers, anti-aircraft guns...the list goes on. And at the core of each and every one of these weapons lie some very advanced systems which provide the basis for a game driven by realism. Battleground Europe relies on military-grade ballistic models as well as vehicle and weapon models which use actual data from their real WWII counterparts.
Geof Rey "DOC" Evans, Producer and Game Manager, explains the process of creating an Armored Fighting Vehicle in Battleground Europe:
“Once we have decided what vehicles to add based on a number of gameplay criteria that determine such things, the real work begins. First we have to heavily research the weapons of choice (in this case we are looking at tanks) to gather information on all the salient attributes we need to incorporate into the model based on its real life attributes.
This would entail:
- Caliber of the main gun and its ballistic performance profile, not just its penetration ability. Obviously secondary weapons such as co-axial MG’s are also considered and modeled to the same standards. Gunsights are researched for historical optical markings and performance.
- Layout and construction of the protective armor covering the vehicle. This includes cast versus rolled plate differentials, angles of mounting from vertical or horizontal, and the various thicknesses of different parts of the armored shell that comprises the vehicles protective armor.
- Layout and construction of the internal components like ammunition storage, guns, engines, fuel tanks, oil tanks, transmissions, radiators, and the crew itself. All of these components can be damaged or destroyed based on a wide range of consequential outcomes that rely on the ballistic performance of the weapon that strikes the tank and what kind of damage it does at that point.
- Performance profile of the vehicle, including road speed, cross country speed, turret speeds (traverse rates) and fuel range.
Cross sectional 3-views are put together with any photographs/artwork of the vehicle in question, often including a 3 dimensional model … for the 3d artists to begin creating the vehicle. The internals of the vehicle are also covered for relevant aspects to be included in the virtual cockpit which is, in fact, a separate 3D model the player views out from when they are using the vehicle, and which is contained inside the vehicle much like a real cockpit is functionally configured within a vehicle. Historic textures are used wherever it is possible to confirm them as such.
Once the producer responsible for the data or flight model and the artists have a working example, it is put through an exhaustive series of tests run in the game engine itself, to ensure proper functionality of all aspects of the model, from performance of it’s attributes (gun performance, armor effectiveness or vehicle maneuverability) all the way down to code based aspects like the visual damage and destruction model.”
This video is a graphic representation of what happens when damage is applied to a vehicle. It isn't simply a matter of a hit causing 25% damage. Physics play a huge role in determining which parts of the vehicle suffer damage, whether those parts are rendered inoperable, is there damage being caused to other parts of the vehicle by ammunition cooking off, and much more:
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Ever wonder what happens when a vehicle gets damaged? This video will show you!
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This is the backbone of game that delivers realism and game play like few others.
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I must say I Love this game and Have played it longer than any other game to date.
How about the lag? Has that been fixed?
Lag? What lag? There's no lag...
In other news, this game rocks, the graphics aren't fantastic, but there's an extremely good reason for that, and said reason is because it'd take you literal HOURS to cross the landscape of this game, the distance between cities can sometimes be up to 20-30 kilometers. And the community and gameplay are fricken fantastic, no where else can you find such awesomeness.
Greatest game ever, hands down.
Mmmm been looking to try this , hows the community / Customer service etc? Appreciate any feedback.
Thanks
Unfortantly after 7 years this game hasnt fulfilled its promises from day 1.
Yea the graphics have improved, but they had to. Text based games had made more improvements in graphics. The problem was with WWIIOL is that the developers were forced to put out the game before it was ready. This could have been because of several reasons. At first I blamed the backing company but the more I played, and the more I read the forums the more I started to realize that it may have been Corner Rat Studios (CRS) fault. It only took another 6 months after the release of the game to get it out of beta, and then another year to fix some of the net coding issues. They finally revamped the graphics of the game after about 2 years, and by then the game was already far passed out dated. There has been much conflict in the game and it hasnt been fighting over a pixelized France, its been between the developers and the playerbase. (And in some cases the developers inhouse) Alot of this source of friction has been based around Geof Rey Evans AKA-"DOC", the game manager and producer. His grating attitude, and often rude, but improving, demenour has alienated many players and driven off others. At one point in this games history there were on average squads of 100 players online per side every day. But due to the lack of real advancement towards the original goals of this game many players have just left. Some check in every so often with the free trials and such, but then leave when they see the game is still not really worth the 15 dollars a month.
Yes there are some positives to WWIIOL. It does have one of the largest game environments without loading times in the FPS game worlds. But this is offset by the often poor frame rates, and need for monster machines to run a substandard graphics engine.... CRS is working on this, and the vaunted UNITYII(TEII) graphics engine is due out, "soon". On the down side many things in the game had to be dumbed down for the sake of balance and gameplay. The flightmodel is the most notible of such. With planes that perform near supersonic dives, in a 1930s design WWII plane. And the endless low level tree top flying that is common in many other "pocket" games. After 7 years the game is still missing a good damage rendering system. You either lose a wing, the tail, or explode. Its pretty much the same for vehicles on the ground, you either lose a wheel/track, burn, or explode.
As for gameplay, the game is basicly one giant capture the flag, table humping, fight after another. Its pretty much the same thing every 2 hours, with different names and orders to the buildings. Rarely does the fights take place outside of the towns. And they all end about the same way, with a large group of tanks sitting in the opposing army base camping for infantry kills.
All in all, this game after 7 years, hasnt made a big improvement. Its trying but its still not where it should be, or where it could be. But its your choice, give the game a try in its 14 day free trial. But be warned if you dont have a good system, you will be stuck with low sub teen frame rates. Dont expect a polished game like the pictures show. Expect a game that looks 6 years old, and playes like it too.
Hodo.
Well, the "Welcome back Axis soldier" campaign is going off without a hitch. A massive map roll ensued as the former axis players logged back in June 6th, and has caused the game to show off its *worst* features to former players yet again. Boring empty town caps, much of the fights are at towns where there's nothing at all to fight against, or if there is, its a Navy brigade, and no one can spawn in to defend as no one has navy rank.
So the game is in 'whack-a-mole' mode, and is so utterly boring right now that it makes me log off in disgust. If you can't keep a person playing for FREE in the game, what hope is there of keeping paying customers?
You make me laugh hodo, you slag off a game that hasn't delivered but you still pay. Guess they're doing something right.