Development Status #10

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 10th Development Status. You can see on what we were working the last two weeks.

Enemy AI design

Together with our team, we discussed the model of enemy behavior on the battlefield and created a scheme on which we will model enemy AI. We want enemy AI to behave naturally and realistically.

Our initial approach is to have script-based events on the battlefield, that describe what happens if the player's team does specific action, for example:

Player's team seizes main objective
Enemy_Group_01 starts counter attack with:
air support if Player's team did not destroy Air Observer/Radio Station
party support if Player's team did not destroy/kill Arty Observer etc

So the approach is right now very basic, with each objective having a selected group of squads assigned to it to defend or attack, and then each unit following some basic machine-state system.

German Infantry

Below you can see a model of German infantry uniform which we are currently working on. We plan to put two variants in the game - Wehrmacht, and SS to keep it realistic. If you have any good sources of references for such uniforms, be sure to share them with us!

T-34/76 Tank model

We have finished working on a high-poly version of Soviet T-34/76 including the interior and engine.

Questions from our community

Recently we received some interesting questions from one of our Steam forum users, which we decided to answer in a development status to reach more people interested in our game.

You talk about multiplayer a lot, but it is quite unclear what kinds of multiplayer we will have in the game. Are there going to be player vs player battles, or player vs AI coop battles?

Our initial plan that we are still following was to add PvE (so player vs AI) battles, in coop. We are yet to figure out if we want to add some singleplayer only stuff but our focus is totally on coop. PvP is out of the question for now, it is totally not what we want to do.

During a battle, do 4 or 5 players take on the role of one tank crew, or does each player get their own tank crew to operate with?

Both, at the beginning each player will probably has his own tank that he commands, but at any time he can switch to given crew position and control the tank with that crewman. If the player dies and there are no more tanks as reinforcements, we plan to allow such player to become a crewman in another player tank, if the server will it (this will be a master setting for the host)

Does the player have a certain amount of time to repair, and must assign different members to repair different sections of the time? If the player wants to spend more time out of the battle to repair can they? Will certain repairs require more crew members to help, making the managing of repairs more important? If you do pull out of a battle to repair, can you rejoin that battle, or will you join another battle?

Depending on the mission in the campaign the repair section can be time limited or not (we are yet to test it, as we wanted the repair section to be the lobby of the game, where the player can rest and take a break from the battle)
We are yet to implement the repair mechanics from Tank Mechanic Simulator, and see how far we can take it before the game becomes too dull and too difficult when you have to repair few tanks at once before the next battle starts.
Some actions will require multiple players or player and AI help to finish them, for instance, loading tank ammo from trucks/storage, lifting the turret, etc. Some players will be assigned to work on tanks, and the host or commander will be preparing the stage for the next battle
Logistics and on-field repairs are still something we need to design and discuss, as we want to have very clearly separated battles and repair sections. It might be that player might have a choice if he wants to become part of a logistic company that focuses on salvaging stuff during battle, but we still plan to allow the player to roam on the battlefield after the battle ends, so he has unlimited or limited time (this could be decided if the battle was won or lost) to manage everything in his own pace.

Will losing a battle result in losing your tank and having to get a new one?

The campaign forces will have a pool of vehicles that players and enemies use, the more you destroy or the enemy destroys your forces the less you will have overall, you need to keep the casualties as low as possible. We will add some reinforcement system but it is too early to say how it will look like

Thank you and have a good weekend!
DeGenerals