Tank Squad News

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 23rd Development Status. Check out our two weeks of work.

New Character Face

We’ve been working on new characters. So far you’ve seen new uniforms. We’ve begun to focus more on creating new character faces. Those faces have the same topology as previous ones, which allows for facial animations.



Character Controller

We’ve added a shooting mechanism to the character controller. New code includes weapon configuration which contains:

• Weapon animation
  
• Weapon sounds
  
• Weapon VFX
  
• First person animation
  
• Inventory spot
  
• Weapon characteristics (ammo, fire range, damage etc.)
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Feldgendarmerie
Feldgendarmerie was the military police of Nazi Germany. In 1933 they were reintroduced to the Wehrmacht. They received full infantry training and possessed extensive police powers. They were usually given occupation duties in territories controlled by the Wehrmacht. In Tank Squad, you will be able to find them in our repair station, where they will direct the traffic and show you the direction of departure for the next mission.



Repair Station

We’re redesigning our repair station. From our last internal tests, we’ve concluded that our current repair station is too small. We’ve decided to separate the repair station into different sections and place them in the correct order to facilitate vehicle repairs.

The repair station is going to contain those interactive stands:

• Rearm
  
• Refuel
  
• Spare parts
  
• Tank Graveyard
  
• Paint stand
  
• HQ
  
• Quartermaster
  
• HR
  

Trenches
We continue to work on trenches, here you can see some work in progress. The next step will be to add objects like wood planks, barbed wire, sandbags, etc. to make trenches look more realistic and to build some specific trenches modules like MG post, PTRD post, anti-tank post, etc. We are simultaneously preparing trenches for gameplay testing by adding infantry to them and placing them in the battle level in strategic places.



Motion Capture Animation
Since we’ve begun to work with the Rokoko Motion Capture suit, we’ve been making new character animations. One of those animations is surrender. In Tank Squad, some soldiers under specific circumstances will surrender.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

And the most important…
We would like to wish you all the best for Christmas and the coming new year! Thank you for being with us this year, and that we could count on your suggestions and support.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 22nd Development Status. Check out our two weeks of work.

Milestone

Currently, a machine park in which players can repair tanks and battle levels are separated from each other. Our biggest task at this moment is to transfer damages that the player’s tank has taken from battle level to machine park and also transfer repaired tank state to the next battle level with its customization and settings. Once we will have that done we will continue to work on the next campaign missions. Right now we are working on two battle levels simultaneously and on the repair station level. All those levels are being tested on regular basis. We are very strict with testing to find out any bugs and to improve gameplay.

For us testing is based on few things:

• Optimization - If the game runs smoothly on our computers.
  
• Pacing - How much time it would take for a player to finish certain objectives.
  
• Balance - How does difficulty escalate, game can’t be too difficult at the beginning and too easy at the end. Also, it can’t be too boring or too intense.
  
• Gameplay - If the game is just fun.
  
• UI - If it is easy to find what to do, how to interact with objects around if we guide intuitively player through the game.
  
• Integrity - How does each gameplay part correlate with other aspects of the game.
  
• Visual - Since the beginning of the production of the game we’ve been focusing mostly on functionality, features, and gameplay design. As we are more confident after all those gameplay tests that our game is fun, we begin to focus more on the visual aspect of the game.
  

Sounds
We’ve finished work on some sounds in the last 2 months.

Weapons:

- Soviet

• SVT-40 Rifle
  
• PPSh41 submachine gun
  
• M1895 Pistol
  
• Maxim MachineGun
  
• DP28 MachineGun
  

- German

• MP40 submachine gun
  
• MauserC96 Pistol
  
• Karabiner98k Rifle
  
• Schmeisser Bergmann MP18 submachine gun
  
• Luger P08 Pistol
  
• PZB Panzerbüchse 39 anti-tank rifle
  

Explosives

• M1A1 Bazooka
  
• Panzerfaust
  
• Hafthohlladung Panzerknacker
  
• Tellermine 42
  
• Springmine 35
  
• TM-35 Mine
  

Vehicles

- T-34/76

• Engine
  
• Cannon shot
  
• DT Machine Gun shots
  

Character Controller

• Walking
  
• Running
  
• Jumping
  
• Aiming
  
• Getting in vehicles through hatches
  
• Picking up objects
  
• Placing objects on vehicles
  
• Taking off objects from vehicles
  
• Basic Inventory
  
• Interaction with crane
  
• Simple character customization
  
• Basic sounds effects
  

Interactive Notebook
In repair station player will have a notebook to manage his tank, squad, resources, etc. It’s still a work in progress and the notebook’s content may vary in the game from what we’re presenting now. Its current content is:

- Tank Status
- To Do list
- Machine Park Info
- Equipment

• Ammo
  
• Fuel
  
• Tools

- Customize Vehicle

• Paint camouflage
  
• Paint Emblem
  
• Paint Numbers
  
• Paint Text

- Next Mission Info
- Tank Squad

• Vehicles
  
• Infantry
  
• Support
  
• Recon
  

Gameplay Repair Tests

- Redesign a machine park

• We are going to make it larger
  
• More space, wider roads
  
• Parking for at least 6 tanks
  
• Fuel Station
  
• Ammo Station
  
• Repair Station
  
• Headquarters
  
• Make enough space for players
  
• Train station
  
• Trucks
  
• Interactive NPC units
  
• Tank parts
  
• New Character: Feldgendarmerie
  

- Improvements in environment

• New vegetation
  
• New props
  
• Fixed collisions
  
• Optimized props
  
• New NPCs with new animations
  

- Sounds

• Footsteps
  
• Crane
  
• Ambient
  

- UI

• Interactive Notebook
  
• Colorful outlines for interactive objects
  
• Ghost objects to show player where to place objects
  
• Changes in key binding
  
• Changes in 2D UI
  

Environment

• Terrain
  
• Terrain materials
  
• Trees
  
• Bushes
  
• Optimization
  

In previous development statuses, we’ve been showing you trees, bushes, and optimization (LODs). This time we’ll focus on terrain materials such as grass, ground, mud, sand, etc. Those materials come from Substance Source Library and we are going to modify them to fit better our environments.



Wallpapers
Recently we’ve been asked by our community members to share our concept arts as wallpapers. You can download high quality Tank Squad wallpapers in our discord. Invitation link below! :)



Thank you and have a good weekend!
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 21th Development Status. You can see what we were working on the last two weeks.

LODs
Because our tanks most of the time are going to be used on the wide open areas where is loads of vegetation we have to focus on optimization. At the moment for every tree and bush, our artist is preparing LODs (LOD stands for the level of detail, and it’s the process of making less detailed versions of our models that are viewed when they’re further away from the camera.) By doing this we want to make sure that every single one of you is going to be able to play our game with a high FPS number.

Here is a polycount example of our tree which has LODs:

LOD0 - 11.000
LOD1 - 5.000
LOD2 - 2.000
LOD3 - 500
LOD4 - 8



New character face
When it comes to our work on characters, we focus now on making new faces for characters.


Camouflage Net
One of the features of Tank Squad is the possibility to place camouflage nets with branches on tanks to camouflage them.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


Tank models

We've been getting a lot of questions lately about how many and which tanks will be available in Tank Squad. We have to admit that our team is not entirely sure about this ourselves. At this point, we're focusing more on gameplay and mechanics than making a list of potential vehicles to add. However, we're sure that new content, including vehicles, will be added even after the game's release to keep adding to the base of available tanks. We still have a lot of challenges and tests ahead of us on the implementation of the new vehicles, so we will keep you updated on how they are going.

Thank you and have a good weekend!
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 20th Development Status. You can see on what we were working the last two weeks.

Tree destruction

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Besides bending, ripping off, and destroying trees and bushes VFX Artist also needs to make brand new foliages and for this, he is using SpeedTree software. Corylus avellana or simple Common Hazel is the first species of shrub we are making. Here are a few examples of full shrubs:


And single branches with leaves:


There is another reason to survive the whole campaign - hazelnuts in September and October :)

Repair Station

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
This time we would like to show you the progress that we’ve done on the repair station. Four players can cooperate to repair a tank using a crane. Interactive tank parts and objects are highlighted with a colorful outline. We’ve added a dot to increase the precision of selecting objects that players want to interact with.
To use a crane player has to use WASDQE keys. We’ve added a simple placeholder UI as without it crane controls were confusing even for us. Another thing is that to be able to place some tank parts or objects on a tank, you have to make sure there that nothing collides with the spot. Like you could see in the video, you can’t place an engine cover on a tank unless you rotate the turret.

Enemy vehicles AI

Our AI code was rewritten, so we can use the same code base for player tanks and AI tanks.
Now, our AI tanks are synchronized in multiplayer. Code for AI was optimized and cleaned.
We fix many bugs in AI spawners, and we started to connect their behavior to our BattleManager.

Synchronization

We’ve rewritten and optimized our synchronization code for multiplayer. Now, it is way smoother than before. Many bugs connected with it were fixed during this process.

Motion capture Rokoko

One more look on the work with Rokoko motion capture animation. Shooting from Mosin Nagant 91/30 with scope.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thank you and have a nice weekend!
DeGenerals

[h2]Boo, tankers! 🎃[/h2]

Today's development status will be a little different from previous ones... We didn't give candies to the kids from the neighborhood who came to our office, and they pranked us! They uploaded Halloween related malware to our project and we didn’t manage to deal with it yet. Anyway, we decided to present you a 19th Development Status and our work as always, every two weeks.




German Campaign

We’ve prepared a draft for a German Campaign made of 6 missions. Each mission is on a different map and has got different characteristics that make it special and unique.

So far the missions are set in this order:

• Small Village - Learn basic mechanics of the game
  
• Village with river - Learn complex mechanics of the game
  
• Forest - Close distance combat
  
• Steps - Long distance combat
  
• Village with train station - Tactical Battle
  
• Village with fortifications - Tactical Battle
  

Each mission is going to have a set of scripts that control the pace and the difficulty of the mission. The scripts include:

• enemy units behavior
  
• friendly units behavior
  
• mission objects
  
• mission events
  
• player’s decision influence on the mission
  
• randomization
  
• events
  

Animation motion-capture

This week we’ve configured and began to record character animations using Rokoko motion capture technology. It consists of a special costume with sensors over whole body including head and fingers.
We went to a shooting range to record shooting animations.
With motion Capture we've tried to obtain animations like: Moving with Weapons/ Changing position from stance to crouch to prone/ Shooting / reloading weapon / Position for holding specific weapons.

Weapons we've used: Rewolver Smith Wesson, PPSh-41, PPS, Mosin–Nagant, Kar98k, MG42, DP28.

Some of the animations we’ve done in our office:

• Pouring fuel
  
• Instructing a driver
  
• Turning on an engine
  
• Pulling cables
  
• Using hammer
  
• Firing with mortar
  
• Digging with shovel
  
• Soldier surrender
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Repair Station
New features:

• Engine Stand Model to make tank’s engine easier to repair
  
• Player can pick up those objects and place them on a tank:
  - Flag
  - Sandbags
  - Canisters
  - Shovel
  - Camouflage
  - Tools
  - Boxes
  - Barrels
  - Tank parts
  
• Outline for objects to pick up
  
• Ghost object to show the player where to place and object
  
• Multiplayer synchronization
  
• Entering a tank through a hatch
  
• Turn on/off the engine to be able to repair a tank
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Bendable plants

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thanks for all the support and have a SCARY weekend 🎃
DeGenerals