Devblog #87: Smoke and animations

Hi everyone, it’s time for another update! With the end of the year in sight there’s some things we want to tell you. We also promised to show you some new animations, so let’s cut straight to the chase.


Right now we are very busy with behind- the- scenes decision making and planning. This needs to be done before we give you any dates and roadmaps. Our previous two development updates showed you the “visual catalog”. In the past 18 months we also showed you the kind of mission and the kind of realism you can expect from us. This devblog gives you an idea of the new animations. All in all, we are getting closer to early access every day.


We’ve been working on some nice features, such as the use of smoke dispensers on tanks.
Several ways of generating smoke to protect tanks were used in WW2. Some used launchers that were fired from inside the tank; some had smoke grenade launching canisters outside the tank; some tanks had “smoke candle” installations. We will portray all methods that were used.
These will feature on tanks that had them in real life, so this is not a general thing for every tank or every faction. This represents our goal of realism in the game; it would be wrong to have smoke dispensers on every tank, or to make them available for scenarios in any year of the war. Maybe you know which tanks will have these? At least the one below does:

https://youtu.be/0Vz3Gm_iv94
Tell us what you think, is this any good? Would you use this feature in- game?


https://youtu.be/9gbJTtxhy5w
(From ‘Allo ‘Allo)


On to the next subject, which is also about really new stuff we’re putting in Gates of Hell.

As we announced earlier this year, we are using MOCAP to create a complete set of all- new animations. We are very glad to have a nicely ambitious developer as our dedicated animator.
His work will give Gates of Hell a refreshing bit of realism to speed up getting rid of same old animations for 14 years. For instance, soldiers will not always simply fall over when killed; sometimes their struggle lasts a few moments and movements will occur until they are virtually dead.
Another one is that AI will know how to use a bayonet, but you may already have seen this in our YouTube channel.

So let’s show you a few of those new animations. Please keep in mind that these can be incorporated into the game at any point, so the fact that we are making these with the MOCAP software is not delaying early access. Here is a selection:





Remember that these are WiP, with some polishing here and there being planned. That is a difficult process by the way, but we will show you more animations very soon, without waiting for a devblog to show them to you.
So tell us, what do you think? Would you welcome the first new animations, after all those years? Do you like the idea of smoke screens?


We thought you might also want to see some recent modelling that came from the 3D department. Here are a few renders for you; can you correctly guess what these are? You’ll have to look really closely:

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Let us know in the forums!

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Thanks and see you next month!