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Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront News

Devblog #92: Testing times



Hi everyone, we’re back and there’s a lot going on at the moment, so let’s have a look at what we’ve been up to. We’ve also promised to give you more schedule info, so here we go.
In general, we are progressing very well at the moment.

General

Our previous update was followed by our trailer, and we can only be pleased by the awareness and the positive reactions it generated.
Apart from that it’s been business as usual, so we’ve been very productive in the past weeks. A lot of work was done on the UI, while more new animations, new voice lines are being added and new DCG maps have been finished.
With the DMS support we get, it’s been a smooth ride and a real co-production so far.
Some examples:
  • New Pak40 model is ready and in the texturing stage after the old one was discontinued due to some deviations from blueprints.
  • Windmill is now fully finished with destructibility
  • 72-K and SgrW 42 were exported (WIP)
  • Winter Depot map is ready.
Beta testing

The beta will start as soon as we finish the UI. This is just a bit later than we intended but we’re going flat- out. The beta will be a big landmark because our testers will be the first ones outside the studio to see the game and as the saying goes, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”.
Perhaps we should note that our beta test is a closed beta. We were asked very often by people who want to take part, but we’re not planning any changes or additions to the team at the moment.


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Discord

Our Discord server will go live when we start our beta. We intend to use it for communication with you, the community. Of course we will try to entertain you with visuals, maybe a Q&A here and there and a meta game. Meta games are a different format than the game they support. Ours will prepare you for your first campaign mission, and there’s some fun to be had on the way. More about that later.

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Release

We planned to tell you the release date today. However, It's a bit early to be announcing a definite release date at the moment. We are sure we can tell you very soon.

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The past weeks have been quite intense for us. We are edging ever closer to releasing the first game we ever made. After all that happened, we now want to see our indie baby get born!

That’s it for the moment; so thanks for stopping by, and see you next time.

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Men of War successor Gates of Hell is now a Call to Arms expansion - due out later this year



Gates of Hell is a game we've had on our radar for a while now. It was definitely on our 'Most Anticipated' list for 2019, not sure if we'd spotted it before then. A real-time tactical WW2 game, it was shaping up to be the Men of War successor we all deserved, but developed by the creators of the original engine that powered Men of War - Best Way Soft.

Something weird happened behind the scenes at the end of 2019/early 2020, and the actual developers of Gates of Hell split away from BWS. They've now been picked up by Digitalmindsoft - the company that made many of the later games in the Men of War series, like Men of War: Assault Squad 2.

It was hinted at back in June, but today those same developers - now officially Barbed Wire Studios - have announced that Gates of Hell will be coming later this year as an 'expansion' to DMS's Call to Arms game. It's also called Gates of Hell: Osfront, which means we get ANOTHER game set on the Eastern Front. Yay.

There's an official announcement trailer you can watch here:



Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:


Steel Division 2 - Black Sunday Review

The King of Battle - A Guide to Artillery in Steel Division: Normandy ‘44

Access Granted: Call to Arms


Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront -- Announcement!



We are happy to announce Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront!

Digitalmindsoft, the makers of Men of War: Assault Squad 2 and Call to Arms, teamed up with Barbedwire Studios to deliver a new and exciting WW2 gameplay.

Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront is aimed to convey the realism that strategy players have always desired: Historically accurate visuals and locations, no health bars, no simplifications, no shortcuts taken. Offering unrivalled immersion to give the most legitimate WWII RTS/RTT to date.

Learn more about the game in our announcement trailer and new store page!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD0o9xC8lkM

https://store.steampowered.com/app/400750/Call_to_Arms__Gates_of_Hell_Ostfront/?beta=1

Development update #91: Features and support



Hi everyone, we are still going strong, and we hope you are too!

Development is progressing nicely and we will soon be able to tell you the alpha test is done and the beta is looming. We’re getting a bit more excited now!
While we are preparing to update our store page, we think it may be nice to highlight a few features that you will encounter in Gates of Hell.
Some of these have been discussed in our devblogs over the past years, and because it’s hard to keep track (plus too much work to read all updates) we decided to do just a short list of selected features of which we think they will make Gates of Hell a completely new experience.


Community input

Many features have been asked for by the community, through our forums and social media; so thank you all for giving us such excellent feedback. We’re quite sure we’ve got the most wanted features right. Chances are that you see your own suggestion here already! Keep in mind that we will develop more after release; because development on the first DLC will start immediately after release. We plan to do quite a number, adding factions as we go along, and adding features wherever we can.

Here’s a selection of features:

  • At least 150 vehicles of all sorts (including civilian), 70 human models, 80 small arms for the 2 factions in “Ostfront”.
  • 12 historical missions, 10 multiplayer maps and 15 dynamic campaign maps
  • All SP missions are historical and all SP maps are historical locations
  • Realistic representation of ammunition and ballistics
  • Realistic armor
  • Suspension for vehicles
  • All authentic vehicle and weapon sounds
  • Crew hatches and other vehicle peripherals like smoke screens are operational
  • Dynamic campaign mode
  • Doctrines in multiplayer to specialise your army in different tactics.
  • Authentic voice acting
  • Flight models for aircraft have custom parameters for each type
  • Detailed mechanics for all game items: Land mines include fragmentation mines, bouncing betty and magnetic mines. Bayonets and various melee weapons. Countless types of tools you can use in singleplayer to sabotage the enemy, and to build boobytraps
  • Multiplayer gamemode mechanics representing a historical experience (“territory” gamemode)
  • Peer to server multiplayer netcode in 64 bit architecture for smooth multiplayer experience, thanks to the advanced DMS platform.
  • Realistic logic for repair and engineering work in the battlefield
  • Vehicles have realistic crew settings, including large cannon, which may have up to 6 crew members
  • Visualization for damage in each vehicle component. There are no health bars, but there's hints on the status of the component's durability.

There are many more new things, which you will find out on release!

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Historical missions and DCG

Co-operating with DMS developers there are some very nice features that our game will benefit from. Thanks to the fact that DMS has developed (and is still developing) a Dynamic Campaign Generator, we have a great extra asset. For this mode we have developed a number of purpose- built maps, some of which can be used in other game modes too.
These maps are different from the ones we made before, because of the purpose they serve; this means that unlike our SP missions and campaigns, DCG maps are not based on historical events; you will have to write history yourself on these. We’ll be giving more details about the DCG feature later.


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Voice actors wanted

We are steadily working to deliver a fresh new game, in which we will have new voice acting. It’s almost complete, and yet we could still do with some voice actors. So, if you have a decent microphone and if you are a native russian speaker, please fill out the form on our webpage. Thanks!

Mac and Linux

Because we have switched to a different engine we must also point out that, as a result, we can’t provide Mac and Linux support any more. These OSs do not support our advanced directX and we are not in a position to change that. We’ve always aimed to be one of the few, but it is now beyond our reach unfortunately. We apologize if you are among those in our community who uses either of these OS’s. At first sight there is nothing we can say to “ease the pain” except that we will of course let you know immediately should this change again in the future.



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Trailer

We are putting the finishing touch on our new trailer, which we made to update our store page. When that is finished, we will put it on YouTube too. We expect this to be finished before the next blog. So subscribe to our YouTube channel (link below) to make sure you don’t miss it!

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Development update #90: Roadmap and FAQ



Hi everyone, we’re back with some more information about what we’re up to and how we want to arrange things for our release, which will take place later this year.
Since we made our announcement last month, a lot has happened and many questions were asked. In this blog we want to answer some of the questions we got.

Buying the game, and game price
“Will I need to buy 2 games if I want to have Gates of Hell?”
No. We will release Gates of Hell as a DLC for Call to Arms in such a way that you pay an amount that would be a reasonable price for 1 game.

There are 2 possible situations; either you already have Call to Arms or you don’t.

If you own any version of Call to Arms already, Gates of Hell will be available at a reduced price. It does not matter which version of Call to Arms you own.

If you DO NOT own any version of Call to Arms yet, Gates of Hell and the Basic Edition of Call to Arms will come bundled together for a single, moderate price. We will decide this soon.

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Release
“Isn’t a 2020 release a far too ambitious goal, given that you are switching engines?”
No. Thanks to our specialists and to very energetic support from DMS we have already finished porting to the new engine. The waiting we had to endure earlier this year resulted in more time to produce content, and that’s exactly what we used that time for. This will allow us to offer way more content than we had planned for Early Access, which in itself is a step we will skip completely.

What will be the release date?”
The last thing we want to do is make a promise we can’t keep. We have dependencies in the process that cannot be ignored. But let’s just say we’ll be beta testing by the end of this summer, and that we will plan a date as soon as the beta is completed and any bugs we might find have been reworked. We aim to tell you in september.

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Assorted FAQ
“When can we play the beta?”
We will beta test in a closed environment. Our testers have already been selected and we have no plans for doing an open beta, because we think that would be too much of a challenge to manage with our indie team.

“Will you be using the first person view that is typical of Call to Arms?”
This is not part of our original intentions with GoH, so the answer is no. Maybe this can be a future consideration, but for now we do not intend to use it.

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“Will Gates of Hell be just like Call to Arms?”
Even though we use the Call to Arms engine, Gates of hell will look and feel completely different. This is the result of implementing our own features and using our own philosophy for the game dynamics. For example, we have our own way of determining any damage in- game, based on entities like munition types, armor thickness and shot angles.
The result will be a game that doesn’t feel or look like Call to Arms.

“Which game modes will be available?”
We plan to have different modes of course; in the first place, we will have SP and MP content. The SP content will be a historical campaign for each faction, and the MP will be a historically-based asymmetrical PvP with the possibility of playing with AI bots.
You will be able to experience the evolution of the armies and their traits as the war evolved. A more competitive mode will be included for the ranked auto-matchmaker but nonetheless will still be historically accurate. We will tell you our own names for these modes at some point, and they will resemble earlier games to a certain extent, so maybe you could compare these to “assault zones” (which we call Territory) where controlling an area is not down to a small circle around a flag but to an entire area of the map. more modes will be revealed later.

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We will also implement a dynamic campaign, which will allow you to grow your army from mission to mission and will provide an immersive continuous campaign, outside of the singleplayer missions which due to their strict historical setup, cannot be interlinked story-driven. We will tell you about our game modes in a later devblog, most likely a blog that will give you an overview of features as well.

”When can we see a trailer?”
We have our specialist, and right now he is working on a new trailer. The previous one, which was almost finished, became obsolete the moment we knew we were going to use another engine. That’s life, but it basically meant “back to square one”. If this hadn’t happened it would have been finished months ago. So we’re working on it; this is as important to us as it is to you.

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”Will there be workshop support?”
Yes. We love the creative community and we will welcome any effort to add something special to the game by means of mods. In fact, we would encourage anyone who considers a mod for our game to use our forum as a starting point; over time, we have grown a big collection of suggestions and ideas that can be turned into scenarios. In fact, our forum is a perfect starting point for modders that are looking for ideas for mods that portray a historical battle which the world has forgotten.

That’s it for now. We will be back with another update in about 4 weeks.
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Thanks for your support, see you next month!