Part 1: What’s happening right now?
The developers of Blitzkrieg 3 will soon bring you Version 0.9, which is designed to integrate all of the game’s elements. We told you about some innovations in previous devblogs, and now it’s time for you to know about them in more detail. Today’s episode of the Developer Diaries will explain how difficult it was for the team to prepare this version, what objectives we had in mind, what we had to abandon, and what made our programmers stay awake for days on end.
More on the Campaign and Additional Missions
When creating the campaign, we wanted to build an integrated story and tell you about key milestones in the war for the Axis countries. It was equally important for us to emphasise the heroism of ordinary soldiers, their bravery, and their contribution to the common cause. We turned to Boris Yulin, a military historian, to help us make the missions as realistic as possible. Boris has firsthand knowledge of the Blitzkrieg game series, as he helped develop the very first one. This time he personally chose missions for the campaign, as well as sharing his extensive factual knowledge with us.
We couldn’t overlook other battles in World War II. In addition to the 7 main campaign missions, you can also look forward to 9 additional ones. We’ve tried to make them as historically accurate as we can. During combat missions, you will only be able to use and get as a reward units and military hardware that existed in that time period.
New Economy and Counter System
It’s not easy to implement a new economic system. We needed to rethink and rework a lot of things. We completely dismantled the counter system and then put it back together again from scratch.
We couldn’t introduce any vehicles or units into the game before without greatly affecting the balance. When we introduced the rarity system, it helped us get rid of a number of issues and also make the combat system more varied.
UX/UI
Konstantin Verbitsky, Senior UX/UI Designer
“We’ve spent six months working on the version that you’re going to see very soon. As well as carrying out minor updates, we were creating a completely new product. We had to make a lot of changes: some things in the game were inconsistent and badly represented, and some screens looked too bulky. We’ve made all UI elements simpler, and now information is displayed in the right amount just when you need it. Now you can see the backbone of what we’ve been working on. All the screens will get more detailed in the versions to come. When you look at the screenshots, you can check out how many changes we made on a single screen. This is the global map screen, where you will receive information on your progress and success.”
We’ve changed the look of the screens, added new icons and developed an artistic solution to the rarity system. The game looks really different now. We hope that you’ll like the final result!
Programming
Our employees focused a great deal of their efforts on adding the trench system in this version. It turned out to be harder than we thought. To give you an insight into the difficulties involved, here are some comments from Artyom Pavlenko, our senior programmer:
What are trenches from a player’s point of view?
Just holes in the ground that an infantryman jumps into and runs around in...
But what are they from a programmer’s point of view?
A separate world with its own traversable map and pushout system. When a unit enters this world, they go through special teleportation channels formed just as their path is generated. At this point the unit becomes amorphous, and their physical body doesn’t exist in either world. At the same time, their prototype continues to encounter other units in the external world. When their amorphous body reaches the other world, their physical prototypes gets teleported into the trench to interact with the bodies that are only located in that trench. Sometimes the teleportation fails, and they end up in an untraversable area, a free zone in the external world. This results in the cataclysm of a misplaced unit existing in the external world...
We apologise that you will have to wait a little while longer for the trench system. To keep your spirits up in the meantime, please take a look at the results of our programmers’ work. The code has made it possible for tanks to go through trenches and for infantry to run under vehicles standing above trenches.
Part 2: “Player Suggestions”
Tedo80 (Steam):
Will this game have medals and ranks like previous games in the series?
We intend to introduce an achievements system.
You will receive them as you go through the tutorial and make progress for winning battles in a certain way and successfully performing difficult tasks with individual units. For example, destroying a certain number of troops with strike aircraft or maintaining control over all the howitzers on the map.
We don’t have any other plans about similar incentives right now.
Part 3: “Coming up...”
Our upcoming plan is to analyse your feedback to improve the game and make it more interesting. The contents of the next episode of the Developer Diaries will directly depend on your response to this version.