Part 1: What's happening right now?
As of this writing, our team is working hard on Update 0.8.7. When it is published, you'll probably already be fighting on the new map for the Skirmish mode, while we'll be doing quality assurance of the update and tracking any critical errors.
After a prolonged forced development march, virtually all of our studio will take a small break before our final rush towards the release. The next two weeks are going to be almost complete radio silence, and this blog will take a break, too.
New issues will be released after our vacation to start the third season of our developer diaries.
Water
Those of you who have already played the Strike in the Ardennes mission and the Vineyards of Sicily, the new Skirmish mode map, have most likely noticed that our water visuals have changed. Ivan, who has been working on this change, has written a quick outline of how the work went.
"Implementation of our long-anticipated 'new water' has surprisingly coincided with the upcoming Steam sale. As a result, a relaxed development process, which mostly consisted of watching ripples on water, turned into fierce arguments between us and the Art Department about the final level of water quality in our game...
The first step was painless: we corrected all the visible seam-like artifacts. But artists are artists, and they can easily keep going in their search for perfection :)
First, we added soft edges to the shores
Then, a refraction effect to the water
We even started experimenting with reflections at some point, and we found a solution, but for some reason the artists didn't like it
When the reflections had finally been properly implemented, I just sat down and started taking screenshots, under the pretence of completing my assigned tasks...
...along with continually correcting landscape texture artifacts.
I have no words to describe the relief I felt when the final version was finished... .
By the way, the water in the game used to look like this:
Objects
While we are talking about development from the artists' perspective, we can't help mentioning the upcoming map for the historical campaign, El Alamein, which our guys have spent lots of time working on.
As usual, we've prepared a unique set of assets for the mission. Here are some of them:
We get a set of parts, just like Lego pieces, which layout artists then use to make a map.
The El Alamein project manager suggested we show the map later, once the signature minarets are ready, so for now you can just imagine how it will be arranged and what it will look like. The only remark we can make is that the map is big and has a ton of buildings.
And now, as usual, a few words from our development team about their most recent week of work.
To cut a long story short, and on behalf of entire team:
Teil 2: „Vorschläge der Spieler“
Aleksandr Vitsyn (Project page on VK): "It's better to replace those 4 game mode buttons with just 1. Or you could just keep adding them and end up filling the entire screen. [On the buttons at the top of the screen]".
We will come up with a solution for this in one of the next few updates. You will be able to choose multiplayer battles on the "globe" by marking the modes you are interested in and then starting an opponent search. Everything will be more consistent, more convenient, and more attractive.
Part 3: The Next Episode
We'll probably tell you about the next update, but who knows? It will be a new blog season, after all ;)