(RU translation as usual will be available on GoH's VK site)
Welcome to the twelfth entry of the developer blog.
Before we go into details, let me propose a structural system that we will employ for the Devblog. Aside from classic ‘round of the mill’ introductory paragraphs and status reports, the entries with clear theme focus will have a heading, and equally we will hint the subject on the announcement title itself.
Winter
Let's talk about winter.
A statement well suited to our art director: There is a narrow gap between a winter landscape and a plastic world.
Introducing winter maps to a strategy game, given it’s style of design and limitations, is preety delicate. If enough care is not delivered to the stylisation, design, and atmosphere of a winter map - it’s never going to work. A very strict discipline is required to make a map that conveys the feel of freezing cold and staggering icy war. Because there’s a difference between a snowy scene on the Alps, and a war-torn ambient of frozen Stalingrad.
A large responsibility relies on the environment designer and the environment modeller. We have plotted plans to create unique models exclusive to the winter scenarios, since we feel winter-textured items are sometimes not sufficient to convey a feeling for a different environment. Not only from the practical point of view, that winter assets should have additional 3d-mesh modifications to make them even better-looking in their environment, but also because it will create a sense of place, a local feel, that triggers different emotions exclusive to the winter scenarios.
Statistically, Men of War shows that the community online doesn’t like winter maps that much. They lead the popularity list, second to every other map. Maybe it's time to create an incentive to play real winter in Gates of Hell?
Similarly, post processes and texture enhancements, such as normal or specular maps, need to be handled with microscopic precision. At the end of the day, you really don’t want to have your brigade marching over a ‘sheet of plastic’ or a ‘white carton board’ surface. A game that is played from the first person can model the close-up snowy irregular surface mesh and hence lift responsibility from the mear texture, but I’m sure you don’t want to have to buy two GTX titans in SLI for a 16-Million polygon ground surface.
That’s enough, I’ll quit the chatter. Judge by yourself.
View picture in HD (1920x1080) here
Cule.