Hi everyone, here we are with the next update!
We have some new stuff we want to show you and get your opinion on.
This time it’s all about human models & uniforms. These go together because we want to show you stuff that is completed; not just human models and not just uniforms but both.
The uniforms we show here are Russian summer uniforms of 1941-42.
As always, we research before we design. In case of the Gates of Hell uniforms, a vast amount of effort went into consulting many different sources such as “Uniforms and insignia of Red Army 1918-1958 (Kharitonov O. V.), “Manual on fitting, assembly... of the marsh equipment of Red Army” (1941), orders of introduction of new items of equipment along the years spanning the war and many others. This was done by Artyom Kazarez who is our in- house historian for this subject.
This photo, said to have been taken in Stalingrad, shows off some accessories nicely (e.g. PPSH drum pouch, spade, shoes with puttee’s), but we can’t trust the colors because they may have been added later.
A number of Soviet uniforms are uniquely shaped. On some, the jacket does not open in the middle from the belt down; the reason for this being unclear. Does anyone of you know?
Anyway, sometimes uniforms seem to have been designed for anywhere but the battlefield. Some Soviet soldiers wore overalls; while these kept out dust and dirt, they must have been a total nuisance in the latrine.
Let’s have a look at a selection of Soviet uniforms and a special rundown of some of the faces:
We will post more screenshots of the soviet models on Facebook in the coming days
As you can (maybe) see, there is much more detail modelled into these than you will find in most games.
The soldier on the close-up belongs to a cadre division of the Red Army from pre-war service. He is fully equipped with Y-straps, bread bag and marsh boots. You may note he is sub-machinegunner, so he has two PPSH drum pouches.
Sadly the image of a Soviet soldier in full gear with all equipment, backpack, marsh boots, etc was only a common sight in 1941. Big losses endured in the first months of war lead to tremendous losses of equipment. So during the Battle of Moscow, the standard soldier’s uniform and gear had many differences, and often most of the equipment was poorer than before. E.g: most bread bags and a substantial amount of Y-straps were lost in the summer & autumn of 1941.
This will be shown in the game - in 1942, soldiers will have other arrangements of equipment.
The more polygons you use in the design process, the better your models look, but a lot of time needs to be spent in optimising the mesh for performance reasons.
The “flipside” is - perhaps obviously - the amount of time it takes to finish and texture them all correctly. This is possibly the main reason why we are not developing at a break- neck pace. We use the “highpoly” method for human modelling, creating a model that contains millions of polygons, accurately simulating different cloth materials and down to the very moles on the soldiers’ skin. Later, the sculpture is broken down to just a couple of thousand polygons, something that the game can handle. The wrinkles of cloth and other tiny details that were once contained in the million-polygon mesh are transferred to the texture, giving a natural appearance to all details.
After the modelling is done we need to add something else to get a sense of realism: we should have a wide cross- section of all the different peoples that made the Soviet army a multicultural place by any standard. We have designed our 3D soldier models to represent just that. Note that the faces of the 3D models here only show a fraction of the total number of different faces, and we have collections of them for different nations.
Besides that, we need to add texture variations that make the uniforms recognizable. Our historical advisors have made a specification catalogue to track the different uniforms that we will make, and all the separate pieces that conform it. We will be producing approximately 30 uniforms per nation for Early Access, which is not only a record for any MoW game, but perhaps for any RTS out there - we would have to check!
All in all we hope you can see that we are not only progressing but always choosing for ways that add to the quality. Do you like the result?
Last but not least, some words on the development cycle in general.
Quality, realism and historical correctness take time to integrate. Since all our devs are developing the game in their spare time, it is only logical that the game is not yet finished; however, we are progressing nicely toward release. At the time we write this, a huge volume of work is already finished and our goal for EA this year is realistic.
In one of our summer dev blogs we will announce the start of beta testing, the logical next step in any game development cycle. Make sure you keep following us and, when the time comes, subscribe as a tester. We are currently setting up the process for it. By the way, beta testers will receive a game key from us; they will not need to buy the game when it’s released.
Would you be interested to be among the first that see these uniforms and models in- game?
On to a couple of facts then; did you know that….
- Some Soviet items were looted off Soviet soldiers by default; the felted boot, for instance, was much better for cold conditions because it lacked the cold- conducting iron nails the German soldiers had in their boot soles.
- The “winter lesson” the Wehrmacht had to learn in 1941 was the absolute necessity to wear the uniform trousers over their boots to prevent snow from gathering in them. This could mean the difference between keeping or losing a foot.
- Many Soviet soldiers on war-photos have one interesting peculiarity: they have the lone belt without pouches, the foxhole spade or other items. It’s usually so, because many photos were staged and not taken in battle conditions. On the other hand, there’s many photos of soldiers in full gear as well.
- Every soldier should have a gas mask bag with it’s corresponding gas mask. It’s interesting to note that from the beginning of the war many soldiers dropped their gasmask and used the former bag for carrying other items - ammo, food, tobacco, etc. Below is a war-time picture showing the usual cargo of a gas mask bag in 1942.
