We’re chewing our way though the tasks towards the next milestone, which is to activate the Multiplayer Campaign on the stable servers. We’re still not quite there yet, and this week Reto.Murphy has just committed his ‘Commit of Doom’, which is a major update to the backend servers. This commit is the first major step in scaling up the backend, so it will be able to handle more users. The reason why we call it ‘The Commit of Doom’ is, that it holds so many changes and updates, that our development environment currently has become seriously incapacitated – but don’t worry – this was expected! However it also means that the next stable build will be a bit delayed. However there will be some updates on the Action game.
Last week I spoke of a major Action game update – this hasn’t been rolled out on the stable-server, but it’s now in the process of being rolled out – so those of you who have an alpha-key will soon have new weapon-poses, new vehicle textures (on some models), a new friction model on vehicles, updated tank sights and more.
This week we announced that our good friend and long time collaborator Jesper Kyd will be scoring the soundtrack for Heroes & Generals. He has already composed our main theme and the Axis theme – and he’s currently working on the US theme. But more on that at a later point.
We have a profile on a gaming community called IndieDB. And they have a contest where the users on IndieDB can vote for “Indie of the Year 2011″, so please go to our profile page on IndieDB and vote for us!
Propaganda This Week
Press Release: Heroes & Generals Enlists Jesper Kyd for Soundtrack Duty
“Award-winning composer of Assassin’s Creed® and Hitman® series hooks up with Reto-Moto to score studio’s upcoming combined online FPS and Strategy game, Heroes & Generals.” Read More
Vote for us at Indie of the Year Awards 2011
Developer Blogs This Week
Modeling Vehicles
By Reto.Hr. Wille
“There are many stages before a final vehicle model end up in Heroes and Generals. The first step is obviously to decide on a vehicle.” Read More
Separating the testers from the Testers
By Reto.Splixxen
“Often when people get access to a game in alpha or beta, their main purpose is to snoop around and figure out if the game is something they want to spend time on, once it’s released. But then there are some, who logs on to actually test.” Read More
Campaign data handling
By Reto.Chrestangen
“If you haven’t noticed, then I have to tell you that I am focusing a lot on data structures, data handling and data in general. The reason why, is that we have some needs for advanced data structures in order to handle a massive amount of data. But another reason is that we are using an unusual approach to dealing with data client side.” Read More
Team Debriefing
Design
Reto.RedBjarne, Game Director
“- Forest variation (work on ICE trees)
- Stonebridge fixup
- Garagebuilding for factory level”
Reto.Fleck, Level Designer
“MIA“
Reto.Robotron3000, Community Manager & Game Designer
“I am currently working on the strategic aspects of the game. I am balancing and designing how battles auto-resolve and getting ready to add more factories & airfields to the campaign map.”
Artists
Reto.Hr.Wille, 3D Artist
“This week I have been adding a new Messerschmidt Bf 109E mesh, painted decals and made a new shader for it. Also I’ve just started working on the new version of the M4A3E8 Sherman tank.”
Reto.Mato, Lead Character Artist
“This week I made Character compound placeholders with Combat Gear and GM Paratrooper Textures.”
Reto.Owleater, Character Artist
“Finally the US Paratrooper helmet was done, only minor tweaks on the shader is left. US Combat jacket ingame and highres is final – textures next. I I also did a post on the blog about our character pipeline, which will be published soon.”
Reto.Colding, Lead Animator
“Amongst others … Enter Exit Willys first stab… proper anim poses for Sherman and Hellcat.”
Reto.Dave, Environment/Props/Concept Artist
“I’ve been working on the factory level with Fleck and Jacob. We are working on modeling final objects and textures.”
Coders & QA
Reto.Goonstah, Programmer and Technical Lead
“Nothing to report besides bugfixes… “
Reto.Chrestangen, Flash Programmer
“- Refactoring all viewable object in the map, and data refactoring, clean up and so forth
- Bloggggg
- The regular bugfixing, meetings, other stuff”
Reto.Placebo, Code connoisseur
“* corrected some bugs with pathfinding on campaignmap
* iterated on resupplying commandnodes from HQ reserves – less buggy and now selects the reserve which is closest to the commandnode in need of top up”
Reto.Hal9k, Render Programmer
“- Started on getting Live distribution of the game up and running.
- Continued work on Lobby functionality.
- Optimizing of backend server functionality begun
- Bugfixing of render code.”
Reto.Ogssan, Gameplay Programmer
“Updated the tank sights, fixed an issue with the plane bombs and started work on characters, assault teams and the whole spawn system.”
Reto.Leto, Gameplay Programmer
“This week I have been working on switching to PhysX 3.1 and vehicle collision :>”
Reto.Murphy, Senior Programmer
“Just finished ‘The Commit of Doom’, with a major update to services & deployment.”
Reto.Injection, Senior Programmer
“I’m currently working on the payment system.”
Reto.Splixxen, Lead Tester
“- Sort crash logs.
- Handle feedback from testers.
- Lots of Q/A on houses.”
Reto.Prakash, IT Architect
“* A new update to the warmap-editor now allows for the creation of multiple factories in the same battlefield. However only one factory will produce resources in the game at any given time. The functionality will pick up the first factory applicable for the Faction controlling the battlefield. For example – a battlefield can have 3 factories producing:
- “Tiger I”,
- “Hellcat”, and
- “Infantry”.
* When this battlefield is controlled by US, it will produce “Hellcat” Tanks (since that is the faction’s specific resource, can’t have US fighting in Tiger tanks can we?). However, when the same battlefield is occupied by Germany, then it will produce “Tiger” Tanks. Note that even though “infantry” is applicable to both Factions, the production logic will never get to that factory and hence, never produce infantry.
* The factory production logic for the strategy game frontend is also in place to utilize this new structure… and is being tested.”
Sound
Reto.Draebesmoelf, Lead Sound Designer
“Sounds for planes, planes, planes… And more plane sounds to come 
”
Reto.Lord, Audio Programmer
“I have been working on mission list related things on the flash site. The flash client receives a list of available action game servers. When a user wants to join a mission that is not active yet, the flash client sends a sorted version of the list of available action game hosts (list is sorted by ping response times from the client to each server). The servers service frame work then selects one from the received and notifies the client which then joins the newly spawned action game.”
Management & IT
Reto.Topo, CEO
“MIA“
Reto.Hansg, IT Admin
“- Negotiated server-rent deals with our hosting-provider
- Replaced and restored a disk for Reto.Murphy”
Reto.KenSolo, PR & Marketing Coordinator
“I’ve been busy preparing this weekends trailer shooting, but unfortunately we have to cancel and postpone the outdoor-session due to bad weather (DOH!). The indoor shoot Saturday will still be made though. Besides I’ve been working with Reto.Topo and our marketing consultant Michael on business models and communication strategies.”
NOTICE
The Intelligence Bulletin is designed primarily for the use of the members of the Heroes & Generals community. It is a vehicle for the dissemination to them of the latest information received from Reto-Moto Intelligence sources about the development of Heroes & Generals. Readers are invited to comment on the use that they are making of the Intelligence Bulletin and to forward suggestions for future issues.
Reto-Moto Intelligence Division,
Developer Department
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