Sides Update #1: Overview news

This week, I'm taking a bit of a break from map updates to shed some light on the sides featured in Battlefront Chronicles. This update will give an overview of the sides setup, along with some other little bits of sides-related information.

The basic side setup is pretty similar to that of the stock game. On every ground map, each side has its four standard classes: the rifleman, the rocketeer, the sniper, and the engineer. The equipment for these classes tends to be similar across every side, and isn't too different from what everyone is used to by now, although there are some minor variations. For example, depending on the side, the engineer's primary weapon could be a shotgun, a heavy blaster pistol, or a blaster carbine. Also, the rocketeer for each side now carries concussion grenades, which pack a stronger punch against vehicles, as opposed to the more general-purpose thermal detonators. Last, the sniper class carries a recon droid in place of auto-turrets. The recon droids themselves have had some modifications to make them more effective - if they are destroyed by enemies, their self-destruct mechanism kicks in automatically, meaning they must be destroyed from a distance.

In addition to the four standard classes, each side has two special unit slots. The special units are made up of a variety of classes - some are heavy assault units, some are officer units, and some have a mixture of attributes from other units. Different maps feature different special units. For example, the Republic may have the Clone Gunner and the Clone Commander on Geonosis, but have the Jet Trooper and the ARC trooper on Tatooine.

Finally, I've made some slight modifications to the "feel" of the sides. All projectile weapons have some level of recoil. It isn't enough to wildly throw off anybody's aim, but it is enough to be noticeable, and it makes the game a little more immersive (in my opinion, anyway). Also, all units have a slight motion blur effect when sprinting, similarly to the Force sprint of stock Jedi heroes. This change doesn't really have any functional reason behind it, but I just thought it would be fun to try, and it looks cool. I might also play around a bit with the 3rd-person camera angles, just to see if I can find a fun new perspective. In general, I want the sides to have a little bit of the grit/"realism" of modern FPS games, but still have the fun, arcade-y feel of the Battlefront games.

Thanks for reading! A few additional screenshots can be found in the image gallery. Future side updates will focus on individual special units, vehicles, or heroes.