Battlegroup42 1.8 - New Maps #1 news

The first thing we have to say is that Battlegroup42 1.71 is no more. Instead we are producing something bigger and better.

In our last news we promised to tell you something about the new maps which will be awaiting you in 1.8 - yes, 1.8, due to the fact that there's a whole lot of new content we have decided to not release a patch but a full version instead. This is more than justified, especially considering the amount of new maps alone. Many of you might have wondered why in our last version, in which we introduced the Chinese army, we had only one map featuring them and asked themselves "so much effort for only one map ?" In 1.7 they are actually fighting on only one map, Nanking, which encouraged our mapper Yamamoto to create four more maps for this army. The scenarios are the Battle for Shanghai in October 1937, the great flood at the Yellow River in summer of 1938, the Wannan incident of November 1940 and the Japanese campaign in the province of Jiangxi in summer of 1942.

Additionally, Yamamoto created two other maps for 1.8: "Operation Herkules" is a fictional scenario about the planned, but never executed invasion of Malta by Italian and German troops in August 1942. The "Battle of Attu" takes place in an almost forgotten theatre of war, the annihilation of the Japanese occupying forces on Attu, the westernmost and largest island in the Near Islands group of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, by American troops in May 1943. An individual contribution to the map list comes from Afri Cola - "Serafimovic" depicts the successful attack of Italian forces on Sovjet emplacements at the Don river in July 1942, which lead to the establishment of a strategically important bridgehead.

On "Serefimovic" you will find another new and unique vehicle along with the already announced ZiS-30: It is the Autocarro Protetto AS37, an armored italian multi-purpose vehicle. It has been developed form the AS37 artillery tractor after the battle experiences of the italian troops in North Afrika. Goal was to give the infantry a protected transport and support vehicle, and so it comes in two flavours in BG42 as well: The armored personnel carrier is armed with a Breda machinegun and has gunshields on the sides of the fighting compartment. The fire support vehicle mounts a 20mm Solothurn gun. The model was created by Krätzer including two skins for different battlefields. Most of the new maps will also come with bot support for all our offline players.

We know that you expected to find out some more details about our new project that we recently announced. Despite we are still in the internal discussion and planning phase, and therefore have nothing to show off to the public, we can confirm the rumours the the team wants to switch to the Unreal-Engine, creating a free standalone game. Plan is to port the famous Battlegroup42 gameplay to a much more advanced development environment, better graphics and better physics. The new project is called Battlegroup3 and will start with the battles in the early days of World War 2, when Germany attacks the Netherlands, Belgium and France in spring 1940. We could need any help for this project, so if you're curious and want to involve yourself - talented modders, especially with UDK experiences are always welcome in the team! Just visit our forum at www.battlegroup42.de..